Barely could write, fought with Bat, set town afire

"Drunk, barely literate, loud-mouthed columnist who didn’t believe in punctuation marks"

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Newspapering back in the Victorian era displayed a different face, I fear… perhaps one with more character, but much rougher edges. At least the characters were in residence at the time. Take for example, Otto Floto, fight promoter, sports writer, circus owner, and who also has ties to the Cripple Creek District and is thought to be a likely candidate for helping start the 1896 Cripple Creek fire.

“In the early 1900s Floto was The Denver Post’s sports editor, and a drunk, barely literate, loud-mouthed columnist who didn’t believe in punctuation marks, wrote about fights he secretly promoted on the side, got into shooting matches with the legendary Wild West gunman (turned Denver sportswriter) Bat Masterson and penned such headlines as ‘Local Team Like a Sweater, Worsted,’” wrote the modern Post’s columnist Woody Paige in 2007.

“He actually had operated a dog-and-pony show and provided rides home in his carriage for The Post’s co-owner Harry Tammen, who loved the name ‘Otto Floto’ and gave him a job – and later called the circus the newspaper bought ‘Sells-Floto.’ Floto died at 65, in 1929,” Paige wrote.

In 1896 in Cripple Creek, the first of two terrible fires began in the Red Light section.

“The tale of Jennie LaRue has gained as much notoriety in Colorado as that of Mrs. Leary’s cow in the great Chicago fire,” writes Jan MacKell in her book “Brothels, Bordellos, and Bad Girls.” “It all began on a windy spring day  -- April 25, 1896 – in Cripple Creek. A lone figure made his way down Third Street and on to Myers Avenue, turning in at the Central Dance Hall and heading up to the second floor. Upstairs was Jennie LaRue, ironing near a gasoline stove.  Some sources say the two argued when the angry visitor accused Jennie of stealing his money;  others say Jennie was upset because the man had missed a date with her. However it happened, the couple began to argue, then to physically fight. In the mayhem the stove overturned, quickly igniting the floor with spreading gasoline flames.”

MacKell noted that 3,600 were left homeless and the fire burned over a million dollars in buildings and belongings.

“Newspapers as far away as Denver did not hesitate to spew forth Jennie’s name, but most accounts left out the name of her fightin’ man. Over the years, various periodicals have narrowed the suspects down to three. One is an unnamed bartender from the Topic Theater. Another is a Mr. Jones, who ran a lunch counter at the Central. But the third suspect is most likely our man. He’s that fellow with the funny name, Otto Floto,” writes MacKell in several publications.

“Perhaps the most significant clue to Jennie’s mystery man lies in a marriage certificate filed at the El Paso County courthouse. Dated October 20, 1896, the document reveals the marriage of Otto C. Floto to one Jennie Ried. If the lovely Ms. LaRue was true to her profession and sported an alias, Ried could have been her legal surname.”

MacKell calls attention to the fact that, no one appears to have been held legally responsible for the devastating effects of the fire.

The 1896 Cripple Creek directory lists Floto as the manager of the Cripple Creek Bill Posting Company. Other sources have him as a bartender, and historian Marshal Sprague pegged him as the manager of the Butte Opera House. Maybe Mr. Jones, the bartender at the Topic, and Otto Floto were all rolled into one.

According to Robert K. DeArment, writer of “Bat Masterson: The Man and The Legend,” Floto was hired when he came to Tammen’s attention after a bout in Carson City, Nevada, and hired him as sports editor for his Denver paper, simply because he like his name.

“Tammen always claimed his name was so beautiful.”

Floto, according to DeArment, claimed to be the grandson of Friedrich von Flotow, composer of the opera “Martha.”

“Like Masterson, he had been kicking around frontier towns most of his adult life without finding a profession. At one time or another, he had been everything from a bill poster to a saloon keeper. He shared Bat’s love for the ring and had seen most of the major fights since the Sullivan –Kilrain battle of 1889, when he had been John L.’s timekeeper. He managed Bob Fitzsimmons’ theatrical tour and accompanied Peter Maher on a trip to England,” wrote DeArment.

