Giving People What They Want

Dr. Alfred Hargrove explains his Spirit Table to a patient. (AI composition by the author.)

“Yellow Journalism” dominated newspapers in the late 19th century using loud, shocking headlines and articles trumped up with exaggerated claims and falsehoods dressed as facts. It was a bunch of nonsense and sensationalism, but it sold papers. The newspapers claimed they were giving the people exactly what they wanted.

  Alfred Hargrove did the same thing. He had a talent for sensing what people longed to believe. When they looked to the stars for guidance, he promoted himself as an astrologer. When women hoped he could sense what was wrong in their lives, he became a clairvoyant. Soon thereafter, he transformed himself into a spirit medium, able to organize the spirits to ease their troubles and even claimed to have built a medicinal table by following instructions from the spirits. When men worried about their manhood or the consequences of their indiscretions, the so-called doctor reinvented himself as a specialist in men’s diseases.

Alfred Hargrove gave people exactly what they wanted. He was always a shameless fraud, but he sure could sell it. 

MEET THE HARGROVES

The story of the Hargrove family started off pleasantly enough. In the mid-19th century, William Hargrove was a successful assistant foreman at a foundry near Aston Manor, outside of Birmingham, England. He and his wife Maria Louisa were newly married and starting a family in the midst of a rapidly growing Victorian industrial center. Birmingham wasn’t dominated by massive mills and factories; instead, it earned the nickname “City of a Thousand Trades” because the large workforce were scattered among small workshops, backrooms, and attics to create their wares made of metal, glass, and bone. Even women and children made buttons and pins for poverty-line wages.

As an assistant shop foreman of a foundry (a senior, salaried position overseeing workshop floors) William and his family were better off than the throngs of low-wage workshop craftsmen and pieceworkers whose income was frequently disrupted by trade depressions and the vices of the alehouse. At 19 Walsall Road, the Hargroves lived comfortably, though daily life would have been dominated by the sights and sounds of industrial progress – the clanging of the nearby railways, horse-drawn wagons on the turnpike, and the smoke from local foundries drifting across the Aston sky.

The Hargroves had started their family shortly after their 1845 marriage; their first two children were fine, healthy boys: William Randolph, born in 1846, and Alfred Alonzo, in 1848. But then something went wrong; their first daughter, Maria Lavinia, was born in February 1850 and died just eight months later, in October. Shaken but undaunted, they had another boy, Sydney Bulwey, a few months after Maria Lavinia’s death, in March 1851.

 

THE FAMILY CRUMBLES

In July 1852 they had their fourth son, Christopher, but he died after a brief month of life. A year after Christopher’s birth, Maria Louise gave birth to their fifth son, Leopold Walter Albert Henry; he was born and baptized in England. Three months later, the Hargrove family had crossed the high seas with their new infant and settled in Montreal, Canada, where they had to bury baby Leopold within a few months of their arrival. Of their six children, only three survived infancy.

The loss of babies was brutally difficult, but the loss of their father during a cholera epidemic was a sudden, shattering blow. William Hargrove died in July 1854, when Montreal was at the height of a devastating cholera epidemic. He was only 30 years old. He was buried in the Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal the day after his death – no wake, no open-casket viewing – speed was considered essential to avoid the spread of the cholera contagion.

Thousands of working-class laborers and Irish immigrants died rapidly and were buried in unmarked mass graves or chaotic city plots. For William Hargrove’s family to successfully arrange a proper, individual burial at the brand-new, manicured Mount Royal grounds meant the Hargroves had sufficient funds to shield his memory from the indignity suffered by the less fortunate during that terrifying summer. 

Maria Louisa Hargrove was unwillingly thrust into the role of widow and sole parent to three young boys, aged 8, 6, and 3 years. There they were, in a new land, an ocean away from everyone and everything they had called home.

 

GROWING UP QUICKLY

Instantly, Mary Louisa had to become a single parent and income-producer, and her three little boys would have to mature much more quickly than their bodies. Mrs. Hargrove was listed in Canada’s 1861 census as a grocer, 33, and a widow, which she would remain for the rest of her life. While their mother worked at the grocery store – William, 14, Alfred, 12, and Sydney, 10, were attending school. Mrs. Hargrove also rented out some rooms to two boarders for extra income. She and her boys moved to Brantford, Ontario, 400 miles southwest of Montreal, but just a little over 60 miles from Niagara Falls and the United States.

Their move so close to the U.S. may have been part of a long-term plan to move there, but when the Canadian census was being performed in mid-January 1861, it was quite clear that the U.S. was on the verge of war; South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, and Alabama had already seceded from the Union and three months later, the Civil War had begun.

At an age far too young, Alfred Hargrove crossed into the United States to join the Union army. At just 16 years old and standing 5 feet 3 inches, he presented himself as 19 and successfully enlisted at Brooklyn, New York, in the 15th NY Engineers in 1864. He may have left home with a teenager’s passion for adventure but it is more likely that he determined to help his mother, as many young men did, by sending her some of his pay, bonuses, and enlistment bounty.

His unit constructed earthworks, forts, and trenches around Petersburg, Virginia, as well as assembled pontoon bridges across the James and Appomattox rivers to move Union troops. The 15th NY Engineers were among the first troops dispatched into the burning Confederate capital of Richmond to extinguish fires, clear the streets, and repair infrastructure.

Union engineers digging fortifications during the Civil War. Haas & Peale photographer. (Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.)

At sixteen years old and barely five feet three inches tall, Private Alfred Hargrove entered the Union Army not as a seasoned soldier but as a laborer in one of its most demanding units. Company M of the 15th New York Engineers spent the summer of 1864 carving the war into the earth, and Alfred’s days were defined by the weight of a shovel and the sting of raw blisters. He dug trenches that stretched for miles across the Virginia landscape, hauled dirt in wheelbarrows, and cut saplings for the timber revetments that held the earthworks in place. The older, stronger men handled the technical carpentry and bridge work; boys like Alfred supplied the endless muscle needed to keep the siege lines expanding. His world was mud, sweat, and the steady rhythm of digging—simple work, repetitive work, but absolutely essential to the Union’s slow advance on Petersburg.

Alfred mustered out in July 1865, which meant he would have marched with his regiment through the streets of Washington, D.C., in the historic Grand Review of the Armies on May 23-24, 1865, celebrating the end of the war. Alfred had survived the war and later moved to Massachusetts, carrying with him a remarkable story of survival that started with a lie to a recruiting officer in 1864.

 

MENIAL JOBS WITH NO PROSPECTS

 

With the war over, the 17-year-old veteran had to figure out what to make of himself and start earning money as a very young civilian. The only skill he had developed was the use of a shovel, but he had no interest in making that back-breaking and hand-stinging work a career. Instead, his first post-war employment was as a grocery clerk, work that he had likely done as a young boy back at his mother’s grocery store in Brantford, Ontario.

By at least 1870 and probably earlier, he was a grocery clerk, reunited with his mother and younger brother, Sydney, in Boston, Massachusetts. Maria Louisa Hargrove was running a boarding house; at the time of the census, her boarders included a druggist, a brass finisher, two dressmakers, a teamster, a steam engineer, and a cap maker. Much as it had been back in Aston, England, the Hargroves lived right in the midst of working folks and made their living from the people who passed through the doors of the Aston foundry, the Brantford grocery, and the Boston boarding house.  

 

Alfred’s older brother, William Randolph, had struck out on his own, never again living or working with his mother and brothers. In February 1865, at the tail end of the war, he had enlisted in the Union Navy at Buffalo, New York. In July 1867, long after the war’s end, he was injured in an altercation. A surgeon’s report from the U. S. Naval Hospital at Mound City, IL (on the Ohio River) wrote that William had "Received a contused wound of scalp about three inches in length, last night, while engaged in some row with a party of Negroes – no fracture of skull. Injury did not originate in the line of duty." He was 21 at the time of his admission to the hospital. William then disappeared into history until 1896 when he committed suicide in Brooklyn, New York; it was surmised that despondency led him to eat the arsenic-based vermin poison, Rough on Rats – a horrible, agonizing, but all-too-frequent method of suicide in the late 19th century.

In 1871 Alfred married Isabella Packard of Lynn, Massachusetts, a city nine miles northeast of Boston and renowned for its shoemaking industry. The marriage record shows that Alfred was still a clerk. The marriage was brief as Alfred remarried in Lawrence, Massachusetts to Frances Flora Bickmore in 1875; something seems a little fishy though, because the marriage record claimed it was Alfred’s first marriage. It also listed him with a new occupation – a “book agent” – someone who travelled door-to-door selling subscriptions and taking orders for books. His career as a book agent put him on the road, starting in Lawrence along the New Hampshire border, then to Providence, Rhode Island in 1876, where Flora gave birth to their first child. It was given no name however; their first child was stillborn.

