In October 1884, during the halcyon days of America’s Gilded Age, a wealthy young Englishman named Evelyn Booth ventured to the States to sample all that the burgeoning country had to offer.
As the young sportsman traveled from New York to Chicago to Arkansas and finally to New Orleans, he tumbled into his greatest adventure — a shooting match with Buffalo Bill Cody before a crowd of 3,000 spectators.
Although he failed to bag a shooting trophy, the chance encounter with the king of American showmen gave Booth an opportunity to partner in one of the most profitable and renowned Western enterprises ever.
Born in 1860 to well-to-do English parents in, Dublin, Ireland, Evelyn Thomas Barton Booth attended Trinity College in Cambridge, England. Two years after his graduation, he and two companions set sail for America on the steamship R.M.S Oregon, which docked in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, on November 2, 1884.
Once in the United States, Booth caroused in infamous brothels, frequented gambling houses and obtained front row seats at a John L. Sullivan heavyweight boxing title fight.
Much like Booth his traveling companions, Reginald Beaumont Heygate and Dr. John Percival Frizzle, were also members of the English upper class. At a time when their less adventurous friends were embarking on safe but clichéd grand tours of the European capitals, this group of young friends took a “buddy trip” from England to America.
Reginald Beaumont Heygate would go on to live a rather uneventful life. Born in 1857 in London, England to Constance M. and William Unwin Heygate, a Magistrate for the county of Hertfordshire, England, Reginald graduated from Cambridge University with a B.A. in 1880 and an M.A. in 1883. He eventually found work as an Assistant Private Secretary to Sir William Harcourt in 1886 but died unmarried in 1903.
Dr. John Percival Frizzle, on the other hand, was born in Belfast, Ireland in 1862. Frizzle, after returning to the U.K. in 1885, would eventually emigrate to the United States in 1889. He married Sarah Sadie W. Rhodes in 1894.
After the marriage ended, Frizzle remarried in 1905 to Lena Frances Parker. The couple had twin girls Lena Parker Frizzle and Frances Percival Frizzle. The family lived in Northern California, in Siskiyou County. Frizzle spent time in British Columbia’s Klondike and Yukon Territory.
Later in life, Dr. Frizzle would gain some notoriety for organizing an attempt to track a mastodon he believed to be living in the Alaskan wilderness.
These three scoundrels, after disembarking in New York, would later be joined in their travels by the most famous horse jockey of the day, Frederick James Archer. Archer was one of the most renowned Englishmen of the day.
Born in 1857 Archer became a champion horse jockey by the age of fifteen and quickly rose to prominence becoming England’s most celebrated horseman during the late Nineteenth Century. During his short but storied career, Archer won the Epsom Derby five times and won twenty-one other classic races.
A close friend of Evelyn Booth’s, Archer arrived in America in December 1884.
He quickly joined Booth and his companions while they caroused throughout the country.
In late 1884, however, these four men while in America not only enjoyed brothels and sporting events all over the country, but they also partook in one of the most popular and notorious games of chance of the Gilded Era: Faro.
Originally invented in Southwestern France, the game was extremely popular. It was often pronounced as pharaoh or pharaon.
The game was banned in France in 1691 but continued to be quite popular in England. The game’s popularity stemmed from the ease at which one learned to play, the game’s quick pace, and that the odds for a participant were the best of all gambling games.
This pastime spread to the United States in the 19th century becoming the most widespread and popularly favored gambling card game.
Faro was played in almost every gambling hall in the Old West from 1825 to 1915. It eventually was considered to be the most popular form of gambling, surpassing all other forms combined in terms of money wagered each year.
After enjoying their fill of faro, in late November 1884, Booth and his companions joined a hunting expedition in Arkansas. While in Arkansas, the lure of big game hunting, however, drew Buffalo Bill’s and Evelyn Booth’s worlds together. Booth and his companions remained near Brinkley, Arkansas, until December 8.
William “Buffalo Bill” Cody was also in the area, having just completed an exhibition in Memphis, Tenn. He and his performers were heading south to New Orleans for a scheduled show set to open on December 23.
On his way south in early December, Bill stopped in Arkansas and apparently joined the hunting expedition counting Booth as a member. Cody’s fortunes on the hunt went rather poorly.
