In the 19th century, Americans’ fascination with the occult made fortune tellers and mediums common entertainment at fairs, lecture halls and private parties. Newspapers across the country carried stories of remarkable psychic predictions and spirit manifestations. Journalists also regularly exposed practitioners as frauds, but this did little to temper the faith of true believers.
In the 1880s, Humboldt County was more than 24 hours by steamer from any metropolitan port. Residents seeking advice from clairvoyants or contact with the dead could send $2 to mystics like the so-called Professor Cohen through the mail and get “valuable help and wonderful advice” mailed back in return. When supposed spiritualists and healers rolled into the county in person to capitalize on curiosity, grief, illness and desperation, residents turned out and paid up. Medium Elsie Reynolds and later the Great Fer-Don, a sham practitioner of “bloodless surgery,” cashed in, offering spectacle and false hope.
Elsie Reynolds
Elsie Reynolds arrived in Humboldt in September of 1884. After giving a quick demonstration in the Eureka, she spent a week in Ferndale plying her trade. Most mediums at the time claimed to communicate with the dead through raps, knocks or other sounds. In Reynolds’ seances, spirits were said to enter the room. Believers in the afterlife were convinced she was genuine. Skeptics had their doubts. When Reynolds returned to Humboldt in 1885, with a national reputation and multiple fraud allegations, many residents were still eager to see her.
Reynolds was born around 1835 and moved with her family to Oregon in the early 1850s. After her marriage ended, she became a “celebrated spiritualist.” By 1878, she was conducting public séances in Sacramento, inviting doubters to watch spirits fly through the air. A year later, she had a parlor in San Francisco and offered readings, lectures and demonstrations throughout the country. Fraud accusations followed her. During a San Francisco séance in 1880, an attendee reached for a “materialized” spirit and caught a bundle of rags. In 1883, George Parsons, former editor of the Sacramento Daily Union, denounced Reynolds after learning that what he’d initially believed was the spirit of his deceased daughter was instead a paid actress. In Brooklyn, investigators discovered masks and other stage props with her séance equipment. Reynolds maintained her innocence. She insisted that any deception that happened was caused by evil spirits who possessed her while she was unconscious.
She returned to Humboldt on the heels of a national story, often told mockingly, about her staging a “ghost wedding” on behalf of a wealthy widow. The ceremony was to wed the spirit of the woman’s dead daughter — now grown in the afterlife — to a ghost prince in a room full of mortal and immortal guests.
When Reynolds joined Ferndale’s annual spiritualists camp in the summer of 1885, many called her a fraud and participants pushed to have her ejected. Instead, she held readings and seances in a temporary “shanty” until the final day of the 10-day meeting, when an impromptu committee decided that something should be done to punish the impostor. At their urging, J. T. Robarts swore out a complaint accusing Reynolds of obtaining money under false pretenses. Witnesses would swear they’d seen her change clothes before emerging from a cabinet as a spirit. Others swore they had proof of fraud.
But Reynolds also had defenders, many likely clinging to the belief that encounters with their departed loved ones, at least, had been real. Rather than pit the two factions against one another and risk what the editor of The Ferndale Enterprise predicted would be “the hard feelings which it was bound to engender between hitherto good friends,” and give her additional publicity through a public trial, Robarts was persuaded to drop the charges.
Farmer E. A. Hamner then stepped forward. Hamner was a long-time Humboldt County resident and a firm believer in spiritualism but declared Reynolds a fake. He accused her (and initially her husband, though those charges were dropped) with obtaining money under false pretenses. At the preliminary hearing, Hamner testified that he had paid 50 cents to see Reynolds materialize spirits. Instead, he watched her dim the lights, slip behind a curtain, change her clothes and emerge as “manifestations.” The defense argued that Hamner had never witnessed a true materialization and was unqualified to distinguish a fake spirit from the real thing. Hamner was also forced to concede that he had not heard Reynolds say during the séance that a spirit had descended to earth and taken possession of her body.
In newspaper coverage of the case, Hamner was quoted as saying that his faith in the afterlife had been shaken and that, even if spirits could materialize, “he did not think they would look like Mrs. Reynolds.” Reynolds’ defenders insisted Hamner could not have seen into the cabinet. Others suggested he was motivated by resentment after the restaurant he opened at the spiritualist camp failed to attract customers. The prosecution pressed ahead. After a spirited courtroom exchange that included the defense attorney calling the proceedings “a farce” that the district attorney would recognize if he had “the intelligence of an ordinary 14-year-old schoolboy,” the trial was scheduled for September. Meanwhile, the controversy continued. The Ferndale Enterprise reported losing subscribers after suggesting Reynolds was a fraud — and gaining even more for calling her out.