ANSWERS FROM THE STARS

Something triggered Alfred to study the zodiac, planets, and stars for answers to life’s hard questions – or at least to claim he did. Perhaps he turned to astrology because of the staggering repetition of tragic family losses during his youth that were following him into his own new family. But then again, he may have been covertly targeting the blind faith of those who found comfort in astrological forecasts in order to exploit their gullibility.  His advertising claimed that he started the study of astrology back in 1870 when he was a grocery clerk and began offering his services as an astrologer in 1873 when he was actually selling subscriptions door to door. He may have developed his astrologer business gradually while keeping his day job, but more likely, such early dates padded his astrology credentials, making him sound very skilled, experienced, and other-worldly wise.

Advertisement for Dr. A. Hargrove, Physician and Astrologer, illustrated with a comet in the night sky. The Daily Item (Lynn, MA), 11 DEC 1882.

The newly minted astrologer took his wife on the road, traveling in 1879 to Framingham and Worcester, Massachusetts, in the center of the state. No longer knocking on doors to sell books,  he had transformed himself into an astrologer at the same time that his younger brother Sydney took over as the book agent of the family. In that year, Alfred’s wife Flora gave birth to their second child, a girl they named Maria Jenet. So hectic was their travel, their daughter’s birth was recorded in each town’s records, listing Alfred and Flora as residents of both towns. In Worcester’s birth register, Alfred was an astrologer; in the Framingham record he was listed for the first time as a physician. The boy-soldier and ditch digger who had stocked grocery shelves and sold books door to door had crafted himself into an astrologer and a physician, learning intimate details about people who entrusted him with their private problems and paid him for his vaunted expertise.

The young family had roamed down to Providence in 1880, but the traveling suitcase lifestyle no longer worked well with a baby included, so the Hargroves settled down in Boston in 1882, at 1243 Washington Street. As quickly as Alfred had refashioned himself into an astrologer and physician, he had transformed his rented apartment house into the “English Independent Medical Retreat.” The name used all the right words. “English” marked him as pleasantly distinct, familiar, and respectable, not someone with an awkward accent and of suspicious culture. “Independent” established him as practicing a form of medicine unlike the regular methods practiced by the often hated and distrusted medical establishment; and “Medical Retreat” conjured up a health sanctuary – a place of rest, cure, and safety.

Washington Street was on the south side of Boston. The neighborhood had breweries, a brick works, and a cemetery while the area to the south became devoted to maritime and manufacturing. It was part of the area that became known as an immigrant and tenement district as well as a place for theatres, penny arcades, and other amusements. Upper class Yankees officially avoided it even though many, including T.S. Eliot, were known to be there at night. It had attracted a large number of social service organizations including settlement houses and a bathhouse for the city’s poor. The water was kept lukewarm so that no one would take too long of a shower. The area housed immigrants including many Jewish, Italian, and Irish residents as well as Black Bostonians. Some of the neighborhood’s streets were lined with peddlers selling fruits and vegetables as well as other household necessities. It was Aston, England, and Brantford, Ontario, all over again. It was the place Alfred Hargrove could afford and these were the people that he knew and understood best. His medical retreat was an oasis in their midst, located for success. All he had to do was attract them into his retreat by giving them what they wanted.

Free private Clairvoyant Medical Examinations for Ladies ... Every ache and disagreeable feeling in the human body described with wonderful accuracy.

 

He started off right – free is always attractive – and a clairvoyant medical examination was intimate without awkward exposure. And in that one offer, Alfred Hargrove had promoted himself from astrologer and physician to medical clairvoyant – he was starting to carry more badges of honor than his officers in the war. The claim of clairvoyance meant he had the ability to see beyond what others could with their eyes; his internal vision transcended space and time; it was vision into the body and soul, the past and the future. In some ways it was far more convenient than astrology, since it didn’t require producing zodiac charts to explain things.

DRS. HARGROVE, HARGROVE & HARGROVE

His next business move was to have his wife Flora and brother Sydney introduced as fellow physicians. Flora became Mrs. Dr. Hargrove, providing medical treatments in the office for a hefty $3.00, usually a signal that women could come to her for some private and delicate assistance pertaining to their sex. Younger brother Sydney, whose only prior work experience was selling books door to door, was also anointed a physician; in fact, the two brothers called themselves “Intuitive Physicians,” implying they both possessed the gift of clairvoyance. One of their trade cards even spun the tale of their clairvoyant origin:

The remarkable powers claimed by the Doctors [Alfred & Sydney] was first noticeable, when in childhood, relatives of their family liv[ed] in different parts of England. If anything unusual occurred to them, the Doctors would describe and give full particulars of the event.

 

And from those precocious beginnings, miraculous powers developed to the astonishment and benefit of thousands, or so the familiar trope went:

So rapidly did these wonderful powers develop, that some thirteen years ago the Doctors were put to a thorough test in regard to the different diseases of the body, and to the astonishment of those present, diseases and their symptoms were described with wonderful correctness; and the vegetable remedies most suitable, selected and compounded, which have proven satisfactory in thousands of cases, and in no case a failure.

 

At least to modern ears, calling themselves “Intuitive Physicians” – discernment without conventional physical examination – sounds like an admission that their real skill was in figuring out what their patient needed to hear; not that they were, in fact, clairvoyant. But they were making all the promises that had made clairvoyant mediums such a fascination for so many:

... thousands have been surprised by their startling revelations and wonderful cures. Their advice in regard to all events of life is valuable and reliable.

    Questions of health, such as cause of illness ... and the best mode of treatment, critical periods, etc.; matters of business – gains, losses, speculations, lawsuits, buying selling, removals and the like. Matrimonial predictions, giving full explanation of time and condition of marriage, if any; what kind of a husband or wife, and the hindrances and objections to happiness therein; travels, wills, secret undertakings, divorces, enemies, etc. ...

 

There was no question that Alfred was the initiator and “lead physician” in what became a family medical practice. Some of his advertising in the 1880s and 90s continued to be focused on him alone and he was the only one of the three that ventured to neighboring communities to generate more business. For a while in late 1882, he stayed at Lynn’s landmark hotel, the Sagamore House, drumming up business and exposure in the nearby large city of laborers. He called the combination of his specialties “Astro-Physic”; it sounded like something out of a Jules Verne novel:

An astrological judgment wherein can be correctly ascertained the true cause of chronic diseases, either atmospheric or constitutional, by erecting a map or figure of the heaven, and by careful observation of the different positions of the planetary bodies ... at once see with wonderful accuracy the origin of the disease, the nature, symptoms, and the changes from one stage to another, together with full particulars in regard to the organs which are afflicted.

 

It sounded like so much more than medical society doctors offered. At a time when astronomy, comets, and the like were of increasing popular interest, the Hargroves were purveying astrology as a science of the stars to cure disease and assured that they had “treated thousands of cases by this method” and provided “purely vegetable remedies prepared by us.” Such specialized expertise cost more than the more mundane methods: ladies paid $1.00 and gentlemen $1.50. Advice by mail cost $2.00 and a stamp. While Dr. Hargrove could do a clairvoyant examination or an astrological chart for someone who visited him in the Sagamore House, he made it clear to all that they would have to come to his Medical Retreat in Boston to use the Table.

 

ANSWERS FROM THE SPIRITS

Any spiritual medium worth his salt had connected to a Spirit Band – a group of spirits, from Indians to kings, dedicated to communicating with him and giving him guidance for his customers. Alfred Hargrove’s spirit band were an especially high-spirited bunch, willing to give him directions to create a unique table that would cure people of their ills. “This wonderful invention,” one of his trade cards explained, “consists in disposing the medicinal substances,” wafting up through holes in the table upon which the patient placed her hands. A central chamber in the pedestal of the round table held the vegetable matter instructed by Dr. Hargrove’s Spirit Band, and the vapors “electro-magnetically” followed channels cut through the tabletop to the holes above.

When in use, the patients ... sit at the table, and two of the openings are uncovered for each sitter at the table, and the hands of the patient are placed over the openings, and the active medicinal properties of the vegetable substance which the disease of the patient requires are transmitted through passages to the system of the patient, and produce the desire effect ... Spirit forms are frequently seen and described by the medium and others at the table. Manifestations of a remarkable nature are continually occurring.

Astrologer, Physician, Medical Clairvoyant, and Spiritual Medium – Alfred Hargrove kept adding and changing according to what he perceived the customers wanted.

Cross-section and table top views of Hargrove's Spirit Table, generated by AI using the description on Dr. Hargrove's trade card (see the end of this blog post.)

Dr. Alfred Hargrove teaches and convinces a patient of the electro-magnetic properties infused in the plant substances and the table by his spirit band. (AI composition by the author.)

