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“A Ringer Was Used to Make the Killing”: Horse Painting and Racetrack Corruption in the Early Depression-Era War on Crime
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2021
Abstract
Peter Christian “Paddy” Barrie was a seasoned fraudster who transferred his horse doping and horse substitution skills from British to North American racetracks in the 1920s. His thoroughbred ringers were entered in elite races to guarantee winnings for syndicates and betting rings in the Prohibition-era United States. This case study of a professional travelling criminal and the challenges he posed for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in the early 1930s war on crime highlights both the importance of illegal betting to urban mobsters and the need for broader and more nuanced critiques of Depression-era organized-crime activities and alliances.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press in association with the British Association for American Studies
References
1 Paul Gallico, “Little Ringer, What Next?”, New York Daily News, 17 Aug. 1934, 50.
2 Note, “Horse Ringing by Peter Christian Barrie,” in Pinkerton's National Detective Agency Records, Criminal Case Files, 1861–1992, Box 151, Folder 1, Racehorse Ringers, Essays & Notes, Manuscript/Mixed Material, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, at https://lccn.loc.gov/mm75036301, hereafter PNDA Criminal Case Files box + folder.
3 Bob McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses: How Master Turf Swindler Disguises Thoroughbreds, Chapter I,” New York Daily News, 21 Nov. 1932, 42–43. Aknahton raced legitimately and as himself at Belmont Park and Aqueduct between May and September 1931. See G. A. reports, 21 Oct. 1931, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 6.
4 D. C. Thornhill to S. L. Stiles, 7 Nov. 1931, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 7; Bob McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses, Chapter II,” New York Daily News, 22 Nov. 1932, 44.
5 Accusations and cases of ringing were not new. There were well-publicized ringer scandals at the Derby and Ascot in the 1840s, long before the Coat of Mail controversy. Running Rein won the Derby in 1844, but was later revealed to be four-year old Maccabeus, so the title was awarded to the runner-up Orlando. Bloodstone, winner of the Two-Year-Old Stakes at Ascot that same year, was actually a very different three-year-old horse. See Powley, Adam, When Racing Was Racing: A Century of Horse Racing (Yeovil: Haynes Publishing, 2012), 8Google Scholar; Vamplew, Wray, The Turf: A Social and Economic History of Horse Racing (London: Allen Lane, 1976), 85Google Scholar.
6 Katcher, Leo, The Big Bankroll: The Life and Times of Arnold Rothstein (New York: DaCapo Press, 1994; first published 1958), 117Google Scholar; Vanderwood, Paul J., Satan's Playground: Mobsters and Movie Stars at America's Greatest Gaming Resort (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2010), 249CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Barrie did use bribery to fix races when necessary. For example, he paid Coat of Mail's jockey £25 to ride the ringer at Stockton, England, in October 1919, and bribed Hickey's (aka Aknahton's) jockey at Bowie, Maryland in Nov. 1931 “to keep second all the way” until the final stretch so his patrons could collect $200,000. See Cornish, George W., Cornish of the “Yard”: His Reminiscences and Cases, (London: John Lane, 1935); 92Google Scholar, and Bob McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses, Chapter VI,” New York Daily News, 26 Nov. 1932, 25. Young jockeys were enmeshed in systems of exploitation and indenture, and were sitting ducks for crooks. See John Christagau, The Gambler and the Bug Boy: 1939 Los Angeles and the Untold Story of a Horse Racing Fix (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007); and Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit: Three Men and a Racehorse (London: Fourth Estate, 2002), 61, 74–75.
7 Bob McGarry, “‘Ringing’ Racehorses: How Master Turf Swindler Disguises Thoroughbreds,” New York Daily News, 21 Nov. 1932, 42; “Jimmy Wood's Sportopics,” Brooklyn Times Union, 31 Aug. 1932, 1; Edward Hotaling, They're Off! Horse Racing at Saratoga (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 218–19.