Gene Fowler, who began his famed newspaper career as an assistant to Floto at the Post, described him thusly.

“Otto Floto was a big man in every way. He was a merry man much of the time, but when offended, had the mein of an archbishop who had just heard the confession of Gyp the Blood.”

Masterson and Floto were originally friends but got crosswise over a business deal and a feud then raged for years in competitive papers in Denver.

As Fowler wrote of the rivalry, “Floto And Bat Masterson … were life-long enemies. Both were past masters at appraising pugilists, being America’s foremost critics of pancratia. Let gladiator make one lack luster feint, the slightest error in leading, the least violation of rhythm in footwork, time of punches or coordination of brain and fist – and these Dr. Johnsons of sport would reprove the offender with galleys of bitter type.”

He recalled their now-famous scrap.

“Did they indulge in fancy steps, neat left hooks, graceful fiddling? Nay. They advanced like charcoal burners of the Black Forest, and began kinking each other in the groin! The event was richly symbolic of the critical poohbahs of any art, men who know every move, whether of pen, brush, violin bow or naked fist, and yet themselves can find no bridge from the academic to the practical.”

Fowler said the ineffective roundhouse rights from Floto and Masterson “stirred up more wind than the town had felt since the blizzard of 1883.”

An account in the Denver Times about the fight: “There was a mix, Bat using his cane he carried to good advantage.” Floto took flight according to the story, with Masterson in chase.

“I used to think I was a pretty good runner,” Masterson was quoted in the Times. “But that fellow started to pull away from me on the jump, and before we had gone ten feet I saw that it was all up with me and that I could never catch him, so I just stopped and stamped my foot like you do when you scare a dog, and you might not think it possible, but that fellow let out another link and was knocking big chunks out the time for a city block. He is the best runner I ever saw.”

When asked about his use of cane in the fracas:

“You see there are some fellows you can reason with and talk them into being decent, and there are others you have to beat to death to teach them that they have to be decent. These fellows have got to be decent or someone is going to beat them to death. I understand that my friend Floto is carrying a derringer. The next time I see him I am going to ask him to give it to me and I will pawn it. The darn thing cost $8 and you can pawn it easily for $5,” said Masterson according to the Denver Times.

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Perfecting the art of getting out of Dodge

"Every dog, we are told, has his day, unless there are more dogs than days."
__ Bat Masterson