In the mid-1880s, it certainly seemed like the spirits were in harmony and the stars were aligned over Alfred Hargrove. His business seemed to be thriving, he was advertising heavily in Boston and Lynn newspapers and on trade cards. He seemed to be establishing his tenement as a veritable séance center and medical complex, renting out rooms to two spiritualists, “Mrs. L. F. Hancock, CLEAR-SEER. Test and Business Communications” and “Mrs. E. A. Cutting, “MAGNETIC and Developing Medium. Nervous Diseases and Female Weakness a specialty.” In May 1884, Alfred Hargrove’s wife gave birth to a son, Sydney G., and a few weeks later, his brother Sydney B., got married. The celebrations were short-lived.

In September 1884, the Hargrove curse had returned. Four-month old baby Sydney died of teething (as best as they understood). The following year 1885, Alfred’s cherished mother passed away, then in the next year, 1886, Alfred and Flora lost the one child who had lived beyond a few months: Maria Jenet, aged 7 years and 2 months, died of the croup. All of his intuition and spiritual guidance couldn’t stop the sable train of death.

FOR MEN ONLY  

Something different was afoot. Dr. Hargrove, who had been advertising as an astrologer through 1887, suddenly stopped advertising altogether in 1888. The silence was deafening; it almost seemed like the Hargroves had pulled up stakes and disappeared from the region, or had met with some terrible illness or tragedy that dragged them under the ground to join all the other Hargroves that had died untimely deaths.

He did return. When he re-emerged in 1889, he was a different doctor – in every sense. He and his brother focused exclusively on a new audience that they barely touched on in the previous decade – men. Gone were any mentions of astrology, Spirit Bands, clairvoyance, or the Spiritual, Medical and Developing Table. The new message, big, bold, and emphatic, was that they were specialists in the diseases of men. Same address. Consultation free.

Passing mentions were made that Mrs. Dr. F. Hargrove had a remarkable and successful method in the treatment of chronic diseases and the she had dedicate the past 15 years to the study of “Woman and her Diseases,” but the advertising saturation was devoted to Dr. A. & S. Hargrove, specialists in men’s diseases. Dr. Alfred Hargrove, an 1890 advertisement assured, had “20 years’ practice. 10 Years at the Same Office.” That would again mean that he started that specialty when he was still a grocery clerk, but fact-checking wasn’t pursued as rigorously as it is today.

The two male specialists of men’s diseases said they had a “NEW METHOD” of curing kidney and urinary troubles, unhealthy discharges, seminal weakness, want of energy, and more. “Special attention given to Bright’s Disease and Diabetes.” In fact the 1890 ad assured that over 7,000 cases had been treated successfully in 3 years. In 1893, the number was increased exponentially: “25,000 bona fide cures in 10 years. No mercury used.” The ad poked at the use of mercury for venereal diseases by the regular medical establishment and to justify their own “independent” practice, as irregulars usually did. They also gave the regulars a hard time because  their medicines smelled and tasted so bad:

Many physicians in their practice employ medicines which are so thoroughly disgusting, both in smell and taste, that the patient would rather face death than to undertake such treatment. I can assure you that if such remedies poison the mind they must certainly poison the body; and how can you expect to be cured under such circumstances? ... Cut this [ad] Out [and save it]. ... N.B. Working people should take advantage of the Sunday Hours.

Ad for the Drs. Hargrove, English Specialists for the Diseases of Men. (The Boston Globe), 13 MAY 1894.

Urbanization and crowding in Boston increased infections: strep, tuberculosis, and other bacterial illnesses surged in cities often damaging kidneys. The industrialized work environment that men were faced with increased toxin exposure; factories, chemicals, and polluted water supplies contributed to chronic kidney injury. The profligate ways of many men also earned them one or another of the venereal diseases; even when committed years or decades earlier, some of the strains followed them to the grave. Repeated infections and poor nutrition meant chronic diseases like diabetes and nephritis advanced rapidly, making sick men desperately in need of medical care – and there they were, two amazingly successful specialists in men’s diseases – the Drs. Hargrove, in a busy part of town.

Alfred Hargrove may have had several reasons for leaving astrology, spiritualism, and clairvoyance behind, but bursting into the newspapers again in the form of specialists in men’s diseases was a reaction to opportunity more than a distaste for the  challenges of maintaining his former roles. Just call it intuition.

In 1893, Flora gave birth to their last child – another stillbirth. All five of their children failed to survive to adulthood – heck; none of them made it to 8 years old. In the 1900 census, Alfred, Flora, and Sydney were all listed as physicians; their wealth had allowed them the luxuries of a servant and a housekeeper in the house, but their home missed the joy of children.

In 1905, Alfred provide his testimonial for a proprietary medicine called X-Zalia. He had burned his arm with a cigar and the sore became red, inflamed, and very painful. As the story went, “he tried many remedies, but it grew worse and worse. Yesterday, Dr. Hargrove was treated at Putnam’s drug store, and in less than three hours the sore showed signs of healing; the inflammation had gone and the doctor was free from pain.” No zodiac or spirits were needed.

Mortality finally caught up with Drs. Hargrove, Hargrove, and Hargrove. Flora died in 1907 and Sydney died in 1909; both were in their 56th year.

During the 1910 census, Alfred Hargrove lived alone in his large house at 1243 Washington Street, a widower and the last of his family. In 1912 at 63 years old, still practicing as a specialist in men’s diseases, he finally succumbed to kidney disease and kidney stones, one of the “men’s diseases” that he had promised to cure. Maybe his star chart had revealed his end of days was near at hand; hopefully his spirit band welcomed him home.   

 

Dr. Hargrove's Independent Spiritual Retreat, 1243 Washington St., Boston. One of three trade cards in the Rapoza collection; this one gives the details to the construction of the Spirit Table. All three card have stock images on the front. The historical value, however, lies in the extraordinary amount of detail on the back side of each; all three have widely different content.

              

Alfred A. Liscomb, the King of Life

His kingdom was very small (he was the only one living in it) but the story of its king is unforgettable.

      The era of patent medicines is littered with the advertising and bottles of those who were hugely successful, like Ayers, Warner, Kilmer, and Pinkham. But there were also thousands of “little guys” – one man or woman with little more than a big dream and the two-person teams whose medicine businesses lasted only a few months or sometimes just a week or two. Alfred Liscomb was one of the little guys, but don’t tell him that. He was a force of nature, determined to prove that he was, indeed, the King of Life.

      When I purchased the only trade card I’ve ever seen for this quack doctor, I knew nothing about him and was concerned that his location in Havana, Cuba, would make researching him much more difficult. Thirty-nine pages of research notes later, I have gotten to know him very well and, even though he spent little of his life pretending to be a physician, so much about his life, family, and career were fascinating, I just have to share his complete story here. I can’t get over how he experienced so much of the country’s history during his lifetime, from the California Gold Rush to the Civil War and Spanish American War, the emerging sport of baseball, big city crime, Tammany Hall, and Boss Tweed, quackery, a mental melt-down, and a lifelong passion to stay young. Yeah, it’s a long story but enjoy it; he did.

Halcyon Harlem, New York

      It was the time when Harlem was a pastoral paradise dotted with elegant country homes of the wealthy who commuted to New York City. Samuel L. Liscomb and his wife, Eliza Keeley, raised their family there: two sons, a daughter, and then Alfred Augustus who was the youngest, born 19 March 1834.

      Eliza had brought some money to the marriage; they weren’t rich but it was probably the reason they could afford life in the suburbs. Samuel was elected to be a firefighter in 1842 and then appointed a police sergeant in 1845, two positions controlled by the city’s patronage system that soon became identified with Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall. With his livelihood balancing on the thin branches of political whim, he decided to join an expedition to California during the Gold Rush of 1849, hoping to secure a rich future for his family.

Clipper Ship Card, ca.1850-1860 for the Clipper Ship California, promoting the ocean route from New York to the California gold fields. The four major routes to California during the gold rush - by ocean around Cape Horn; by ocean and across Panama; across the Midwest and the Rocky Mountains; and the Rio Grande route taken by the Liscombs - were each fraught with potential dangers and death from ocean storms, yellow fever, malaria, cholera, dangerous natives and desperadoes, and more. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

He brought his oldest son, William H., 21 years old, with him; they were in the expedition of John W. Audubon (the son of the famous naturalist, John J. Audubon). They traveled by stage to Pittsburgh, by river boat to Cairo, Illinois, and down the Mississippi to New Orleans, took a boat to the mouth of the Rio Grande, then traveled 120 miles upriver to the Mexican shore across from Rio Grande City. There in the stifling north Mexico heat, the expedition was attacked by cholera. Audubon asked the group for volunteers to stay behind with the severely ill; William stayed with his father. Audubon wrote in his journal,

I went to the sick tents; poor young Liscomb, worn out and heartbroken, sat leaning against the tent where his father lay dying, looking as pallid and exhausted as the sick man, and almost asleep; I roused him and sent him to my tent to get some rest.