8 See “Rancocas Entries Are Barred at Spa,” New York Times, 16 Aug. 1931, 130; Bryan Field, “Sinclair to Sell Stable at Auction,” New York Times, 26 Aug. 1931, 26; Bryan Field, “Sinclair Horses Sold for $81,300,” New York Times, 4 Sept. 1931, 17; Hotaling, 236. There was a limited time frame in which a stimulant could be effective, so doping was an “inside job” by a trainer, stable hand or jockey, but the financial incentives usually came from external sources. See Winnie O'Connor, Jockeys, Crooks, and Kings (New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith Inc., 1930), 38, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 150, Folder 9.
9 “Jockey Lewis Wins with 4 Longshots,” New York Times, 22 Oct. 1931, 31S; Bob McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses, Chapter XII,” New York Daily News, 3 Dec. 1932, 24; “Trainers Buy My Tonic and Win,” Sunday People, 7 Jan. 1951, 8; David Ashforth, Ringers and Rascals: A Taste of Skulduggery (Compton: Highdown, 2003), 23–24, 34.
10 C.E.D. reports, 14 Nov. 1931, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 7; statement of Carl Clendening, 26 Aug. 1932, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 8.
11 “Racetrack Rackets,” n.d. [c.1931], in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 1.
12 Foal markings are listed on the New York Jockey Club registration documents for both horses: copy of certificate of foal registration no. 283352, 1928, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 2; and certification of foal registration no. 293575, 1929, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 1. The absence of photographs of these horses would prove to be a major impediment in the three-year PNDA hunt for Barrie and Aknahton.
13 “Petrol and Peroxide; Changing the Colour of a Horse,” Western Daily Press, 21 Sept. 1920, 8; G. Clark Cummings, “The Language of Horse Racing,” American Speech, 30, 1 (Feb. 1955), 23–24.
14 Murray Robinson, “As You Like It,” Brooklyn Times Union, 31 Aug. 1932, 1; Bob McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses, Chapter XI,” New York Daily News, 2 Dec. 1932, 68.
15 Hotaling, 241.
16 Ashforth, Ringers and Rascals, 15–104.
17 See, for example, Dorr, Lisa Lindquist, “Bootlegging Aliens: Unsanctioned Immigration and the Underground Economy of Smuggling from Cuba during Prohibition,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 93, 1 (Summer 2014), 44–73Google Scholar; Moore, Stephen T., Bootleggers and Borders: The Paradox of Prohibition on a Canada–US Borderland (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dorr, Lisa Lindquist, A Thousand Thirst Beaches: Smuggling Alcohol from Cuba to the South during Prohibition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Peter Andreas and Ethan A. Nadelmann, Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 117.
19 Barrie's exposés featured in twelve instalments by Bob McGarry, “‘Ringing’ Racehorses to the Tune of $6,000,000,” New York Daily News, 21 Nov.–3 Dec. 1932, and a series of articles in the Sunday People in January, February and March 1951.
20 Diego Galeano, “Travelling Criminals and Trans-national Police Cooperation in South America, 1890–1920,” in Luz E. Huertas, Bonnie A. Lucero and Gregory J. Swedberg, eds., Voices of Crime: Constructing and Contesting Social Central in Modern Latin America (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016), 17–50.
21 See, for example, C. Sterling, Crime without Frontiers: The Worldwide Expansion of Organized Crime and the Pax Mafiosa (London: Warner Books, 1995); Carlo Morselli and Marie-Noële Royer, “Criminal Mobility and Criminal Achievement,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 45, 1 (Feb. 2008), 4–21; Sharon Pickering and Jude McCulloch, eds., Borders and Crime: Pre-crime, Mobility and Serious Harm in an Age of Globalization (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Eric Beauregard and Irina Busina, “Journey ‘during’ Crime: Predicting Criminal Mobility Patterns in Sexual Assaults,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 28, 10 (July 2013), 2052–67; Calderoni, Francesco, Berlusconi, Giulia and Garofalo, Lorella, “The Italian Mafias in the World: A Systematic Assessment of the Mobility of Criminal Groups,” European Journal of Criminology, 13, 4 (2016), 413–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Wider studies of mobility include Noel B. Salazar, “Theorizing Mobility through Concepts and Figures,” Tempo Social, 30, 2 (Aug. 2018), 153–68; Peter Adey, David Bissell, Kevin Hannam, Peter Merriman and Mimi Sheller, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2014); Julia Leyda, American Mobilities: Geographies of Class, Race, and Gender in US Culture (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2016). Contemporary crime-fiction studies employ mobility as an analytical tool to understand criminal agency across geographically diverse contexts and border crossings. See, for example, Maarit Piipponen, Helen Mäntymäki and Marinella Rodi-Risberg, eds., Mobility and Transgression in Contemporary Crime Narratives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020); Andrew Pepper and David Schmid, “Introduction,” in Pepper and Schmid, eds., Globalization and the State in Contemporary Crime Fiction: A World of Crime (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 1–19.