Walks with a cane, 

finds legendary trouble

By Rob Carrigan, 
robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Sometimes, a change in scenery is good for your soul, or can save your hide, or it is simply necessary to help clear the air around you. No one understood that better than the legendary gunfighter and Colorado lawman Bat Masterson.
Masterson was a true practitioner of the art (both literally and figuratively) of picking the precise moment to “get out of Dodge.”
As a young man, Masterson worked as an army scout in conflicts with Kiowa and Comanche tribes. His first gunfight occurred in a bar in Sweetwater, Texas.
Melvin A. King, an army corporal, who became jealous and combative upon finding Molly Brennan in the company of one Bat Masterson at the Lady Gay Saloon, began firing upon them.
According to some accounts, Miss Brennan jumped in front of Masterson in hopes of heading off the violence and preventing King from shooting him, but both were hit anyway. As Masterson fell, he shot King, who had paused to cock his pistol. Both King and Molly died of their wounds, and it left Masterson using his cane for the rest of his life.
After serving as a deputy for the city (and later in the famous Dodge City Peace Commission) alongside Wyatt Earp in wild and wooly Dodge City, Kansas, Masterson eventually became Ford County Sheriff. His brother Ed, became City Marshall of Dodge City. Ed was killed in fight with two drunken cowboys outside a saloon in Dodge City in 1878.
Bat Masterson became a deputy U.S. Marshall in 1879 while continuing to serve as county sheriff, but by 1880, after losing a re-election bid for Ford County Sheriff and still despondent from the slaying of his brother, he found it was time to get out of Dodge'.
For the next few years he passed most of his time playing or dealing cards, drinking and chasing women in places like Leadville, Trinidad and Tombstone, Ariz., with his longtime friends, the Earp brothers.
In 1882, he was hired by the city of Trinidad to clean up the town as town marshal and was by most accounts, successful. In the meantime, the Earps, along with 'Doc' John Holiday had managed to get into their legendary trouble at the OK Coral in Tombstone. Finding it necessary to get of town themselves, they ended up in Trinidad. Being an officer of the law at the time of the incident, Wyatt Earp was somewhat protected from legal troubles in Arizona, but Doc Holiday was in danger of being extradited for his role in the shootout. Masterson, according to some reports, was able to help out by having him arrested in Trinidad on trumped-up charges and making sure that trial delays and hearing postponements gummed up Holiday’s extradition back to Arizona. Holiday was however arrested in Denver, but Colorado refused to extradite and he lived out the remaining five years of his life here in Colorado.
Masterson returned to Dodge City several times over the next few years but, but in each case, he seemed to run into some form of trouble there. Visiting in 1881, he stepped off a train and into a gunfight with two men who were badgering his younger brother Jim. The fight was stopped by shotgun-brandishing authorities, and one of the wounded men was taken to the Doctor. Masterson, for his part in the affair, paid a small fine and left on the evening train.
He showed up again in Dodge City in 1883 for the “Dodge City War” that wasn’t. The scrap developed between the town’s saloon keepers and the city authorities but it turned out to be a bunch of hub-bub over nothing. In 1886, he was back in town again and ended up smacking Nellie Spencer’s husband with a pistol and ran off with Nellie.
That relationship, however, was short-lived and by 1891 he owned and managed the Palace Variety Theater in Denver and married actress Emma Walters. He began writing sports columns for George’s Weekly, a sporting newspaper in Denver. He also spent some time managing a gambling hall in Creede (where he reportedly got liquored up on occasion and would walk down the street late at night shooting out business lights and then come back in the morning an pay for the damage).
Denver, started wearing on him as well.
“When a boxing promotion partnership with Otto Floto, sports editor of the Denver Post, ended rancorously, Masterson took up the pen to retaliate against vituperation Floto hurled at him in his columns. The word battle led to a street brawl in July 1900. Bat belabored Floto with his cane and sent him running. Many Denverites viewed the feud as a comic affair, but it grew more serious when Floto and his Post employers imported notorious gunman ‘Whispering Jim’ Smith to deal with Masterson. The two gunfighters never met, but in May 1902 Bat, disgusted with Denver, left town,” wrote R.K. DeArment in the June, 2001 edition of “Wild West.”
Masterson spent the rest of his days in New York City, much of the time working as Sports Editor at the New York Morning Telegraph and died at his typewriter in 1921, having just finished his final column.
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Tools in the holster and tell-tale choice