In September, Reynolds returned to Humboldt for trial only to have the charges dismissed at the prosecution’s request. The Times-Telephone praised the decision, insisting taxpayers should not pay to differentiate between genuine and fraudulent mediums. The Ferndale Enterprise editor, on the other hand, believed it had become “a notorious fact among the profession of tricksters and shams that Humboldt County is the place for a harvest.” He had hoped the expense of a prosecution would be a “costly lesson” for Reynolds and discourage other “impostors” from practicing “humbuggery” in Humboldt. The dropped charges had avoided the possibility of convicting Reynolds and devastating community members who believed she had helped them communicate with dead loved ones.
Following the dismissal, Judge Kimball hosted a farewell reception for Reynolds at his private residence. The Western Watchman reported that 50 or 60 community members “in material bodies” attended, accompanied by an unknown number of invisible (spiritual) guests. Over the years, newspapers continued to report stories accusing Reynolds of fraud. None of them ended her career.
The Great Fer Don
On July 30, 1908, the Weekly Humboldt Times reported that 4,000 people had recently crowded into a vacant lot at Fourth and I streets to see “traveler, lecturer and philanthropist” the Great Fer-Don. Eurekans were treated to musicians, comedians and acrobats before Fer-Don took the stage. He then told the crowd that he had gathered a team of the world’s finest medical experts who could make the deaf hear, the lame walk and the chronically ill well again. Most compelling, he said his doctors could remove tumors and treat disease without surgery. Despite the improbability of “bloodless” cures, at least some desperate Humboldt County residents believed him.
After growing up in Illinois, James M. Ferdon went to work for the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Co.’s traveling “Indian Combination.” They attracted audiences with free entertainment: war dances, lectures and performances by men billed as scouts and Indian fighters. Between acts, promoters sold patent medicines like Kickapoo Indian Sagwa, billed as a Native remedy for everything from malaria to stomach trouble. Local newspapers reinforced the pitch with half-page advertisements and testimonials, including one signed by W. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), declaring Kickapoo Indian Remedies “indispensable.”
Ferdon paid attention and soon struck out on his own, traveling from town to town as “Electric Bill.” As Bill, he drew crowds with jokes and stunts before selling inexpensive electric belts marketed to cure constipation, back pain and more. Newspapers criticized his methods, but Ferdon was, as one story stated, “a slick looking chap with brown hair and soulful eyes, and he possessed a smile that was child-like and bland.” He usually left each town with cash.
The work was profitable but depended on Ferdon himself to generate revenue. By 1898, he joined H.L. Berry to launch the Quaker Medicine Co. This allowed him to combine his crowd-building techniques with product sales that could generate revenue long after he left town. Ferdon claimed to be a Quaker (they had a reputation for being trustworthy) and traveled across the U.S. and as far as Hawaii. In between free entertainment, Ferdon pitched remedies guaranteed to cure paralysis, blindness and other ailments.
After Berry became mired in a libel suit in 1903, Ferdon toured with “Loo Wah, the Chinese Wonder-Worker,” while selling remedies that cured deafness in minutes (clearly a common concern) and allowed those hobbled by stiff joints to throw away their canes. After Loo Wah, Ferdon returned to the Quaker bit as Brother Paul. He was repeatedly charged with disturbing the peace with his disruptive street corner spieling, as well as practicing (and selling) medicine without a license. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he became adept at legal defense. In Chicago, state health officials finally imposed $1,700 in fines. Ferdon negotiated a $500 settlement and, by then married, left the east.
The now “Great Fer-Don” traveled the western states, offering patent medication at a dollar a bottle (or six for $5) that purportedly cured everything from kidney disease to rheumatism. His pain relievers went for 50 cents (or six bottles for $2.50). He also assembled a team of supposedly licensed physicians who promised to remove tumors, gallstones and cancers without surgery. At a time when infections like sepsis and gangrene made even successful operations dangerous, promises of “knifeless” procedures were irresistible.
