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.
Kimberly 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.
Men of No Reputation is part of the Ozarks Studies series, edited by Brooke Blevins. The series acknowledges the awakening of a scholarly Ozarks studies movement—one that crosses disciplinary boundaries as it approaches regional study from a variety of vantage points—and positions the University of Arkansas Press as the publisher at the forefront of the movement. As the only university press headquartered within the Ozarks region and as a press with a solid background in the publication of books on the region—Rafferty’s The Ozarks, Land and Life, Morrow’s Shepherd of the Hills Country, Harper’s White Man’s Heaven, Sizemore’s Ozark Vernacular Houses, and many more—the University of Arkansas Press is ideally suited for the first series that will level a scholarly eye on the Ozarks and Ozarkers.