22 Harry Smale to PNDA, 15 Dec. 1931, PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 150, Folder 13, racehorse ringers correspondence; Murray Robinson, “As You Like It,” Brooklyn Times Union, 31 Aug. 1932, 1. Barrie either fuelled or did not correct later newspaper reports of his aristocratic antecedents. See Dan Parker, “Paddy Barrie's Magic Tonic,” American Weekly, 9 Sept. 1951, clipping in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 7. His father, Edmund Chadwick Barrie, was a provision merchant. See National Library of Scotland, Scottish Post Office Directories, Edinburgh & Leith Directory, 1889–90, 63, at https://digital.nls.uk/83641909, accessed 8 May 2020.
23 Barrie slit three-year-old Aknahton's gums and removed several teeth so that the number and discolorations tallied with that of a two-year-old horse. Bob McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses, Chapter I,” New York Daily News, 21 Nov. 1932, 43.
24 Digital copies of Barrie's service papers are available at National Archives of Australia, Series B2455 First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914–20, BARRIE P C, SERN 384, at https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/DetailsReports/ItemDetail.aspx?Barcode=3052790&isAv=N, accessed 29 April 2020. Information is taken from AIF Attestation Paper of Persons Enlisted for Service Abroad (1, 5); Medical Report on an Invalid (13); Medical Case Sheet (46); M. V. Roberts to the Australian Military Offices, 12 June 1916 (60); Casualty Form-Active Service (68–69). Barrie's prewar occupation was “farmer” on several documents, but the handwritten entry on his original enlistment form is “farrier.” See AIF Attestation Paper of Persons Enlisted for Service Abroad (1). Also, the synopsis of Barrie's military record provided by his barrister to jurors in September 1920 and reported in local press did not fully tally with his military record. See, for example, “Turf Fraud Sentences: Penal Servitude for Barrie,” Western Daily Press, 29 Sept. 1920, 6. For crime and Great War veterans see, for example, Abbott, Edith, “Crime and the War,” Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, 9, 1 (1918), 32–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bourke, Joanna, Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain and the Great War (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Lawrence, Jon, “Forging a Peaceable Kingdom: War, Violence, and Fear of Brutalisation in Post-First World War Britain,” Journal of Modern History, 75 (2003), 557–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Emsley, Clive, “Violent Crime in England in 1919: Post-war Anxieties and Press Narratives,” Continuity and Change, 23, 1 (2008), 179–82Google Scholar; Ginger S. Frost, “‘Such a Poor Finish’: Illegitimacy, Murder, and War Veterans in England, 1918–1923,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques, 42, 3, special issue: Rethinking World War I: Occupation, Liberation, and Reconstruction (Winter 2016), 91–111.
25 Cornish, Cornish of the “Yard”, 89–96; “Turf Fraud Sentences: Penal Servitude for Barrie.”
26 See, for example, “Racehorse Owner Arrested,” Perth Courier, 8 June 1920, 6; “The Jazz Turf Case,” Western Times, 28 June 1920, 4; “Turf Case Developments,” Western Daily Press, 7 July 1920, 2; “Turf Conspiracy Charge, Daily Mail, 12 July 1920, 6; “Sequel to a Horse Race,” Western Times, 13 July 1920, 8; “The Turf Scandal,” Western Times, 21 Sept. 1920, 8; “Easy Money Made on Turf,” Dundee Courier, 29 Sept. 1920, 4; “Turf Fraud Case Appeal Dismissed,” Western Times, 18 Nov. 1920, 4.