“The difficulty in life is the choice.”
__ George Moore, 1900

It is said that you can tell a lot about somebody by the choices they make. Favorite Beatle, Fat Tire beer in the cooler or Miller High Life in Fridge, plain or peanut, Ford Ranger or Subaru Outback – it all gives a bit of insight.
What then, can we learn from a particular preference in firearm?
Men of violence, of course, sometimes choose paths that make the firearm necessary in the first place. But once headed down that path, what compels them to shove a particular tool in the holster?
The Samuel Colt Co., in 1873 developed Peacemaker model and it became an immediate hit here in what was the “Wild West.”
“It was originally produced in .45 caliber, with a 7 ½ inch barrel, for Ordinance issue to troops. Custer’s Seventh Cavalry troopers each carried one of these weapons with 18 rounds of ammunition in addition to his Springfield .45-70 single shot,” wrote Robert B. Cormack, in a paper for the Denver Westerners Monthly Roundup in 1962.
Part of its popularity was the result of genius of forethought by Colt in chambering this six-shooter for the same cartridges used in the Winchester Model ’73.
The ‘hog leg,’ or ‘plow handle’ and even sometimes called a ‘cutter’ was the first large revolver to use self-exploding, center fire cartridges.
“Bat Masterson’s favorite Colt was a .45 cal. single action with a stubby 4 ¾ inch barrel. Wyatt Earp usually wore two of this caliber. The left one won was a ‘Peacemaker’ with a 7 ½ inch barrel, the right had a 12 inch barrel. Known as a ‘Buntline Special,’ this Colt had been made to order and presented to him. According to the testimony of his friends, Doc Holliday definitely did not lug a shotgun everywhere with him. His pet was a nickel-plated .38 double action Colt, though on many occasions he was known to carry additional artillery. Billy the Kid had small hands, and therefore preferred his .41 Colt double-action Colt to the .44-40 he sometimes used. Butch Cassidy favored the Frontier.44-40 colt with a 7 ½ inch barrel. Wild Bill Hickock gained his fame with two 1851 Colt Navy .36s with ivory grips. He retained his fame with two ‘Peacemakers’ and died with a Smith & Wesson tip-up .32 rim-fire revolver in his pocket,” wrote Cormack.
Perhaps one of the most interesting elements of the times, was how commonplace the option of packing a piece was.
After all, when the McCarty gang, buddies of Butch Cassidy, decided to rob the Farmers & Merchant Bank in Delta and a bank teller started yelling for help and was shot and killed by Fred McCarty, it was the owner of the hardware store who came to the rescue.
“Ray Simpson, junior owner of the hardware store of W.G. Simpson & Son was cleaning his Sharps .44 caliber rifle at the time of the bank robbery. The hardware store was directly across Main Street from the bank. Simpson was thirty-one, a tall and slender man. He loved to hunt and was a crack shot. He was quiet, cool and calm,” notes Ken Jessen in his 1986 book “Colorado Gunsmoke.”
“Upon hearing the two shots from the interior of the bank, Simpson quickly pulled the lever down on his Sharps to drop the breech block. He inserted a shell and grabbed several more as he ran out of the store … Just then, he saw the outlaws coming at full gallop down the alley. Simpson fired from the hip at the man in the rear, Bill McCarty. The entire top of Bill’s head was blown off, and his brains ended up some twenty feet from where he fell from his horse. Simpson dropped the breech block again to insert another shell,” Jessen wrote.
“In the meantime, young Fred McCarty pulled up to see if could help his fallen father. Fred was nearly a block away from Simpson, but that moment of hesitation gave Simpson a clear shot. The bullet from Simpson’s rifle hit Fred in the base of the skull, then came out his forehead. Tom McCarty did not slow to see what happened to his brother or his nephew, but continued to ride hard. Money from the robbery was scattered in all directions in the street,” according to Jessen.
Simpson fired again, and then once more at Tom McCarty but missed each time, hitting instead a riderless horse.
Later Tom McCarty sent letters for months to Simpson, threatening to avenge the killing of his brother and nephew.
Simpson eventually made the choice to leave Delta and move to California, and lived a relatively long life for the times, surviving until 1940. Tom McCarty is said to have hid out in the Paradox Valley, on the Dolores River in Montrose County, for some time after the robbery but eventually left the area also, possibly ending up in Oregon, Alaska or Montana.
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Photo Information:
1. Father and son, Bill and Fred McCarty, killed with Ray Simpson's .44 caliber Sharps rifle while trying to flee a robbery of the Farmers and Merchant Bank in Delta, Colorado. Interestingly, as the two outlaw's bodies were displayed for several days in downtown Delta as a lesson in making bad choices, notice that the undertaker apparently shaved the two, located Bill's hat, and styled (or at least combed) Fred's hair. 
2. William Alexander (Bill) McCarty.
3. Fred McCarty.
4. William Ray Simpson.

