'Men of No Reputation' author to speak here Saturday, Oct. 12

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

An historical book with an infamous connection to Webb City and Carterville will be the topic of an upcoming special event at Webb City Public Library.

Kimberly Harper, an editor for the Missouri Historical Review, will discuss her new, “Men of No Reputation: Robert Boatright, the Buckfoot Gang and the Fleecing of Middle America” at 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12 at the library.

Her presentation is sponsored by three local organizations, the Webb City Historical Society, Webb City Area Genealogical Society and Webb City Public Library.

Copies of her book will be available to purchase and for her to sign.

The historical society has purchased 10 of the books for students at Webb City High School.

According to the book’s description,

“Men of No Reputation” is the first account to explore the life of Robert Boatright, one of Middle America’s most gifted, but forgotten, confidence men. Boatright’s story provides a rare window into the secret world of Missouri’s criminal past, which influenced the methods of confidence men across the country.

Boatright took the preexisting big-store confidence scheme and perfected it. With the assistance of a talented coterie of confederates known as the Buckfoot Gang, this “dean of modern confidence men” fleeced the gentry of the Midwest on fixed athletic contests in the turn-of-the-century Ozarks. Working in concert with a local bank and an influential Democratic boss, Boatright seemed untouchable. A series of missteps, however, led to a string of court cases across the country that brought his criminal enterprise to an end. And yet, the con continued. Boatright’s successor, John C. Mabray, and his cronies, many of whom had been in the Buckfoot Gang, preyed upon victims across North America in one of the largest Midwestern criminal syndicates in history before they were brought to heel. Like the works of Sinclair Lewis, Boatright’s story exposes a rift in the wholesome Midwestern stereotype and furthers our understanding of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American society.

You can listen to Kyle Kellams, of KUAF public radio, Fayetteville, Ark., interview Harper when the book came out in February.

Harper earned a master’s degree in history from the University of Arkansas. She received the Missouri Humanities Council’s Distinguished Achievement in Literature (Non-Fiction) Award for her book “White Man’s Heaven: The Lynching and Expulsion of Blacks in the Southern Ozarks, 1894-1909.”