27 Heather Shore, “Criminality and Englishness in the Aftermath: The Racecourse Wars of the 1920s,” Twentieth Century British History, 22, 4 (Dec. 2011), 474–97, 474, 479–87.
28 Steven A. Reiss, The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime: Horse Racing, Politics, and Organized Crime in New York, 1865–1913 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011), xv–xvi, 174–75, and chapters 7, 8; Reiss, “The Cyclical History of Horse Racing: The USA's Oldest and (Sometimes) Most Popular Spectator Sport,” International Journal of the History of Sport, 31, 1–2 (2014), 29–54, 29–38.
29 Mike Huggins, Horseracing and the British 1919–39 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003); Herb Phipps, Bill Kyne of Bay Meadows: The Man Who Brought Horse Racing Back to California (South Brunswick and New York: A. S. Barnes and Company/London: Thomas Yoseloff Ltd, 1978), 9; Gregory L. Ferraro, “The Corruption of Nobility: The Rise & Fall of Thoroughbred Racing in America,” North American Review, 277, 3 (May–June 1992), 4–8.
30 For a seminal critique of the “criminal Atlantic” see Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton, Eighteenth-Century Criminal Transportation: The Formation of the Criminal Atlantic (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). On later transatlantic criminal mobility see Paul Knepper, The Invention of International Crime: A Global Issue in the Making, 1881–1914 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Mathieu Deflem, Policing World Society: Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 97–110; Andreas and Nadelmann, Policing the Globe, esp. chapter 3.
31 Bob McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses, Chapter III,” New York Daily News, 23 Nov. 1932, 33. On passport see report from PNDA London correspondent, 5 Dec. 1931, and F. J. N. reports, 7 Dec. 1931, both in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 7.
32 Siener, William H., “Through the Back Door: Evading the Chinese Exclusion Act along the Niagara Frontier, 1900 to 1924,” Journal of American Ethnic History, 27, 4 (Summer 2008), 34–70Google Scholar, 35, 43–46, 52.
33 Barbara Roberts, “Shovelling out the ‘Mutinous’: Political Deportation from Canada before 1936,” Labour/Le Travail, 18 (Fall 1986), 77–110; Mae M. Ngai, “The Strange Career of the Illegal Alien: Immigration Restriction and Deportation Policy in the United States, 1921–1965,” Law and History Review, 21, 1 (Spring 2003), 69–107, 75.
34 Ryan D. King, Michael Massoglia and Christopher Uggen, “Employment and Exile: U.S. Criminal Deportations, 1908–2005,” American Journal of Sociology, 117, 6 (May 2012), 1786–1825, 1794–95; Daniel Kanstroom, Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 32–34.
35 Ngai, 76. When Barrie told a Saratoga district attorney in 1934 that he had entered the US illegally on at least four occasions this was a blatant undercount. See Paul Gallico, “Peter Barrie Is Perfect Villain of Horse Track,” Detroit Free Press, 20 Aug. 1934, 15.
36 New York Criminal History #3549 Patrick Christy, 15 Oct. 1932, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 8.
37 For another mobile professional thief, see Vivien Miller, “The Life and Crimes of Harry Sitamore, New York ‘Prince of Thieves’ and the ‘Raffles’ of Miami,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 87, 3 (Winter 2009), 378–403.
38 David R. Johnson, “The Origins and Structure of Intercity Criminal Activity 1840–1920: An Interpretation,” Journal of Social History, 15, 4 (Summer 1982), 593–605, 597.
39 Reiss, The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime, 143; Wilbur R. Miller, A History of Private Policing in the United States (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 105–6. Pinkertons had also been at the forefront of the crackdown on betting shops and poolrooms in the 1880s and 1890s.
40 James D. Horan, The Pinkertons: The Detective Agency That Made History (London: Robert Hale & Company, 1967), 511; Miller, A History of Private Policing, 133–45; Robert Michael Smith, From Blackjacks to Briefcases: A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003); Stephen P. O'Hara, Inventing the Pinkertons; or, Spies, Sleuths, Mercenaries, and Thugs: Being a Story of the Nation's Most Famous (and Infamous) Detective Agency (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), 150–51.