And on the night of 17 March 1849, after his father died,

The heavy trade-wind from the southeast sighed through the open windows of the long, twenty-bedded room we were in, [where] the deep moans of young Liscomb, who, dreaming, saw nothing but the horrors of his father’s death …

After burying his father, William stayed on with the expedition, becoming ill himself with dysentery to the point that Audubon feared they would also lose him; but he reached San Francisco and was one of 38 (out of 96 men in the expedition) who made it to the gold mines. In 1860, eleven years after the fateful expedition, William was still in California, working as a carpenter; he apparently found little or no gold.

      Although the heartbreaking news about the loss of Father Samuel to cholera must have hit the Liscomb home like a ton of fool’s gold, the family rallied and moved on; Eliza eventually owned property and a dry goods business; her estate value went from $10,000 in 1860 to $20,000 in 1870. (Putting this in context, the 1860 amount was the equivalent of $390,000 in 2025 USD and the 1870 amount would now be $490,000.)

Baseball Trade Card. While this card was printed in 1888, it shows a baseball game being performed without gloves, meaning it represented the 1850s and 1860s when Alfred Liscomb was playing. Rapoza collection.

      Alfred in particular seemed to lead an enjoyable, relaxed life as a young man. He became a store clerk (probably at his mother’s dry goods store) at 21 yrs old. He entered his pointer dog in a dog show and it won third place in its category. He also demonstrated a passion for the new sport of baseball, playing for the Harlem Club at several positions and was one of the team’s best hitters. A newspaper reported the game on  30 August 1859 was especially exciting, “The applause and cheering as good plays were made on each side were almost deafening.” Alfred Liscomb was recognized as one “of the players … most deserving of credit for their good playing”; he got three hits and made two runs in the 13 to 15 loss against the Eckford team of Brooklyn. In a 13 June 1860 match against the Continentals, in front of a thousand spectators, Alfred caught four flyballs as the team’s centerfielder and made four runs at bat; this time the Harlem Club won 35 to 13. When his team wasn’t playing, he frequently volunteered his services to be an umpire; some of those games ended with such final scores as 51-27.

      In 1856 he had followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a volunteer firefighter at the Pocahontas Engine Company, No.49, in Harlem. This essential community service exempted this young men from military service during the early years of the Civil War. When the federal government imposed a draft in 1863 the exemptions no longer applied, but Alfred A. Liscomb was discharged before serving due to “disability”; it’s hard to imagine what physical or mental disability the active baseball player and umpire could have had that would exempt him from military duty. Although found unfit to be a soldier, he remained a volunteer firefighter for many years to come. In February 1864, five months after his release from military duty, Alfred, now 30, was married to Widow Sarah M. Churchill, 25, of Woodbridge, New Jersey; and raised her 5-year-old son as her own. Alfred and Sarah then had their one child, Blanche, in 1867.

Midtown, Manhattan – Life in the Big City

      During the remainder of the decade after the war, Alfred was the proprietor of a livery stable on 7th Avenue in the Greenwich section of New York City. In the next several years he flittered between being a merchant, a collector, and an inventor, holding a U.S. patent for an improved ash-sifter in 1874. Where would Liscomb land next? For the next four years, from 1875-1878, he listed himself as a physician, promising to cure fever and ague (think chills) in 24 hours “or MONEY RETURNED”. Customers could visit or write to either of his New York or New Jersey depots to get a package (bottle or box was not specified) of his cure for 50 cents. His advertising puff promised,

Next to an earthquake, which shakes up the bowels of old mother earth at a terrific rate, there is nothing which can compete with a fever-and-ague at rattling one’s flesh off the bones. This, in connection with malarial fever, will inevitably kill a human being, unless the aforesaid being calls or addresses Dr. Alfred A. Liscomb, of 200 East Twelfth street, New York, and 294 Fourth street, Jersey City, and obtains from him an immediate cure, which will be effected in twenty-four hours, or the money, fifty cents, will be returned. Better not delay.

      As suddenly as the dubious doctor had appeared, he disappeared and re-emerged, self-shorn of medical title, and becoming the superintendent of some apartment houses in Midtown Manhattan from 1879 to 1889. It was in this position that the disabled draft candidate found himself on a rugged battlefield vanquishing foes. Upon entering his fifth-floor apartment of the Adelphi flats he superintended, he was startled by a young woman rushing out of his home with a bundle in her arms – the teenager had burglarized his apartment and dashed past him, ran down the hall, and jumped into the dumbwaiter shaft, sliding down its rope “at a fearful rate” to the ground floor below. He pursued her by running down the five flights of stairs, “expecting to see the girl dashed to pieces at the bottom,” but instead, she was running toward the street door. He chased her and nabbed his criminal a few blocks away. “The flesh had been torn from the palms of her hands and from her fingers and her clothing was spattered with blood.” Police found there were 14 indictments against her for previous burglaries; she had served a 2-month jail sentence, “but obviously not reformed,” she was now sentence to four years in the penitentiary.

"The Death-Grapple." Two burglars attempt to hurl Alfred A. Liscomb off the roof of an apartment house; a female tenant pulls the coattails of one of the burglars to help out Liscomb. From The National Police Gazette, 15 March 1879, p.12. Courtesy of Internet Archive.

      Just a few weeks later, while sitting by the window of his fifth-story apartment, Superintendent Liscomb saw two young men acting suspiciously, “creeping along the roofs of the houses” across the street  and hiding behind chimneys; then they broke open a hatchway through which they passed down to the inside of the building. Liscomb ran over and up into the building and caught the burglars in the act of opening a trunk containing silver. Liscomb was in hot pursuit as they hightailed it up their ladder to the roof. “An exciting chase over the roofs to Seventh Avenue followed.” Fists and feet were flying as Liscomb finally caught up to them and the three men fought on the rooftop. The New York Herald luridly called it a “Death-Grapple” between the 45-year-old and the two burglars. The National Police Gazette sensationally described how the two criminals “proved too much for him and dragged him to the end of the roof” where it suddenly dropped off into an alley way down below. Liscomb “struggled frantically on the edge” as they tried to hurl him over. A female tenant appeared and successfully pulled on the coattails of one of the assailants and dragged him off of Liscomb. “This gave Liscomb a moment’s respite, and he improved it by striking the unknown man a heavy blow in the face.” That man ran off but Liscomb secured the young man with the coattails and brought him, still flailing away for several blocks, to the police; the collared burglar was an 18-year-old wagon driver. His partner in crime was eventually caught as well and the two perps, members of the Tenth Avenue Gang (one an ex-con), were each sentenced to state prison for eight years.

During his superintendency years, the Liscomb family developed a special friendship with at least one of their tenants, a young woman abused and abandoned by her husband. The tragic young victim committed suicide in February 1888, but had first sent a letter to Alfred Liscomb which read in part,

Dear Mr. Liscomb … I am so tired, weary, and broken-hearted. Keep the news [of my suicide] from blind mamma and kiss her for me … Many times you and your wife have saved me from death. You took me in and cared for me when those who should have done so turned me on the streets. God bless you for it. Perhaps if I could see poor mamma’s dear blind face to-night I might be tempted to live on and endure my misery. Ah, no; it is better so. Good night. ...

Alfred told the press, “A sweet, noble woman is dead” and Sarah wept bitterly. She was the “Blind Mamma” mentioned in the suicide note. For at least the first two decades of their marriage, she had been very artistic, painting pictures on black velvet and making dress patterns and intricate collages with colored bits of paper; but when Sarah began to have health problems, a disease in her eyes had caused blindness.

In contrast, Alfred, while described as “well-advanced in years,” was age-defiantly energetic and always ready to prove it. In the September following their young friend’s suicide, a reunion of New York’s old volunteer fire department was held in Harlem. About 5,000 people attended to honor the “Spry Old Fire Laddies … scores of men on the shady side of 50, conspicuous in red shirts and big stiff hats … they had a roaring good time of it.” A half-mile race for fire department veterans over 55 was entered by seven men, including Alfred Liscomb. The New York Herald described him as “a man whose long, wavy side whiskers made him look as if he might be either a well-preserved parson or a prosperous broker.” For most of the race, Liscomb and the eventual winner were the two leaders, “cheered on frantically by the big crowd.” The winner’s time was 2 minutes, 19 seconds and Liscomb gained the silver medal for coming in second. He was indeed on the “shady side” but not the way it had been meant; intentionally or not, he had cheated – he was six months short of his 55th birthday.