“Bill has announced his intention of killing every bird he fires at, but we are not surprised to hear that out of seven shots he failed to hit anything and departed cursing awfully,” Booth remarked.
On the other hand, Booth proved his prowess with a pistol, recording a large number of kills. Word of Booth’s expert marksmanship caught Cody’s ear and, after Bill finished attending scheduled exhibitions in Arkansas and Mississippi, the two set a date to meet in New Orleans.
There is some question as to when Booth and Buffalo Bill Cody first became acquainted, but they definitely knew each other, met in New Orleans, and eventually had business dealings.
On December 6, after performing in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Bill’s Wild West troupe boarded a boat and began winding their way down the Mississippi River toward New Orleans.
Buffalo Bill, meanwhile, separated from his Wild West performers and hustled by rail to the Crescent City in order to view the Exposition Grounds and make accommodations for his employees before they arrived.
With his departure, Buffalo Bill needed to hire someone to take charge of securing transportation for the Wild West troupe’s trip to the Crescent City. Leaning on old alliances and friendships, Cody turned to his long time counterpart Bob Haslam. This decision ended up being a total disaster.
Throughout Cody’s life, he was generous to a fault with friends, employees, and acquaintances. Cody never forgot his childhood friends or the people he worked with while following the road to international fame and super stardom.
Annie Oakley, who worked for him, once said of Cody’s blind generosity, “He was totally unable to resist any claim for assistance that came to him or refuse any mortal in distress.” This was exactly the case for Cody’s hiring of Haslam.
“Pony” Bob Haslam, as he was known to most, was a friend of Buffalo Bill’s from their days working for the Pony Express. Bob was hired by the Pony Express as a teenager, helped build the stations, and was assigned the Nevada run from Friday's Station (State Line) to Buckland Station, 75 miles to the east.
Haslam is credited with having made the longest round-trip journey of any Pony Express rider. The story of his journey goes, that at Buckland's Station Haslam’s relief rider was so badly frightened over the Indian threat that he refused to take the mail.
From there, Haslam took the relief rider’s mail all the way to Smith's Creek amassing a total distance of 190 miles without a rest. Then, after reaching Smith’s Creek and resting nine hours, Bob retraced his route with the westbound mail.
At Cold Springs he found Indians had raided the place, killing the station keeper and had run off all of the stock. Finally, he reached Buckland's Station, completing a 380-mile-round-trip, the longest on record.
His ride, while wounded, was an important contribution to the fastest trip ever made by the Pony Express. The story also has it that one of the messages Pony Bob transported was Abraham Lincoln's 1860 Inaugural Address.
Unfortunately for Buffalo Bill and his Wild West, Cody discovered Pony Bob was nowhere near as good at plotting a course down the Mississippi River as he was at carrying the mail.
In desperate need of a job, Haslam begged Buffalo Bill for work.
Pony Bob Gets A Job
In an act of kindness toward his old partner, Cody hired Haslam as the advance agent for the Wild West show. In the position of advance agent, Haslam selected the performance grounds for the enterprise and arranged transportation for the troupe.
When charting a course down the Mississippi River, Pony Bob hired a river boat with navigator in Cincinnati, Ohio, to carry the show’s performers and equipment. The navigator proved to be as incompetent in his position as Pony Bob.
Upon arriving in New Orleans on December 8, 1884, Cody received a telegram containing news of complete disaster.
The Outfit Sinks
On the preceding day, while steaming south toward the Crescent City, the boat carrying Bill’s Wild West troupe, performing animals, and paraphernalia collided with another vessel sinking the ship and almost drowning everyone on board.
Apparently, after the collision the boat captain ran the ship ashore. Shortly afterward, he proceeded to patch the damage to the boat and then set sail down the river once more. After traveling a short distance, the ship sank under thirty feet of water.
When the vessel submerged in the river, the famous Deadwood Stagecoach was nearly lost and world champion trap shooter and popular Wild West show performer Captain Adam Henry Borgardus narrowly escaped with his life.
In recalling the calamity, Buffalo Bill, who estimated the monetary loss to be around $20,000, recorded, “We lost all our personal effects, including wagons, camp equipage, arms, ammunition, donkeys, buffaloes, and one elk.”
After learning of the accident, Buffalo Bill frantically telegraphed Nate Salsbury, the manager of the Wild West show.