41 “Racetrack Rackets,” n.d. [c.1931], in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 1; Pinkertons to Alan Hynd, 14 Aug. 1941, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 150, Folder 13. Pinkertons had exposed another American “king of the ringers,” Benjamin A. Chilson, between 1903 and 1905, and again in the 1920s. See D. C. Thornhill to J. W. Wright, 29 Sept. 1921, and Asst. Supt. C. E. Duhain report, 9 Feb. 1926, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 5; and clippings on Chilson in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 3. Chilson and Barrie did overlap, in 1926 for example, but Chilson (aged 64 in 1926) then disappears from the historical record.
42 See, for example, John Kobler, Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone (Cambridge, MA: Dacapo Press, 1992; first published 1971); Albert Fried, The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America, revised edn (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); David E. Ruth, Inventing the Public Enemy: The Gangster in American Culture, 1918–1934 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996); Paul R. Kavieff, The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit, 1910–1945 (New York: Barricade Books, 2000); Robert A. Rockaway, “The Notorious Purple Gang: Detroit's All-Jewish Prohibition Mob,” Shofar, 20, 1, special issue: American Jews (Fall 2001), 113–30; Mara L. Keire, For Business and Pleasure: Red-Light Districts and the Regulation of Vice in the United States, 1890–1933 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), esp. chapter 6; Robert M. Lombardo, Organized Crime in Chicago: Beyond the Mafia (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013); Robert W. Whalen, Murder, Inc., and the Moral Life: Gangsters and Gangbusters in La Guardia's New York (Fordham, MD: Fordham University Press, 2016).
43 See, for example, Michael Woodiwiss, “Transnational Organized Crime: The Strange Career of an American Concept,” in M. E. Beare, ed., Critical Reflections on Transnational Organized Crime, Money Laundering and Corruption (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 3–34; Woodiwiss, Double Crossed: The Failure of Organized Crime Control (London: Pluto Press, 2017); Frank Argote-Freyre, “The Myth of Mafia Rule in 1950s Cuba: Origin, Relevance, and Legacies,” Cuban Studies, 49 (Winter 2020), 263–88.
44 John E. Halwas, The Bootlegger: A Story of Small-Town America (Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 1999); Shane White, Stephen Garton, Stephen Robertson and Graham White, Playing the Numbers: Gambling in Harlem between the Wars (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); John J. Binder, Al Capone's Beer Wars: A Complete History of Organized Crime in Chicago during Prohibition (New York: Prometheus Books, 2017); Tammy Ingram, “The South's Sin City: White Crime and the Limits of Law and Order in Phenix City, Alabama,” in Amy Louise Wood and Natalie J. Ring, eds., Crime and Punishment in the Jim Crow South (Urbana and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2019), 79–104.
45 Kobler, 91, 140, 145, 202.
46 Ibid., 142–43; Katcher, The Big Bankroll, 265, 295.
47 McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses, Chapter I,” 42.
48 Samuel C. Hildreth and James R. Crowell, The Spell of the Turf: The Story of American Racing (Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1926), 243–52.
49 See Ashforth, Ringers and Rascals, 51–52.
50 Katcher, 112, 119, 123; David Pietrusza, Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series (New York: Basic Books, 2011; first published 2003), 130–34. Rothstein won $1,350,000 in two races in 1921, including $850,000 on Sidereal at Aqueduct on 4 July.
51 One of Rothstein's partners was Charles A. Stoneham, head of a gambling syndicate controlling the casino and racetrack at Havana. Barrie raced at least one ringer at Havana, in 1927. See Katcher, 193; “Horse Ringing by Peter Christian Barrie,” in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 1.
52 McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses, Chapter III,” 33.
53 Katcher, 232.
54 Ibid., 132–37; Pietrusza, 92–93, 117, 130–32.
55 See C. Oren Renick and Joel Nathan Rosen, “Inextricably Linked: Joe Louis and Max Schmeling Revisited,” in David C. Ogden and Joel Nathan Rosen, eds., Fame to Infamy: Race, Sport, and the Fall from Grace (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010), for the example of early 1930s Detroit racketeer John Roxborough.
