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Steve Brooks Founder / Manager Northern California - United States 3780 Posts |
Whit,
Thought that perhaps you might enlighten our Café members with a little history of the origins surrounding the now classic Three Shell Game. Thanks.
"Always be you because nobody else can" - Steve Brooks
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Alan Wheeler Inner circle Posting since 2002 with 2038 Posts |
In an old Jackie Chan movie called "The Drunken Master," which was set in ancient China, there was a scene with something much like the three-shell game, perhaps using tea cups. Do you know whether this is an anachronism or historically accurate?
Thank you for donating your time this week, Whit Haydn! alleycat
The views and comments expressed on this post may be mere speculation and are not necessarily the opinions, values, or beliefs of Alan Wheeler.
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Whit Haydn V.I.P. 5449 Posts |
My feeling about the origin of the shell game, shared by my friend and fellow researcher Ron Wohl, is that the cups and balls was always a takedown scam presented in the guise of a magic trick.
This type of takedown scam was introduced in Europe by gypsies who flooded Spain with such games in the fifteenth century, but probably dates back to ancient Greece and Egypt. We know the cups and balls were performed on the streets in ancient times, but whether they were used as a congame back then we have no way of knowing. My guess is they were always some kind of scam. Further reasons for this conclusion will be described in our book on the shells in essays by myself and Dr. Wohl. The thimble-rig and the shell game are the slimmed down version of the original scam--without the cover of a magic presentation. These later games simply cut to the chase. I do not know much about the history of the cups and balls in the orient, but I suspect it is fairly old in India, China and other parts of the east. It is probable that it was used in the same way there. A good description of the cups and balls as a take down game appears in Robert-Houdin's book "Card Sharpers." He describes a magic performance in a Parisian restaurant in the 1840's using a ball of bread and three soup plates, and the accompanying setup and takedown of the gullible patrons. Our book on the shells will cover all of this in great detail, but the general history is as follows. Thimble-rig was the more larcenous child of the cups and balls scam, and probably originated in England sometime in the seventeenth century. It appeared in America in the late eighteenth century where it was championed by Dr. Bennett. Dr. Bennett of Shreveport, Louisiana (probably born in England) was often credited as the inventor of thimble-rig, which isn't correct. He was, however, one of the first and certainly one of the best-known thimble worker to have worked the scam in the United States. He made a fortune playing the game on the Red and Mississippi River steamboats, where he was known as the King of the Thimbles and the Napoleon of the Thimble-Riggers. In the early 1840's, the Doctor and a group of his disciples created such havoc among the bucolic sports of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi that stringent laws were passed in those states specifically prohibiting the game. Dr. Bennett claimed that thimble-rig had been his principal source of income since boyhood, which meant that he must have been performing the scam since before 1800. In 1845, at the age of seventy, Bennett was a kindly-appearing older gentleman with snow white hair and a disarming trick of peering over his spectacles and saying, "Sometimes, my boy, I am very severe, then again not quite so sly." He played with thimbles and a moistened paper ball, and was famous for a ruse in which a tiny triangle of paper was glued to the inside of one of the thimbles. Whenever called for, he would turn that thimble toward the sucker and pull back slightly which caused the tiny piece of paper to be exposed for a short time. The sucker would assume that the ball was under that thimble. Davy Crockett in several chapters of his autobiography describes some of the shenanigans of a character he calls "Thimble-Rig" whom he met on the riverboats. Thimble-Rig was probably one of dozens of shell game operators working the steamboats of the great American rivers in the first half of the nineteenth century. Eventually, by the 1840's, the three thimbles were replaced in the United States by three small metal cups about the size of walnut shells, and then by walnut shells. The size and shape allowed new methods of handling. The pea was either a cork ball or ball of paper. Bret Harte may have based his fictional gambler Jack Hamlin on “Lucky Bill,” the most notorious of the California gold rush “sure-thing” gamblers. Thornton was born in Chenango County, New York. A tall broad-shouldered man with curly black hair and large gray eyes, Thornton was considered quite a ladies man, once traveling with a "harum" of three young women. "Lucky Bill” joined a wagon train to California in 1849, and by the time he reached the Pacific Slope he had most of the money of his fellow travelers. Thornton operated a shell game played with little metal cups shaped like half-walnut shells and a blackened cork pea. He performed on a tray suspended from his neck with a leather strap. He kept his fingernails long so that he could clip the cork pea between the nail and flesh of a finger as he supposedly set a cup down over it. This method was more difficult than the French “finger palm” more commonly used at the time. In his first two months in Sacramento, Thornton made $24,000. He went broke several times with his addiction to Faro and profligate spending, but always made his fortune back with the help of the “three musketeers” and the little pea. He eventually established a ranch in the Carson Valley of Nevada near the town of Genoa that he stocked with several thousand head of cattle. He built a sawmill and operated a toll road, becoming one of the area's most prosperous and respected settlers. Thornton’s luck ran out when he was convicted of murder and cattle theft, and hanged on June 18, 1858. One of the early "kings" of the Mississippi shell