There goes Muldoon, he's a solid man

"All I know about training I learned from him," Gene  Tunney said.

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

World champion wrestler, boxing trainer and strongman William Muldoon had limited experience with Colorado, but that did not stop him from being connected with the place.
"Muldoon wrestled in August 1881 at Denver in old Turner Hall at what is now Market and 20th. He also appeared in Central City and Georgetown in September of that year," notes a reader to a previous post.
Solid Man was a slang term used to describe a plain-thinking person from the country or overseas who doesn't adapt to city mores, the reader says.
Muldoon was a lot like many folks from Colorado in the 1870s and ‘80s -- hard-fighting, rough-and-tumble, confused about their origin, and perhaps prone to ‘improve’ their particular stories.
It was for Bill Muldoon, in fact, they chose to name a seven-foot-stone man, a "prehistoric human body," discovered near Beulah in 1877, according to many accounts.
Though Bill Muldoon’s nickname ‘the Solid Man’ probably originated from a song written by New York theater writer Edward Harrigan and first performed in March of 1874 in Manhattan.
The discovery was billed as the ‘missing link’ between apes and man and hucksters, including Soapy Smith, charged those interested 10 cents each to take a look. The 7-and -half-foot stone man was thought to be the "missing link" between apes and humans.
"There can be no question about the genuineness of this piece of statuary," said the Denver Daily Times at the time.
It was later revealed that George Hull, perpetrator of a previous hoax featuring the Cardiff Giant, had spent three years fashioning his second "petrified man," using mortar, rock dust, clay, plaster, ground bones, blood, and meat. He kiln-fired the figure for many days and then buried it.
A few months later, as the celebration of Colorado's year-old statehood approached, the statue was "discovered" by William Conant, who had once worked for the legendary showman P.T. Barnum. News of the find quickly spread to Denver and eventually New York. Displayed in New York, the "body" attracted large crowds until a business associate of Hull's revealed the hoax to the New York Tribune.
Harrigan’s lyrics for “The Solid Man,” go like this:

I am a man of great influence
And I'm educated to a high degree
I came when small from Donegal
On the Daniel Webster across the sea
In the 14th Ward [(or) Jersey City] I was situated
In a tenement with my brother Dan
By perseverance I elevated
And I rose to the front like a solid man.

CHORUS:
Then come with me and I'll treat you decent
I will get you drunk and I'll fill your can
And on the street every friend I meet
Says there goes Muldoon; he's a solid man.

To every party and every raffle
I always go, an invited guest
As conspicuous as General Grant, me boys
I wear a rosebud all on my breast
I'm called upon to address the meeting
Without regard to clique or clan
I show the constitution with elocution
Because you see, I'm a solid man.