56 Reiss, “The Cyclical History of Horse Racing,” 38–39.
57 Kobler, Capone, 34; Vanderwood, Satan's Playground, 240–41; Hotaling, They're Off!, 243. Harry L. “Bing” Crosby was one of the original stakeholders of the Santa Anita racetrack in California, which opened in December 1934.
58 Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit, 58; Ferraro, “The Corruption of Nobility,” 4–5.
59 Alison Goodrum, “The Style Stakes: Fashion, Sportswear and Horse Racing in Inter-war America,” Sport in History, 35, 1 (2015), 46–80, 54.
60 Hildreth and Crowell, The Spell of the Turf, 228–32; Hotaling, 214–15, 234, 249; Hillenbrand, 37–39, 158–59, 201.
61 Reiss, “The Cyclical History of Horse Racing,” 38–39.
62 Charlene R. Johnson, Florida Thoroughbred (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993), 46.
63 Hotaling, 223; Holly Kruse, Off-Track and Online: The Networked Spaces of Horse Racing (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016), 56.
64 Hotaling, 224; Roger Longrigg, The History of Horse Racing (London: Macmillan, 1972), 282.
65 Johnson, Florida Thoroughbred, 32; Vanderwood, 49.
66 Ashforth, Ringers and Rascals, 58.
67 E. L. Patterson to S. L. Stiles, 13 Oct. 1931, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 6; Maryjean Wall, How Kentucky Became Southern: A Tale of Outlaws, Horse Thieves, Gamblers, and Breeders (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 109–27, 193–95; Katherine C. Mooney, Race Horse Men: How Slavery and Freedom Were Made at the Racetrack (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), esp. chapter 7. On race and criminal profiling see Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).
68 Phipps, Bill Kyne of Bay Meadows, 46, 119–20; Powley, When Racing Was Racing, 20; Cummings, “The Language of Horse Racing,” 27; Kruse, 17–18. For a useful description of modern betting and pari-mutuel payoffs see Richard H. Thaler and William T. Ziemba, “Anomalies: Parimutuel Betting Markets: Racetracks and Lotteries,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2, 2 (Spring 1988), 161–74, 162.
69 Johnson, “The Origins of Intercity Crime Activity,” 600; Fried, The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster, 117; Jonathan D. Cohen, “‘Put the Gangsters out of Business’: Gambling Legalization and the War on Organized Crime,” Journal of Policy History, 31, 4 (2019), 533–56, 541.
70 Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit, 17–18, 32–33; Phipps, 41.
71 Longrigg, 282.
72 McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses, Chapter VI.”
73 Fitz, “‘Shem’ Not Shem,” 9 Oct. 1931, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 1; Ashforth, 65.
74 “Burning Blaze Has Top Weight,” Baltimore Sun, 10 Oct. 1931, clipping in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 1; McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses, Chapter I,” 43.
75 E. L. Patterson to S. L. Stiles, 13 Oct. 1931, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 6.
76 Reiss, The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime, 163–64; Johnson, Florida Thoroughbred, 21–28, 35, Miller Davis, “The Story of Horse Racing in Florida; Simply Fabulous,” Miami Sunday News, 24 Nov. 1963, 8D.
77 Typed statement, Maryland State Racing Commission, n.d., in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 150, Folder 13; “Racetrack Rackets,” n.d. [c.1931], in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 1; “7 Ruled off Turf by Maryland Body,” New York Times, 19 Nov. 1931, 31.
78 E.F.G. reports, 14 Oct. 1931, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 6; “Big Bill Duffy Dies: Figure in Dry Era,” New York Times, 26 May 1952, 18; V. Penelope Pelizzon and Nancy M. West, Tabloid, Inc.: Crimes, Newspapers, Narratives (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2009), 95.