Betting on a Quinquagenarian Sure Thing

Alfred Liscomb had always prided himself on his physicality; from star baseball player to fighting assailants at the edge of a dangerous roof to running in a race, he had always exhibited great confidence in his physical prowess. Nothing was going to stop Alfred Liscomb. A staunch Democrat, he made wagers in 1889 on his party’s candidates for New York City mayor, the state’s governor, and on the reelection of 51-year-old Grover Cleveland as the country’s president, but Cleveland narrowly lost. By the terms of the wager with a Philadelphia banker, Liscomb was now obliged to walk from New York to Washington, a distance of 240 miles, in seven days (an average of 35 miles per day), or transfer $1,000 (almost $35,000 in 2025 USD) to the account of his wager opponent. Although he could afford to pay, such an idea never crossed his mind; he was determined to make the walk.

The wager and the result spread at the speed of lightning through newspapers across the country, all fascinated by the political angle and the brash and foolish high stakes gamble to which Alfred had agreed. A newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio, titled their coverage, “LOONY LISCOMB,” but the Philadelphian banker hadn’t bet against some out-of-shape nag but rather a born-to-race stallion. The Nashville Banner reported,

Mr. Liscomb is a thin, wiry old gentleman, fifty-six years old, and weighs 145 pounds. … Little daily jaunts of twenty-five miles or so have hardened his muscles and put him in splendid condition for his task. … He was confident that he would succeed in covering the limited time, no matter what the weather is.

The Philadelphia banker wasn’t nearly as hardy; he offered to pay Liscomb $500 to not make the trip because he didn’t want to shiver in the carriage following Liscomb to ensure he walked the entire distance. Liscomb told the New York Sun, “I accepted his offer, at the earnest solicitations of my wife and family. I am sorry now that I did it.” In his heart, Liscomb really wanted to “hoof it to Washington.”

From 1890-1895, Alfred Liscomb busied himself in real estate, investments, and even a furniture business. Dr. John Swentzel, Blanche Liscomb’s dentist husband, explained that his father-in-law Alfred “Liscomb inherited money from his mother [who died in 1880] … and besides that, was always in a position where he enjoyed a lucrative income.” Life may have had its advantages in large part because of his involvement in Tammany Hall, New York City’s powerful Democratic political machine. Swentzel stated that his father-in-law “was a well-known member of Tammany Hall, and his two brothers were for years in public office,” because of their Tammany association. (Brother Joseph was the penitentiary warden in 1874 who was accused of letting the incarcerated Boss Tweed live a life of luxury instead of prison hardship like the other inmates.) A thousand-dollar wage was a risk but nowhere near as dangerous as his “death-grapple” with assailants at the edge of a tall building.

Alfred Liscomb did, indeed, survive his wild wager and his death-defying rooftop fight, but an accidental fall on a Manhattan sidewalk changed the trajectory of his life.

Slipping Away

      Sometime in the winter, spring, or summer of 1896, the now 62-year-old Alfred A. Liscomb fell on the sidewalk at 51st St. and 6th Ave. in Midtown Manhattan (where Radio City Music Hall would show up over three decades later). There’s no record of what made him fall on that city sidewalk – uncleared snow and ice, cracked concrete, or perhaps a slippery manhole cover or coal scuttle. On January 10th, for example, the New York Tribune reported, “Broadway was the scene of many a tumble yesterday, and the slippery sidewalks and still more slippery coalhole covers were the cause of much trouble and pain to the unwary.” Liscomb blamed the city’s negligence for his personal injuries and they must have been substantial. He had filed suit for $10,000 – it was the 1896 equivalent of suing for $382,204 today. Serious injuries definitely happened on America’s sidewalks – Mary Baker Eddy’s fall on an icy sidewalk in Lynn, Massachusetts, was so severe that it effectively changed her religion. At such a high figure, Alfred Liscomb was essentially claiming to have sustained life-changing injuries and while both sides agreed to discontinue the lawsuit action in October, his life did, indeed, seem to have changed after the fall.

      In September Alfred was off his game; clearly not himself. The self-assured, driven, energetic Alfred A. Liscomb with a chip of hubris on his shoulder had been transformed into a pathetic, confused soul who, for the first time in years, seemed old beyond his years – and nobody was sure why.

"Liscomb as He was Discovered by the Police." Note the chain bound by a padlock, wrapped around his left leg and the post and also the top hat still on his head, quite unlikely after the alleged 72 hours of abduction and sedation. Artist's interpretation, New York Journal. 17 September 1896, p.5.

He had been found in a dirty cellar underneath a horse stable chained to a post. Two men who had gone into the dismal basement heard a faint voice from deep in the dark depths that pleaded, “Come here.” It was strange enough to find a human enslaved by a padlocked chain in a forgotten discarded chamber under the busy city, but everything about the man before them seemed like an absurd tall tale. They hadn’t discovered a long-forgotten, imprisoned derelict with tattered, filthy clothes and scraggly, overgrown hair. This was Alfred A. Liscomb, finely dressed in a perfectly clean, unwrinkled black suit and tie, his silk top hat still on his head, and a solitaire diamond stud glittering from on his spotless white shirt front. “There was hardly a speck of dust on his shoes, which bore evidence of a recent shine.” One of his discoverers later told the police, “There he sat,

as cool as though he were eating a turkey dinner.”

      It just made no sense.

Utter Confusion & Muddled Memory. Another artist's rendering of Liscomb with vivid side whiskers and more importantly a facial expression and hand gesture that were displays of significant confusion and uncertainty. The graphic of the chain and padlock in the background were symbolic of the whole bizarre story. New York Journal, 17 September 1896, p.5.

      As the police captain questioned him, the rescued Liscomb’s memory was foggy, faltered, and muddled, lacking any degree of conviction or clarity. His answers were “exceedingly indefinite” and he couldn’t account for discrepancies and gaps in his story. He struggled to explain details, seemingly because he didn’t know them rather than being unwilling to share them. His piecemeal responses contained more confusion and unresponsiveness than answers. Liscomb also said very little about his adventure even to any of his family. The police tried to fill in the gaps with their own investigation.

      Liscomb told them “a rambling story” that he had been in the cellar for three days and nights, carried there by two men who threw a horse blanket over his head (he had also said it was seven men). They then robbed him of $300 (he also said $360) and chloroformed him repeatedly over the three days and placed a gun on a beam over his head lest he should try to get away. Alfred couldn’t explain why he never shouted for help or shot the gun to attract attention. The doctor who examined him said he showed no signs of three days of starvation or of being repeatedly chloroformed. The police found a key in Alfred’s pants that unlocked the padlock on his leg chain. The thieves hadn’t robbed him of other cash he had in his clothes, or the solitaire diamond gleaming from his shirt, or his gold watch. And the watch, which was “made to run 30 hours, was ticking merrily,” even though he had been allegedly chloroformed for 72 hours. The police were even suspicious of the fact that “Liscomb’s assailants had selected a post to tie him to that gave him an opportunity to sit comfortably on a stone.” Even his hat was still on his head after a horse blanket had been thrown over him. All of this was above and beyond the fact that he was found looking like a gentleman ready to attend the opera rather than a victim of robbery and abduction.

      The press and the attorney for the stable owner publicly judged and convicted Alfred Liscomb in the court of public opinion. The newspapers proclaimed “Crime, farce or fraud?” “wild, weird story,” “queer yarn,” and “the man was faking,” and the attorney pontificated:

Get Liscomb here to court and I will prove to Your honor that he outrivals Baron Munchausen in the largeness of his lies and imagination. If a man such as he can concoct such fabulous yarns I think he should be put on the Island [where the prison was] to allow him to meditate over them. …

      Alfred was taken from the police station to his daughter’s home in New Jersey where he was confined to bed for several days with two doctors in attendance. He was diagnosed to be suffering from nervous prostration, a condition that could involve extreme mental and physical exhaustion, fatigue, headaches, insomnia, anxiety, irritability, and heart palpitations, all attributed to stress; today it would be called a nervous breakdown. He avoided visitors and barely spoke, even to family members. They and his closest friends were understandably concerned about Alfred’s strange story and confused behavior and they candidly shared their beliefs that he was not himself: “There is no doubt among the friends of Alfred A. Liscomb … that he is suffering from temporary aberration of mind.” Dr. Swentzel, his son-in-law, said the whole episode was “the dream of a wandering mind temporarily unbalanced.” The title of the newspaper article that conveyed these opinions of Liscomb’s inner circle was brutally blunt: “LISCOMB THOUGHT TO BE INSANE.” 

