Wagering against the Buckfoot Gang wasn’t wise

Helen Myers, formerly well known in Webb City, told her granddaughter, Leslie Myers, about an illegal foot race that she’d witnessed.

At the time of the controversial incident, Helen would have only been about 3 years old, so it is assumed that this story was explained to her as she got older. But she did remember some details.

Foot racing was a popular sport beginning back in the early 1800s and continuing on into the 1900s. Webb City was not left out in this sport.

A saloon owner in Webb City, Robert “Buckfoot” Boatright had quite a reputation with a group of foot racers known as the Buckfoot Gang. It was actually a pretty slick operation in which money was scammed from gamblers, who were unsuspecting of the gang’s shenanigans.

It was assumed that the Buckfoot racers had managed to collect over $3 million from their foot races that were arranged by the Webb City Athletic Club. The races were held in out-of-the-way places to hide from the law.

Boatright and his Buckfoot gang were quite smooth in their scams, making it hard to prove their ill ways. They paid the winning man with a sack full of cash, only to be discovered later that the sack contained paper bundles instead of cash. Fast runners, promoted as sure-wins, would accidently trip close to the end of the race. Those who had bet heavily on the sure-win lost a lot of money.

The most lucrative scam involved obtaining bets on highly contested races. The bets were collected and put into a safe in Boatright’s saloon. When the race was over and the money retrieved from the safe, it wouldn’t be there.

Law enforcement officials determined that the safe had a false back, allowing the money to be removed as soon as it was put into the safe.

The Joplin-News Herald described one scam in which two members of the gang went to a large city and convinced a wealthy man to judge a race and hold the money in security for the winner. Boatright’s men claimed he had failed to pay them when they’d won, and they were just trying to be sure that the money would be secure.

When they arrived in Webb City and Griffith, the rich man, offered to hold security on the money by depositing it in his bank account, he was asked to match the money to guarantee the money would be there.

After the race, when Griffith went to the bank to get the money, bank officials said they had been informed by the race “winners” that Griffith had lost his bet. The winners had been given all of the money, including Griffith’s security portion of the deposit.

It seems that they were able to take the money from the bank by using a well-known Webb City banker’s name.

Buckfoot Gang author to speak here

If you want to more about these unscrupulous characters, Kimberly Harper, an editor for the Missouri Historical Review, will discuss her new book, “Men of No Reputation: Robert Boatright, the Buckfoot Gang and the Fleecing of Middle America” at 2 pm, Saturday, Oct. 12, at the Webb City Public Library.

One of the chapters is titled “Webb City Is No Place for Sissies”!

The event is sponsored by the Webb City Historical Society.