Salsbury, who was also an accomplished singer and actor, was preparing to go on stage and sing at Denver’s Tabor Opera House when he received Cody’s terse telegram: OUTFIT AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER. WHAT DO YOU ADVISE?
Initially shaken by the news, Salsbury rushed to the speaking tube and shouted to the orchestra leader, “Play that symphony again and a little harder, while I think for a minute.”
After a moment of contemplation, Salsbury told the messenger to telegraph Cody: GO TO NEW ORLEANS, REORGANIZE AND OPEN ON YOUR REGULAR DATE. [I] HAVE WIRED YOU FUNDS.”
With the money sent to him by Salsbury, Buffalo Bill regained the majority of what he lost and opened his show in New Orleans on time.
Remarking on Haslam’s job performance as advance agent Nate Salsbury said, “Pony Bob had as little judgment in such matters as any man I have ever met in my whole life.”
He added that while Pony Bob “was perfectly devoted to the service he undertook, he had not the slightest fitness for the work. He blundered along in a haphazard kind of way until he reached New Orleans, but he was sharp enough to send back the rosiest kind of reports on the condition of the country through which the route was laid.”
Booth Meets Cody
On March 13, 1885, Booth and his companions arrived in the Crescent City. It is believed that Cody and Booth received a more formal introduction through a mutual acquaintance by the name of Frank B. “Yank” Adams.
Adams was a professional carom billiards player who specialized in finger billiards and was considered the "champion digital billiardist of the World.”
The connection between Buffalo Bill Cody and Yank Adams is one that is not entirely clear. However, both Yank and Bill were mutual friends with a man named Dr. Frank Powell which is more than likely the source of their relationship.
In the early days of Powell’s medical practice, he was assigned to the post at Fort McPherson, Nebraska, next to the town of North Platte. Buffalo Bill was living in North Platte at the time so their paths eventually crossed.
Part of Powell’s duties as fort surgeon involved accompanying patrols in Indian country, a task that earned him the nickname, “Surgeon Scout.”
Powell probably met Buffalo Bill on patrol or at a Masonic Lodge meeting while in North Platte.
After becoming friends with Cody, Powell eventually joined Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack Omohundro on a buffalo hunt, and from that point on Powell and Buffalo Bill, were great friends. Cody often remarked that he and Powell were, “blood brothers.”
Whether they met through Doc Powell or through their work in the entertainment industry, Yank and Bill Cody clearly knew one another.
Shooting Matches
Evelyn Booth when he gained a formal introduction to Buffalo Bill wrote in his journal, “We four: Cody, Yank, Doc, and I went up to his camp to have some shooting and spent a very enjoyable day. Neither of us tried very hard in the shooting and a match was arranged for the following Saturday.”
After this initial shooting competition, the first of two official matches took place between Buffalo Bill and Evelyn Booth on March 28, 1885.
“It was terribly windy which prevented accurate shooting,” Booth said of the first match. “I won [by] three birds killing 40 to 37. Bill immediately challenged me again to shoot on the following Wednesday, the day appointed for his benefit, and another match was arranged.”
A separate source states that Booth shot 40 clay pigeons to Bill’s 39 in that first match. The second contest took place on April 1, 1885, before 3,000 spectators at New Orleans’ Exposition Grounds.
Buffalo Bill narrowly won the rematch, causing Booth to fume, “The return match was shot off with the following result, Bill 47 Self 46, though three were counted to him which he never touched.”
Riotous Living
Although the outcome of the match was contentious, the two men became fast friends. They spent several evenings with the Wild West cowboys getting drunk, smashing glasses, and tussling with local police.
The riotous living, however, could not disguise Cody’s obvious financial troubles.
The Wild West’s woes prompted Booth to remark, “I fear the Honorable Cody is having a bad time of it as there are hardly any spectators and his expenses must be very heavy.”
Cody himself said of the fiscal volatility, “The New Orleans exposition did not prove the success that many of its promoters anticipated and the expectations of Mr. Salsbury and myself were alike disappointed, for at the end of the winter we counted our losses at about $60,000.”
Cody Heads To London
Needing a new business angle, Cody told Booth he wanted to take the Wild West overseas to London.
Booth noted, “He is very anxious to take the whole show over to England next spring and I have had several talks with him about it and am going to make inquiry on the other side.”