Before the strange September incident, Alfred had left his brokerage and furniture business activities and started to work as a wagon driver, delivering crates of Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup throughout the city; it was a distinctly blue-collar employment for a man who had been enjoying a white-collar lifestyle, another hint that life had suddenly taken a different turn for him. Within seven months of retreating from the stresses of the chained-in-a-cellar episode, the 63-year-old New Yorker walked away from his wagon business in order to  lead secret boatloads of men and ammunition to Cuba to help rebels fight for freedom against Spain. You can’t make this stuff up.   

Sneaking By

      On 15 April 1897 the aging Liscomb was making national headlines once again; both The Cleveland Press and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch were so impressed by his daring, illegal, and successful exploits that they even included the New Yorker’s portrait in their papers and the Dispatch did so under the column heading, “IN THE PUBLIC EYE.” During the Cuban War of Independence, over 70 illegal expeditions were undertaken from U.S. ports to smuggle much-needed weapons, ammunition, and supplies to Cuban rebels from U.S. ports but fewer than 30 were successful; most were intercepted by U.S. Navy patrols, and some by the Spanish Navy; two were wrecked and another was driven back to port by a storm. The expeditions were executed by Cuban exiles and American supporters – Alfred Liscomb was one of those.

Three Portraits of Alfred A. Liscomb. (left to right): Artists' renderings in The Cleveland Press, 15 April 1897, p.4., and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 17 April 1897, p.4.; photograph on his trade card of 1910. Note, however, that the artist rendering of him in 1896 (see above) showed the longer whiskers closer to those of 1910; perhaps he had tried to clean up his image for the publicity covering his Cuba expeditions in 1897 then let them grow out again afterwards.

In May 1896, a Grand Cuban-American Fair” was held in New York City’s Madison Square Garden. The motto used by the event organizers was, “Cuba appreciates sympathy – She must have assistance” and Alfred Liscomb embraced the sentiment. He had friends among members of the Cuban resistance in New York and he owned property in Matanzas, Cuba, which had greatly depreciated in value since the insurrection began. At a large dinner event, New Yorkers had made the Cuban resistance their guests and the menu was composed of Cuban dishes. Alfred told one of the Cubans present that he would like to take an expedition to Cuba. The Cuban placed his own small steam-powered yacht moored at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, at Liscomb’s service. A member of the Harlem Yacht Club, Liscomb was a skilled navigator and yachtsman, so he decided to command the vessel himself. The press consequently referred to him as Captain Liscomb.

      Arrangements were speedily made, and on April 9th the little steamer Dream, commanded by Captain Liscomb and laden with munitions and 35 Cubans, left the harbor. The Dream was chased by U.S. Navy ships off the Florida coast, so Liscomb put the yacht in at Jacksonville, to allay suspicions that it was bound for Cuba. When it resumed its voyage it was followed by more patrol boats to two other Florida ports. Eventually the coast was clear, and Liscomb successfully navigated a course to Matanzas, Cuba where an insurgent band received it. His mission accomplished, he sailed back to Punta Gorda on the west coast of Florida where he found 40 young Americans and Cuban-Americans anxious to go to Cuba, so another expedition was soon under way and successfully landed at Cabo San Antonio, the westernmost point of Cuba, after eluding the vigilance of a Spanish gunboat. Despite improbable odds, the Dream and its intrepid captain had twice accomplished their missions and headed back home to New York.

Sarah Maria Churchill Dunn Liscomb, about 1878-1882. She is wearing what appears to be a silk taffeta dress which was standard fashion but also quite flammable. She became blind sometime after this picture was taken and in 1898 her dress caught fire because of its proximity to a hot iron stove - it was a common accident and always a tragedy. Courtesy of ancestry.com

      Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders would free Cuba from Spain’s grasp in the next year; while they were the ones who would defeat the Spanish bear,  Alfred Liscomb had first given it a few good pokes. Although 24 years older than the future president, Captain Liscomb’s daring heroism and rugged individualism was cut from the same cloth as Roosevelt and his troops.

      Back in Harlem, Alfred read the grim news about the explosion of the Battleship Maine in Havana Harbor. But news of an approaching war didn’t seem to matter two weeks later, on 28 February 1898 when Sarah Liscomb, Alfred’s wife of 34 years, died in a tragic fire. The totally blind woman was sitting too near the dining room stove, warming herself with her 6-year-old granddaughter, when Sarah’s dress caught fire. The little girl screamed for her mother and grandfather and Alfred came quickly, rolling Sarah in a blanket to put out the fire, but she had been “frightfully burned,” and died several minutes later; Alfred’s “hands and arms were severely burned in his efforts to rescue his wife.”

 In 1900, even at 66 years old, something stirred in Alfred’s soul; perhaps it was the wanderlust engendered by sailing the high seas or the Caribbean climate, waters, foliage, and Cuban culture that were calling to him. The loss of his lifelong wife and the horrific, upsetting memories of their last moments together may also have made him want to search for the peace that only time and distance can provide. He decided to return to Cuba.

Cuba’s Fountain of Youth

Alfred came prepared to succeed and make money; he announced himself to his new Cuban neighbors as a physician once again (after a hiatus of over two decades) and he also tried to impress the locals by puffing himself up as a “BACTERIOLOGIST FROM NEW YORK CITY,” and an inventor of a new medical treatment. But the culture that responded would prove to not be impressed or gullible because he was fresh off the boat from the United States. Spanish newspapers warned:

… there is none as dangerous as the “quack” or the “yankee,” who possesses the art of persuasion like no other. … these asses in wise men’s clothing, unmasked, begin to emigrate [to places like Cuba] in flocks like tuna.

Back side of the trade card of Alfred A. Liscomb, 1910. On the front side he identifies himself as "Dr." and on the back as "Prof." as well as a bacteriologist and inventor of a medical treatment. But the fact that he was "FROM NEW YORK CITY" seemed to be the most important credential he was trying to convey; however, it didn't seem to have brought him any additional respect or attention. Rapoza Collection.

      To say that Alfred A. Liscomb had a hard time settling in at Havana, Cuba, would be an understatement. In 1900, his first year of residency, He was arrested four times: first for fraud (perhaps in his medical practice), then twice for public indecency, for which on the second occasion he was sentenced to ten days of community service, paid a fine of ten pesos [$10 USD] and posted “a bond of 500 pesos to guarantee he would not disturb the peace of the neighborhood.” His last court appearance was “for mistreating one’s neighbor,” the court report noted cautiously, “Alfredo A. Liscomb, another doctor, but American, acquitted.”

In March 1904, the quickly aging doctor decided to pull one of his most successful self-promotions out of his bag of tricks: betting on his walking and running. Even The Boston Traveler picked up the human-interest story of

Dr. Alfred Liscomb of Havana celebrated his 74th birthday [it sounded even more amazing, but he was only 70] a few days ago, and on the night of the anniversary he employed some of his surplus energy in winning a bet which he had made that he could walk and run a mile [2 miles total] in 20 minutes. The doctor covered the distance agreed upon in 12 minutes.  

      Exactly a year later, on his 71st birthday in March 1905, he was at it again, trying to impress friends and to promote his new cure, Agua de Oro:

Dr. Alfred A. Liscomb, who is famous for his athletic stunts in the city, has made a bet of another supper to some friends that on Sunday night, which is the occasion of his seventy-first birthday, that he will walk one mile and run one mile, or two miles in all, in the space of twelve minutes.  He is to start from the corner of Prado and Neptuno streets at 10 o’clock sharp, and the race will be as free as the air to all. This event is to prove the efficacy of the Doctor’s Agua de Oro cure, which makes the old young. ... [emphasis added]

      So Agua de Oro was a cure for old age, giving the elderly the strength and energy to stay young; Professor/Doctor Alfred A. Liscomb had discovered a fountain of youth, and he was the living proof – he was the King of Life.

      Seven months later, in October, Alfred had enlisted two financial backers to establish “the Cuban ‘Agua De Oro’ Co., at New York City to manufacture medicinal preparations” with starting capital of $15,000 ($547,246 in 2025 USD). It was serious business. Ship manifest documents are far from complete, but available records show Alfred traveled between the New York and Havana at least ten times in the last six years of his life, probably for business and financial reasons moreso than to revisit family and friends. In 1904 he departed Havana on June 7th and landed in New York on the 11th; then two weeks later, he departed New York on the 25th and arrived back in Havana on the 29th. From then on, Liscomb was traveling frequently (it may be more accurate to call it commuting) between New York and Havana; each way averaged three to four days.