79 Katcher, The Big Bankroll, 320–22, 340–41; Pietrusza, Rothstein, xviii, 9–11, 309, 375–76; John Scarne, The Odds against Me: An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), 128–31; Mitgang, Herbert, Once upon a Time in New York: Jimmy Walker, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Last Great Battle of the Jazz Age (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2003; first published 2000), 16–17Google Scholar, 21–22.
80 The epithet was given to or appropriated by other Jewish crime figures, such as Isadore “Nigger” Goldberg of Twentieth Ward Group in 1920s Chicago. See Fried, The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster, 35, 105; Russell, Thaddeus, A Renegade History of the United States (New York: Free Press, 2010), 171Google Scholar.
81 Rothstein was killed in 1928 and Hildreth did not survive an intestinal operation in September 1929. “Sam Hildreth, 63, Turf Veteran, Dies,” New York Times, 25 Sept. 1929, 31.
82 Fitz, “Ran as Gailmont, Started as Shem at Havre de Grace,” 25 Feb. 1932, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 1.
83 E.F.G. reports, 14 Oct. 1931, G.A.W. reports, 16 Oct. 1931, D. C. Thornhill to S. L. Stiles, 22 Oct. 1931, C.J.M reports, 22, 23 Oct. 1931, E. L. Patterson to S.L. Stiles, 25 Oct. 1931, A.F. reports, 31 Oct. 1931, E. L. Patterson to S. L. Stiles, 31 Oct. 1931, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 6; A.F. reports, 2, 3, 4, 5 Nov. 1931, A.F. reports, 5 Nov. 1931, E.J.W. reports, 12, 13 Nov. 1931, E. L. Patterson to S. L. Stiles and D. C. Thornhill to S. L. Stiles, 9 Nov. 1931, C. E. Duhain reports, 14 Nov. 1931, E.J.W. reports, 17 Nov. 1931, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 7; E.J.W. reports, 6 Nov. 1931 in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 9.
84 E. L. Patterson to S. L. Stiles, 25 Oct. 1931, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 6; H. S. Mosher to H. R. McMullin, 10 Nov. 1931, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 7.
85 Fitz, “Ran as Gailmont”; Supt. C. E. Duhain reports, 1 Dec. 1932, 1, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 8.
86 “Stewards to Rule on Miami ‘Ringer’,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 25 Feb. 1932, clipping in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 1; McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses, Chapter VIII,” New York Daily News, 29 Nov. 1932, 48.
87 McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses, Chapter I,” 43.
88 Notes from Miami, 27, 28 Feb. 1932, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 1; “Gailmont Branded as ‘Ringer’ on Hialeah Park Racing Card,” Miami Daily News, 24 Feb. 1932, 10; “Hialeah Ringer Case to Be Decided Today,” Miami Herald, 25 Feb. 1932, 11; “State Race Board Upholds Stewards,” Miami Daily News, 28 Feb. 1932, 7B. It was reported that the track photographer would “mug” all five horses to assist with future identification if they were entered unlawfully. “Topical Tropics,” Miami Herald, 2 March 1932, 10.
89 “Barrie Arrested in Gailmont Case,” Miami Herald, 1 March 1932, 4; E.J.W. reports, 2 March 1932, 2, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 8: Racehorse Ringers-Reports, 1932; Ngai, “The Strange Career of the Illegal Alien,” 77. Barrie's phone records showed that he had been in regular contact with Duffy. Raymond had been convicted of second-degree forgery in New York in January 1932, but was released from Tombs Prison on appeal on 9 March (although this was set aside in July), so the timing of Barrie's departure from Miami seems significant. See “Raymond Is Guilty of Forgery,” New York Times, 15 Jan. 1932, 7; “Raymond, Gambler, Gets 5-Year Term,” New York Times, 27 Jan. 1932, 15, “Gambler Gets Bail in Forgery Appeal,” New York Times, 9 March 1932, 10.