Although the London exhibition did not take place until two years later, in 1887, the seed of success in Europe had been firmly planted in Cody’s mind.
Buffalo Bill noted, “Though the idea of transplanting our exhibition, for a time, to England had frequently occurred to us, the importance of such an undertaking was enlarged by and brought us to a more favorable consideration of the project by repeated suggestions from prominent persons of America, and particularly by urgent invitations extended by distinguished Englishmen.”
Returning to America in 1886, Booth kept his promise to Buffalo Bill. On January 8, Booth, Cody, and Salsbury entered into a lucrative partnership in which Booth paid a sum of $30,000 to Cody and Salsbury.
In exchange, Booth became a one-third owner of “all live stock and other effects.” Under further terms of the contract Booth would receive “25 percent of the profits from all sources connected with the enterprise.” Cody and Salsbury shared the remaining 75 percent.
Buffalo Bill remained in complete control of “all the Cow-boys, Mexicans, Indians, and Hostlers connected with the enterprise.” Salsbury retained control of all “advertising, purchasing, the camp Department of said enterprise, and the regulation of the affairs of the Box Office.”
As a reserve fund, each of the three men deposited $5,000 in the Merchant’s Loan and Trust Company Bank of Chicago. The agreement was to run three years.
Staten Island, Then Back To England
In June the Wild West traveled north to New York’s Staten Island. There, Cody recouped most of his New Orleans losses, playing to large crowds at Erastina, the magnificent resort grounds of Erastus Wiman, former manager of a large mercantile company and president of the Great Northwestern Telegraph Co. of Canada.
In 1887, those “prominent persons of America” Cody mentioned floated the idea of holding an American Exhibition in London. This Exhibition was a world's fair held in West Brompton, London, in the same year of Queen Victoria's golden jubilee.
The Exhibition was a display of manufactured products, a diorama of New York City, and American paintings including a display of landscapes from celebrated artist Albert Bierstadt.
The American aim in participating was to display the latest agricultural, mechanical, and textile products and inventions from the United States, but the main attraction was the Wild West show, which was part of the state of Colorado's contribution.
Nate Salsbury received an inquiry from the Exhibition’s organizers in February of that year. After a series of telegrams and messages between the two parties, the organizers made it official and invited the Wild West to be part of the exhibition. With the Wild West show making its way to London, Cody and Booth’s idea finally came to fruition.
On March 31, Buffalo Bill and his entourage made the voyage to England. Booth, meanwhile, remained in the States pursuing various business ventures.
Transporting Buffalo Bill's Wild West from New York to the UK represented an enormous undertaking, bringing to London a large number of people and animals.
Performers included Annie Oakley, 97 Indians, mostly those from the Sioux tribes, including Black Elk and Chief Red Shirt, as well as African-Americans, and Mexicans.
When the Wild West finally arrived in London after their long voyage across the Atlantic, the show became an instant success. The Wild West played to large crowds receiving standing ovations all over Britain.
Performing For The Queen
Cody personally invited the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, to a private preview of a Wild West performance on May 5.
So impressed was the Prince, that he managed to arrange a command performance for Queen Victoria on May 11, 1887. The Queen enjoyed the show immensely and even recorded her high acclaim within the pages of her personal journal.
After the success of the American Exhibition, Buffalo Bill became the most recognized American in the world and the most requested guest of British royalty. The Wild West show remained a major attraction in the United Kingdom until its final performance in 1906.
After acquiring new found fame and great success abroad, Buffalo Bill apparently no longer needed financial assistance from Booth and allowed his contract, and their friendship, to lapse at the end of their three-year agreement.
Though it would experience further financial wobbles, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West would outlive Booth.
Through the 1890s the wealthy Englishman continued to live the sporting man’s life. He wagered on boxing title fights, sought travel adventures across America, and eventually owned ranchland in Wyoming.
After a brief stint in Canada’s Klondike with wife Lola, Booth ventured to Oregon, where, in August 1901, he died from burns received in a brush fire. He was 41 years old.
Booth’s contributions to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West are worth remembering. This little-known English gent provided a source of income to the enterprise at a time of fiscal uncertainty, and Booth was one of the men who helped Cody hatch the idea of an overseas tour, which transformed the Wild West into an international phenomenon.
Kellen Cutsforth can be reached at kcutsforth@denverlibrary.org