Repeat CHORUS

Different accounts also suggest that Civil War hero and outspoken newspaper owner, David F. Day, (himself from New York) named his legendary Ouray newspaper (which later moved to Durango) after either the wrestler, the statue, the song, or all of them combined.
Bill Muldoon, grew up in Belfast, New York, and became a soldier, serving in the Civil War (though this is disputed by American National Biography, which says it was actually his older brother that served in the Sixth Calvary) and then for the French army in the Franco-Prussian War.
It was there he was introduced to Greco-Roman wrestling. By 1880 he was the champion of the world, having never lost a match and defeating opponents all over the world. Also by that time, he had become a New York City Police Officer, rising to detective when he resigned in 1882.
Famous sporting writer, Al Spink, had this to say about him in the Reno Evening Gazette, Saturday, March 8, 1919.
“He became famous in a few weeks by throwing all opponents easily in the police tournaments held in the metropolis.
Sporting writers called him “the noblest Roman of them all," and he was, perhaps, the finest-formed man ever seen in an American arena.
He was so handsome that when Modjeska, the Russian actress, laid eyes-on him she fell in love with him and immediately employed him to take the part of Charles the Wrestler in the play of "As You Like It," in which she was then appearing.”
Spink goes on to tell tell of his own disenchantment with the sport of wrestling as it related to Muldoon.
“Of the entire company of great wrestlers at that time there was not one to compare with Muldoon in splendid looks, in wonderful stature and magnificent muscle and strength.
Bauer came nearest to him, but it was only in height that Bauer possessed an advantage. I recall a bout in which the two were the principals, and I thought they were doing their level best, but happening behind the scenes between falls I heard Bauer say to Muldoon:
‘If you want me to go on, Mul, you’ll have to throw me lighter than you did then. If you don’t, I’ll never go on with you again.’
Then, for the first time, I discovered that the entire game of wrestling was rotten. Later, I learned more about it, but this was my first awakening.
Of all the wrestlers in the world I had looked on as being worthy of esteem and confidence, Muldoon appeared in my eyes the worthiest and squarest of the lot. And now even that dream was shattered.”
Muldoon in later years went on to form the Olympia Institute that catered to celebrities and politicians. He also trained a number of professional boxers including Gene Tunney.
William Barclay “Bat” Masterson, himself with an extensive Colorado history, befriended Bill Muldoon and after waging an aggressive campaign in his New York Morning Telegraph columns against two successive New York boxing commission chairmen, was somewhat responsible for his appointment. The campaign had the desired effect, prompting the ousting of first one and then another when Bat was unsatisfied with the replacement. The governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt, finally appointed William Muldoon, one of Bat's oldest and closest friends, as chairman in 1921.
Muldoon died in 1931 of prostrate cancer.
At the time of his death, The New York Times obit quoted retired boxing champion Gene Tunney, “All I know about training I learned from him…. His patience, intellectual courage and wisdom were inspirational.”
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Masterson: Gunfighter to ink slinger

Every dog, we are told, has his day, unless there are more dogs than days

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Perhaps it is not really that far from gunslinger, Indian fighter, and frontier lawman in the hardscrabble cowtowns and mining outposts of the old west -- to newspaper sports editor, Broadway cult hero, and friend of the president in the “Big Apple.” But as far as I know, it takes a unique sort to travel such a road.
William Barclay Masterson, 67, or “Bat” as he was commonly known, was found slumped over his typewriter one late October Tuesday morning in 1921, in his office at the Morning Telegraph.
It was the end of the trail for Masterson who had spent the last 18 years (three days a week) writing his column “Masterson’s Views on Timely Topics.” The heart attack that finished him, gave him just enough time to finish his last dispatch. The following last words were found still in the typewriter carriage.
“There are those who argue that everything breaks even in this old dump of a world of ours. I suppose these ginks who argue that way hold that because the rich man gets ice in the summer and the poor man gets it in the winter, things are breaking even for both. Maybe so, but I'll swear I can't see it that way."
“His body was taken to Campbells, the famous New York funeral parlor where a simple service was held in their chapel with burial following in famous Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. His large upright marker is emblazoned with the epitaph: "Loved by Everyone," according to a biography by Donald Greyfield.
Having served as buffalo hunter in Kansas, Indian fighter in Adobe Wall, Texas, lawman in Dodge City, Kansas, Trinadad, Colorado, and Tombstone, Arizonia (with the likes of his good friend Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday) hired gun, and security for Judge Roy Bean in Langtree, Texas, principal in the"Royal Gorge" war between competing railroads in Colorado, federal marshal appointed by the president in New York, fight promoter, professional gambler, faro dealer, saloon owner in Creede, Colorado, and theater owner in Denver, Colorado, as well as inspiration for movies, books, pulp magazines and Broadway plays, his big old heart finally gave out.
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