Ferdon may have been a quack, but he was a masterful marketer. By the time he’d reached Eureka in 1908, he had perfected his approach. He placed ads in local newspaper formatted like news stories. The first usually ran a few weeks prior to his arrival and profiled him as an “odd character” — a world traveler, lecturer, humanitarian and friend of the poor. A second announced Ferdon’s impending arrival, promising “a barrel of fun.” Ferdon’s entrance, according to more paid ads anyway, was grand, including a band, parade and public celebration designed to attract attention and build a crowd. Later “articles” described him as selfless and prolific philanthropist who treated children to free entertainment. He sometimes published “interviews” praising a town and predicting future prosperity. Fer-Don’s stories were clearly embellished but his performances were popular. After young Jimmy Larkin was arrested for petty larceny, Eureka’s police court judge chastised his mother for leaving her home and son “sadly neglected” while she went off to enjoy the medicine man’s free shows.
Ferdon rented space at 311 F St. in Eureka. Between musical acts, jugglers, and comedians, he gave away medicines, tossed coins into the audience and invited anyone suffering from toothaches, backaches, cancer and other illnesses to visit his office for a free consultation. Many of Eureka’s laboring men and women with little access to affordable medical care took advantage of the offer. During consultations, people were often “diagnosed” with ailments that supposedly required special treatments or proprietary medicines. Ferdon and his experts also recommended “bloodless surgery” for gallstones, tumors and cancer. In special cases, Ferdon agreed to waive the fee, up to $75, if a patient underwent the procedure in front of an audience. That summer, however, a Stockton woman reported that after agreeing to a “knifeless” operation on stage, Ferdon cut her tumor off with scissors. Ferdon denied the allegation.
While in Humboldt, Ferdon published testimonials from supposedly satisfied Eurekans: Fer-Don had restored hearing to Mr. Hitchings right ear; he resolved, Mr. F. Adorni’s obscure and undisclosed “complaint that all local physicians pronounced incurable”; and he apparently saved a visiting Miss Austa Metsala’s life using a “bloodless” treatment for gallstones. Whether Metsala was who she claimed to be, or ever had gallstones, was impossible to confirm.
Ferdon also claimed to have bloodlessly removed a tumor from Dr. Edward Goyer, described as a prominent physician with a successful Eureka practice. In reality, Goyer had abandoned his medical practice years prior due to “nervousness” and would face a murder charge in 1913 following a botched abortion (“Humboldt’s Grisly History of Illegal Abortions,” Jan. 19, 2023). Nevertheless, Ferdon reprinted Goyer’s endorsement in newspapers across California. At least two more of Ferdon’s Humboldt County endorsers lost their property to foreclosure within two years of their testimonials.
Within weeks of Ferdon’s arrival, appalled local businessmen fed up with the man’s shady tactics petitioned the Eureka council to raise the city’s $5 license fees for traveling vendors, hoping to drive the man out of town. The council immediately passed a new ordinance, though it would not come into effect for 30 days. It stated:
“Every traveling merchant, hawker, peddler, or vendor, street fakir or advertiser, who sells or advertises goods, wares, or merchandise of any kind, patent or other medicines of any kind, or any profession or professional calling, by music, singing, dancing, jugglery, tricks, sleight of hand, buffoonery, gymnastics, or by spectacular plays, shows or performances, or by speeches, declamation or oratory, or by any performance intended to draw a crowd to the person so selling or advertising aforesaid, shall pay a license tax of $50 per day.”
After the ordinance passed, Ferdon published a newspaper “interview,” declaring it targeted and unconstitutional. He accused jealous local physicians of spearheading the move and offered $10,000 to anyone who could duplicate his experts’ “bloodless surgery” and cure cancer, appendicitis or other diseases without an operation, which was, of course, impossible.
On Aug. 22, while the Daily Standard continued to run the Great Fer-Don’s advertisements, the Eureka Californian denounced him as a fraud, accusing the man of writing his patients’ testimonials. It also published a sworn statement from a Russ slaughterhouse butcher who claimed he had supplied Ferdon with the same tapeworm the showman later displayed on stage as a parasite his medicine had helped a local woman expel. The butcher said it came from a sheep.
Ferdon weathered the allegations and remained another week, boarding a steamer south just as the $50-a-day license fee took effect. Despite collecting hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars from people in the county that October, a Humboldt resident attending one of Ferdon’s Oakland shows heard the showman describe Eureka as “one of the most unprogressive and uncivilized communities in the state.” Ferdon advised his audience to stay away.
Lynette Mullen (she/her) is a Eureka-based historian writing a book about Eureka’s early red-light district and the women who lived there.
This article appears in Humbuggery in Humboldt, Part 2.