game artists, James Miner was known variously as Umbrella Jim and as the Poet Gambler. He was called "Umbrella Jim" for his habit of beginning his con game under an umbrella--rain or shine, indoors or out. He was called the Poet Gambler for his famous doggerel that he used to accompany his shell game: "A little fun, just now and then, Is relished by the best of men. If you have nerve, you may have plenty; Five draws you ten, and ten draws twenty. Attention given, I'll show to you, How 'Umbrella' hides the peek-a-boo. Select your shell, the one you choose; If right, you win; if not, you lose; The game itself is lots of fun, Jim's chances, though, are two to one; And I tell you your chance is slim To win a prize from Umbrella Jim." The rubber pea appeared around the 1860's, usually made from the rubber from a printer roller. Well known exponents of this version of the scam include "Nutshell Jim," "Old Man" Taylor, Doc Baggs, "Clubfoot" Hall, and the king of the shell game men, Jeff "Soapy" Smith. Jeff Smith first learned the shell game from a circus grifter named Clubfoot Hall, but his short and notorious career really took off in 1885 in Leadville, Colorado. There he apprenticed to “Old Man” Taylor, the foremost shell game operator of the day. Taylor was an expert pitchman, and the inventor of the soap swindle from which Jefferson Randolph Smith would get the nickname that would stick with him the rest of his life. In the soap swindle, Soapy would present himself as a “soap salesman” on a city street corner. After extolling the many virtues of his wonderful soap, Sapolion, “made in my own laboratory from a secret formula,” a number of bars of soap were unwrapped in front of the public, and then folded back up with $10, $20 and $50 dollar bills hidden in the paper wrappers. These were dropped into a suitcase with the ordinary soap bars (worth about a nickel), and the spectators were allowed to take their pick at $5.00 a bar. Only the five or six shills in the crowd ever seemed to find any money since Soapy had palmed off each bill in the act of folding the wrapper. Soapy Smith would become one of the most famous and influential con men of the nineteenth century. He even coined the term "sure-thing" bet. Eventually Smith would take over the vice and gambling in whole towns—in Denver and Creede in Colorado, and later in Skagway, Alaska. Doc Baggs and George Devol would steer for Soapy for a time, but Soapy’s main operating principle was the opposite of Baggs, Devol, and all those of the earlier period. Instead of finding the richest victim and taking him for the most possible, Soapy liked to take average people for less money. He planned to make it up in volume. By lowering his profile in this way, he could work the same area for a long time, and didn’t have to constantly “hit the road.” He believed in organization, and wanted all the grifters in an area working together. This would be useful in dealing with the authorities, many of who were already used to “arrangements” with various types of criminal gangs. He wanted to have the “fix” put in with the police, and if he didn’t bother the local people, and avoided violence this was usually possible—for a price. Soapy was an expert at calling and holding a crowd on the street, and at the patent medicine show technique of filling the crowd with shills and boosters. He combined all the best methods of the street pitchman and medicine show with the con-artistry of the shell game. Citizen-vigilante Frank Reid and Jefferson Randolph Smith shot and killed each other on the Skagway docks in 1898. Soapy’s gang fled in every direction. It is certain that these talented and finely-trained con men carried on with his ideas as they scattered all across the country: “The way of the transgressor is hard—to quit.” —Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith Some of Soapy's henchmen eventually became famous in their own right, including Wilson Mizner who founded the famous Brown Derby restaurant in LA, and Alexander Conlin known as "Alexander--the Man Who Knows." Conlin was a famous mentalist in the first half of this century, and the author of the Dr. Q manuscripts. Well, this "short history" turns out to be like taking a sip from a fire hose. Much more about this fascinating history will appear in our book, "The School for Scoundrels Notes on the Shell Game." |
Steve Brooks Founder / Manager Northern California - United States 3780 Posts |
Wow, thanks a bunch for the little history lesson, very informative says I.
I'm really looking forward to reading the book when it becomes available.
"Always be you because nobody else can" - Steve Brooks
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John Smetana ???? - 2009 499 Posts |
For those of you who may be interested in learning more about both SOAPY SMITH and WILSON MIZNER, I would suggest two books that will fill the bill, The first is titled "Soapy Smith-King of the Frontier Con Men. Written by Frank C Robertson and Beth Kay Harris and published in 1961 by Hastings House. The second is ROGUES PROGRESS-The Fabulous Adventures of Wilson Mizner written by John Burke. My copy was published in 1975 by G P Putman's Sons.
Have fun and as always, Best thoughts, John Smetana |
Whit Haydn V.I.P. 5449 Posts |
Thanks, John. Both those books are a great read. The Robertson/Harris book is out of print and hard to find, and it is not very accurate. "The Reign of Soapy Smith-Monarch of Misrule" by William Ross Collier and Edwin Victor Westrate published in 1937 is much better, although filled with undocumented information that also may not be accurate. It is hard to find as well.
My friend Jeff Smith, who is the great grandson of Soapy, is working on the definitive biography, and that should be out eventually. It will be the most factual. Also, I am looking forward to David Charvet's book on Claude Alexander Conlin, which I think should be very interesting and break a lot of new ground. Don't know when that is coming out. |
Whit Haydn V.I.P. 5449 Posts |
Please, guys, don't forget to check out some of the other threads on the shell game and three-card monte in this forum. There is some great info here. I have learned an awful lot from being here. Thanks to all.
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