      The Spanish term, “Agua de Oro” means “Golden Water.” A South American plant called streptosolen has many common names, including Agua de Oro. It was believed to have medicinal virtues, including being a diuretic and a remedy for rheumatism, both complaints of the elderly; perhaps Liscomb was making his cures and treatments from this plant to reverse these complaints of seniors like himself. More likely, however, he had simply bottled a golden-colored liquid that he promised had age-defying transformative properties. His principle claim that Agua de Oro made the old feel young may be a strong hint that he was using coca leaves and kola nuts in his energy elixir, like other popular tonics of the time. Medicines called "nerve tonics" and “brain tonics,” like Coca Cola and Koca Nola, were especially popular for relief from fatigue, headaches, and general malaise, relying on coca and cola for their stimulating energy punch.  

      In 1906 Alfred Liscomb was in trouble with the law once again. A man who died of yellow fever in Galveston, Texas, had contracted the infection at Dr. Liscomb’s house in Havana. The city had previously put Liscomb’s house under quarantine because two more cases, one of which ended in death, had occurred in his house. As soon as the health department imposed a quarantine on a house, no one was allowed to enter or exit the building until the department was satisfied the contagion danger was past and the quarantine was lifted. Alfred Liscomb disregarded the restrictions for his quarantined home and was reported, probably by one of the sentries posted to enforce the quarantine, “The correctional court has fined Dr. Liscomb five pesos for having opened one of the doors sealed by order of the [Health] Department.” Risking public safety and defying the health department were not actions befitting a medical professional, but Liscomb was no doctor and I get the feeling that he didn’t care.

Front of Alfred A. Liscomb's trade card, 1910. He proudly listed his age and coronated himself the "King of Life" as proof of the effectiveness of his age-defying medicine, but the end of the year the card was made, the King was dead. Long live the King. Rapoza collection.

      He himself had been in “feeble health” since 1909 and he passed away on 5 December 1910 late in his 76th year. The causes of Alfred Liscomb’s death were listed as capillary bronchitis, senility and exhaustion. In the early 20th century, medical understanding and terminology were imprecise by today’s standards; the diagnosis of bronchitis would likely be pneumonia today and senility is now generally understood as dementia.

      The trade card he had produced during the year of his death turned out to be a memento mori as much as an advertisement for his medical services. It stated he was the inventor of the Agua de Oro treatment, which he offered from the Agua de Oro House, a large sanitorium on the island. No records have been found yet to establish the success of his medical enterprise, but the absence of advertising or local Cuban commentary about the cure, the treatment method, or the sanitorium, except for what is found on his trade card and in his death notices, suggest their impact of all of it was negligible. The photograph of the doctor, correctly listed as “Age 76 Years,” shows an old, worn-out looking man with white, hairy horns that betrayed his age as much as rings on a tree trunk. His diamond stud still presented proudly in his tie knot, but the King of Life looked tired and ready to abdicate his throne.

      Despite his vaunted youth-giving Agua de Oro, there was no stopping the sand in mortality’s hourglass for Albert Liscomb: he died of age-related causes that kill many of the elderly even today. Pneumonia causes high mortality rates for the elderly and dementia is often a precursor to developing pneumonia. Dementia causes swallowing difficulties, causing food and liquid to enter the lungs, thus weakening the immune system, making bacterial lung infections harder to fight, which results in increased risk of pneumonia.

      The significant fact to me is not how Alfred Liscomb died but how he lived, particularly, how long was he suffering from dementia? Was it possible that a concussion, delirium, or dementia triggered by his fall could have caused the 62-year-old’s mental meltdown in the cellar under the stable in 1896, as his family and friends suggested? A sudden, severe shift to very odd behavior can be a sign of cognitive issues like dementia or delirium, even if it's just for a day, as people with these conditions often have unpredictable behavior swings, become confused, or act out of character,  Could his several infractions with the law in Cuba, especially the two counts of public indecency, have been evidence of some more temporary trips into dementia or some other mental illness? He was apparently physically fit throughout his adult life and thrived on the adulation of the crowds, but certain behaviors since his fall in 1896 suggest mental instability of some sort and his death certificate points to dementia. Even his decision to undertake extreme risk of illegal quasi-military expeditions to an unstable country and his attempt to make and sell fake medicines and provide quack medical services during a contagious, deadly epidemic suggest either a lot of brass or not enough marbles. Alfred Liscomb’s simple black-and-white trade card hides lots of secrets but it also introduced us to the man who once became the King of Life, even if only in his own troubled mind.

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine

Long, Long Before Iron Man's Arc Reactor: R. P. Hall's Galvano-Electric Plaster

UPDATE: July 2025 - A very rare, unusual galvanic battery was listed this month on eBay, and I secured the kind permission of the seller to show the item on this blog post. Definitely worth a look - SEE THE STARTLING IMAGE NEAR THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST! It has a fascinating mixture of cosmic symbolism: the sun and a crescent moon, two hearts, and a pair of all-seeing eyes, all framed by a horseshoe and divided by a Christian cross. A potent combination of talismanic protection from illness, bad luck, and evil - talk about a defense and cure-all for anything evil that might approach!

It doesn’t happen often.

After 40 years of collecting Victorian advertising, it has to be something truly special to catch my eye. It must be so different that it makes me do a double-take. My finger slips off the mouse button, and my head leans forward, bringing my face close to the screen. My eyes go into microscopic-focus mode to ensure I’m not imagining things. My brain kicks into overdrive, checking my virtual collection to confirm I don’t already own one. It studies the subject for possible subliminal messages, cultural significance, and historical relevance. I soak in the richness of the colors, the allure of the graphics, and the brilliance of the design.

On those rare occasions when the image exceeds my wildest expectations, the little boy in me pronounces the official response of my experienced, high-level analysis:

“Cooooool!”

Click. Somewhere out there, I’ve made a seller happy. Okay, calm down, adrenaline; it’s mine.

The Discovery of Hall’s Galvano-Electric Plaster

I recently had such an experience, and I’d like to share it with you. About a month ago, I saw the Hall’s Galvano-Electric Plaster trade card for the first time ever. I’ve spent so much time examining this card and researching the backstory of the product and its advertising that it has taken me until now to be ready to report my findings. I discovered far more about the product and the man behind it than I had expected. This has left me in a quandary about how to present it in a blog post.

I’ve decided to approach it differently: this post will focus exclusively on this one advertising trade card, while the next post will delve into the whole story—the inventor of this product, his life, how he created this particular medical item, and what happened to both him and his invention.

So for today, let’s focus on the curious medical device that bamboozled both the patient and the inventor alike: Hall’s Galvano-Electric Plaster.

Mustard and Frogs’ Legs

The inventor of this device was Reuben P. Hall, a former peddler with no formal medical education. However, what he lacked in knowledge, he made up for with a vivid imagination, meticulous ingenuity, and keen perception. He saw two medical treatments—ancient plasters and modern electricity—being used for the same aches, pains, and diseases. In 1874, he figured out a way to bring these two methods together into one new and improved solution.

For centuries, wives and mothers made a home remedy called plasters from ingredients they had on hand. Mustard plasters were the most common form, made by mixing mustard powder, flour, and water into a paste. This gloopy mess was spread on one side of a piece of fabric and applied wherever on the body it was needed, such as on the chest for colds and congestion or on the back for arthritis, muscle pain, and backache. The mixture provided penetrating warmth to the area beneath. Today’s more modern-sounding and medicinally improved “pain relief patches” are the evolved descendants of this time-honored practice.

In 1874, electricity was still more mystery than science when Reuben claimed he had harnessed it in his plaster. Almost a century earlier, the Italian physician Luigi Galvani applied an electrical spark to a dead frog, causing its legs to twitch with animation. This result led many to believe that if electricity could bring life to part of a dead frog, it could help revive and restore humans’ pained and diseased bodies. Consequently, all sorts of medical devices promising rejuvenation emerged, often referred to as magnetic or galvanic electricity. People bought hand-cranked magneto-electric units to cure ailing family members at home, sometimes combining low-voltage shocks with steam cabinets and baths. Others purchased belts lined with various configurations of metal discs or cylinders to be worn under their clothing, next to the skin, to generate an electric current through the body. Often, men’s belts included a scrotal sack feature hanging below to bring some zip-a-dee back to the doo-dah.

Patented Magic

In his patent application, Reuben Hall provided a detailed review of the ever-expanding array of electrical appliances being foisted on the public. He also pointed out their shortcomings, the worst of which was the lack of traditional medicine being passed into the body. Unlike the age-old mustard plasters, electricity was the only medicine served up by the new medical shock equipment:

Electric currents have long been used by the medical profession in the treatment of many diseases. They have been applied in many ways. Currents from batteries, induction apparatus, or frictional apparatus have been used, by means of wires and electrodes placed on designated parts of the body. In other cases, they have been applied through the medium of baths, and in still others, by Voltaic belts, to be worn upon the body, the current being there both generated and applied. Their use has not been as extensive as it might have been, for the reason that while they were used, the ordinary exterior local applications of medicine could not be used, as was often desirable.