90 McGarry, “‘Ringing’ Racehorses, Chapter I,” 42.
91 Paul Gallico, “Little Ringer, What Next?”, New York Daily News, 17 Aug. 1934, 50.
92 “Operations of Barrie,” n.d., 2, C. E. Duhain to A. E. Ribey, 19 Oct. 1932, A. E. Ribey to C. E. Duhain, 24 Oct. 1932, “Track Undesirables,” W. F. W. reports, 4 Nov. 1932, Supt. C. E. Duhain reports, 1 Dec. 1932, 3, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 8.
93 “The Master Horse Ringer!”, New York Daily News, 20 Nov. 1932, 52C.
94 John McEvoy, Great Horse Racing Mysteries: True Tales from the Track (Lexington, KY: Blood-Horse Publications, 2003; first published 2000), 134; Bert Sugar with Cornell Richardson, Horse Sense: An Inside Look at the Sport of Kings (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2003), 137–38; Josh Nathan-Kazis, “History's Greatest Horse Racing Cheat and His Incredible Painting Trick,” Narratively Hidden Histories, at https://narratively.com/historys-greatest-horse-racing-cheat-and-his-incredible-painting-trick, accessed 5 June 2020.
95 Quoted in McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses, Chapter I,” 42.
96 Gallico, “Peter Barrie Is Perfect Villain of Horse Track.”
97 Memo from W.F.W., 23 Nov. 1932, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 8.
98 See H. S. Mosher reports, 4 Feb. 1933; E. S. McNerry to C.E.D., 15 July 1933; E. McN reports, 29 July 1933; T.J.F. reports, 22 Dec. 1933, 3–7, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 9.
99 W. F. Wagner to all offices, 5 Jan. 1934, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 9.
100 “The Pinkertons Smash the Race-Track Ringers,” True Detective, Dec. 1941, 91, article in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 7; McGarry, “Ringing Racehorses, Chapter XI.”
101 Cook, Fred J., The Pinkertons (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1974), 167–71Google Scholar.
102 “Veterinarian for Jockey Club Certain No Ringers Have Been Run at Saratoga This Season,” The Saratogian, 17 Aug. 1934, clipping in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 6.
103 “Barrie, Alleged Swindler, Given Hearing in Court,” The Saratogian, 17 Aug. 1934, clipping in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 6; “Peter Barrie of ‘Ringer’ Fame Arrested at Saratoga,” Miami Daily News, 15 Aug. 1934, 9; “Barrie Charged with Attempted Theft of Horse,” New York Daily News, 16 Aug. 1934, 54.
104 Kanstroom, Aftermath, 31; “U.S. Studies Deportation of Gangsters as Weapon,” Washington Post, 12 Dec. 1930, 1; Edward T. Folliard, “400,000 Aliens in U.S. Illegally, Doak Says,” Washington Post, 6 Jan. 1931, 1; “More Lenient Deportation Laws Favored,” Washington Post, 4 April 1932, 2; “Immigration Law No Check to Gangsters,” Washington Post, 21 July 1934, 2; Villa Poe Wilson, “Club Women Will Lend Their Aid to Charity, Economic and Reform Campaigns,” Washington Post, 4 Nov. 1934, J4.
105 “Alien Criminals,” Washington Post, 13 Dec. 1930, 6.
106 A. E. Ribey to C. E. Duhain, 24 Oct. 1932, 1–2, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 8.
107 Gallico, “Peter Barrie Is Perfect Villain of Horse Track.”
108 John L. Coontz, “Get Out! Uncle Sam to Criminal Aliens,” Washington Post, 30 April 1933, SM1.
109 H.S.M. reports, 26 Oct. 1934, E.F.G. to D.C.T. and H.S.M., 3 Nov. 1934, in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 152, Folder 9.
110 “Barrie On Way Out,” Daily Racing Forms, 25 Oct. 1934; and Robert T. Paul, “One Ringer Less,” New York Daily News, 21 Aug. 1934, clippings in PNDA Criminal Case Files, Box 151, Folder 6.
111 Morselli and Royer, “Criminal Mobility and Criminal Achievement,” 4–6, 13; Beauregard and Busina, “Journey ‘During’ Crime,” 2052.
112 Gallico, “Little Ringer, What Next?”.
113 Hotaling, They're Off!, 241.
114 Ashforth, Ringers and Rascals, 85–104.