In electric baths, this has been remedied to some extent by enclosing the bath and supplying medicated air or vapor to the patient while under treatment. This involves a cumbersome and expensive apparatus, and can be used only for limited periods and at intervals.

Reuben then presented the patent examiners with his alternative—a unique invention in the medical electricity marketplace: a medicinal plaster with electrical components embedded in the fabric. On his detailed illustration below, two “electrically dissimilar galvanic elements” (like copper and zinc), labeled “P” and “N,” were heart-shaped metal plates connected by a wire underneath. Human perspiration completed the electrical circuit started by the two hearts and wire, producing a current. The latent electrical energy in the human body was thus triggered into action, much like the frog legs.

The key difference between Reuben’s invention and all the other electrical devices then in existence was the combination of electricity generation and simultaneous medicinal application. Yet ironically, his patent drawing downplayed what medicine should be used:

E is any suitable base or fabric, upon which is spread any suitable medical compound, A. To the composition of this compound, I make no claim as it may be varied to suit various conditions or diagnoses.

Customers or their pharmacists could apply whatever medication they chose to the plaster. It wasn’t so much that Reuben was ambivalent about the medicine; he was focused on developing the next generation of electrical medicine. That, apparently, was where the real money was.

Miracle Born in the Storm Clouds

I’ve only seen this one advertising trade card for his product—I doubt there were any more. This trade card design captured the curative magic of Hall’s Galvano-Electric Plasters, showing the dramatic transformation from sickness to health. Under decorative arches, the archetypal before-and-after combination of a sick man and his healthy counterpart clearly displayed the benefit of the plasters. There could be nothing better than the visual of a man tossing his crutches and doing a jig to demonstrate the miracle of Hall’s plaster. Before-and-after visuals were a popular and often-used convention for medical advertising; Parker’s Ginger Tonic and Buckingham’s Dye for Whiskers were two such products with several equally effective variations on the theme. Tossing one’s crutches and doing a silly dance was a powerful way of showcasing the cure’s effectiveness and the joy it brought.

To keep the customer focused on the product even longer, a poem followed the illustration. Written in contrived quatrains of butchered iambic pentameter, the point was not to present a timeless sonnet but to amuse and vividly praise Hall’s plaster for capturing the power of the gods: lightning –

Deep in the storm cloud’s womb I have my birth,

Thence flashed by Angel’s wings from Heaven to Earth,

Under the magic of my touch, old Pain

Wages his fiercest warfare all in vain

What Heaven-borne power slays disease’s demons in an hour?

… the mighty master –

… Hall’s Galvano-electric plaster!

The card displayed first-rate creativity but second-rate execution. The artwork was nice but not refined, the color palette was minimal, and the poetry was hackneyed. However, the message was crystal clear: Hall’s Galvano-Electric Plaster cured the hopeless and miserable. An 1878 advertisement in the Boston Globe stated, “STOP PAIN AS IF BY MAGIC. THEY REALLY PERFORM MIRACLES.”

The trade card’s reverse side has a few variants. The version shown here is the trademark registered in January 1877 (see the evolution of the trademark design further below). The advertisement describes the “Galvanic Battery” embedded in the plaster that produces “a constant but mild current of Electricity, which is most exhilarating” when the electrical circuit is completed by being put in contact with the body. Twenty-five medical miseries, ranging from weak eyes and constipation to lung and heart disease, would be speedily cured by the electricity, “those subtle and mysterious elements of nature,” produced by Hall’s plaster. The last promotional line summarizes the benefits illustrated on the card front, once again promising nothing short of miracles: “They cause the Lame to leap with joy and the Halt to take up their beds and walk,” subliminally reminding the reader of the same miracle performed by none other than Jesus himself. (John 5:8-9; also see Isaiah 35:6)

Professor of Nothing

It wasn’t just lightning that was in the clouds; doom was in the air as well.

Hall’s plaster advertising ran across nine states in 1874, but the number of states kept diminishing each year thereafter. Just a few short years into the sales of Hall’s Galvano Electric Plaster, a lightning storm of new-fangled electrical medical devices made their appearance across the land—and on people’s upper chests.

These devices were also described as galvano-electrical batteries but lacked any medicinal plaster component. They were distinctly designed to be stylish, even fashionable jewelry-like medical devices: small and shiny, suspended most often by a silk band, worn at the top of the cleavage. Although the instructions generally recommended wearing them “as close to the heart as possible,” they were pretty items, with a pleasing arrangement of disks made from different metals like bronze, copper, nickel, and zinc, arranged in a circular pattern around a central object. This central object could be a flower, hexagon, cross, heart, or other design, each created by a different manufacturer. Most were enclosed in a circular band of bronze or white metal; one was edged in a horseshoe pattern, and Scott’s Galvanic Generator was extra-fancy, with a sculpted winged cherub holding bundles of lightning bolts on one side while the reverse side had a zinc fist similarly clutching lightning bolts, all embedded in a copper shield. Hall’s Galvanic-Electric Plaster was expected to be hidden under clothing; Boyd’s Battery, Scott's Galvanic Generator, and the rest of the batteries produced from 1878-1886 were designed to be the center of attention and in the public eye.

London Galvanic Generator, Pall Mall Electric Association, ca. 1881. (left) front side - winged cherub sculpted in Lionite, holding bunches of lightning bolts; (right) reverse side - copper plate with embedded zinc in the shape of a fist holding lightning bolts. Rapoza collection.

While their public exposure surely increased their popularity, it also brought them condemnation from critics who insisted they weren’t providing any medical benefit at all. Calling electric batteries “toys,” the faultfinders guffawed that “a wooden button worn upon the breast would be quite as effective as the so-called ‘batteries’ which have hitherto been sold as curative to an over-credulous public.” They even claimed that wearing a slice from an ear of corn would do as much good (and look pretty much like) as one of the batteries. To the critics, the popular belief in the curative power of electric batteries fell into the same realm of superstition as those “otherwise intelligent persons [who] believe that carrying a Horse Chestnut in the pocket will keep off rheumatism.”

The detractors also targeted the “before-and-after” illustrations that Hall’s plaster and other electric battery companies used to promise amazing results. The critic’s sarcasm was as vicious as it was humorous:

There is a picture of a man without any battery, labelled “Before Using,” and another picture of a man with a battery, labelled “After Using.” Now if these pictures are accurate representations of the man before and after, we protest against its use. One has only to wear one of these things, and his own mother would not know him. A rogue has hereafter no need to go to Canada to escape justice. All he has to do is to wear one of these batteries, and if these pictures are true, he becomes another man altogether.

Electrical batteries like Hall’s and all the rest faced stiff headwinds at the same time they were being warmly received by the public. They didn’t last long, likely due to a combination of significant critical opinion and the fact that they simply didn’t work.

There is no more development of electrical action between these bits of metal than there is between the coins in one’s pocket—and we pronounce the thing to be an UTTER BARE-FACED FRAUD.

People still suffered from weak eyes, constipation, and heart disease even though electrical batteries dangled from their necks or Hall’s Galvano-Electric Plaster stuck to their backs. If there was any improvement, it was more likely the result of time and nature providing their own remedy or, in the case of constipation, time and nature might be aided by a heaping plate of beans.

During an intense courtroom cross-examination in 1882, one of the leading electric battery manufacturers, Professor John C. Boyd, was asked, “Professor of what?” Responding under oath, his telling reply was, “Professor of nothing.” His credentials, like his product, were a ruse, good for nothing. The only thing shocking about Hall’s plaster and the subsequent wearable electrical batteries was that they didn’t work; they didn’t generate electricity, and they didn’t cure or remedy disease. They do make great patent medicine antiques, though!

Just like Iron Man's Arc Reactor, Hall's Galvano-Electric Plaster and all the small body batteries that followed should have stayed in the world of fiction; maybe they can be included in the next Iron Man movie!

(left) Lowder's Magneto-Electric Battery (center design: two circles within a hexagon), ~1886 (courtesy of the Wellcome Collection; public domain); (right) Richardson's Magneto-Galvanic Battery (center design: heart), Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN, 25 MAR 1881).*

"Extremely Rare Galvanic Battery Medical Cure-All Medal, Token." Listed on eBay in July 2025. This is a very large and heavy battery; 2.75 inches x 2.28 inches (70x58 mm) and 1.59 ounces. The back is stamped "Made in Germany," but the eBay seller stated it was not; that was often stamped on items during the late 19th century as a sign of quality. (Courtesy of eBay seller thbco. This image is not linked to the eBay page because it has already been sold.)

(left) J. R. Flanigan Medal Battery, 1880; (center) John M. Lewis, 1880; (right) Boyd's Battery, 1878. (from patent drawings and other public domain files)

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine