W. Alvin Lloyd, Publisher
Time flits by, and Alvin Lloyd has been absent for several months. But like an errant rabbit out of a very tall hat, he will soon emerge on the Mississippi River aboard the swift-running steamboat, the Persia. As for the particulars of this voyage, the sights along the way, the ship has some distance to travel on the Ohio before Lloyd strides aboard.
The steamer left Pittsburgh on November 4, 1853, cruised the 485 miles downriver to Cincinnati, and arrived four days later.
On November 9, 1853, the Persia pulled out of the port of Cincinnati to begin her long trip to Louisiana. The Persia always covered those 1,548 miles in eight to ten days. This trip would take ten. Much to everyone’s relief, the Ohio was now on a rise at Pittsburgh, which meant that vessels could get out, and there was a lot of traffic, steamers like the Persia and fleets of coal boats flocking downriver, which was good news for Cincinnati and cities farther down, such as Louisville, where coal had been scarce.69
The ups and downs of the Ohio were deadly serious issues to all the towns west of Pittsburgh, a matter of life and death. The coal would come in from the Pennsylvania fields and be shipped out of Pittsburgh by coaler to all the principal ports not only along the Ohio but also up and down the Mississippi, to St. Louis, Memphis, Vicksburg, and New Orleans. When the river level sank it made river transportation impossible. And when the Ohio froze over, same thing. In short, the famous navigable Ohio River was not so navigable after all.70
This hadn’t been such a problem in the old days, when pretty much everything west of Pittsburgh was frontier. There was little civilization there then, and frontiersmen were hardy, or at least expected to be. But now, by 1853, there were millions of citified, urbanized riverine settlers who had no idea how to look after themselves except by the expenditure of a hard-earned dollar. Progress hadn’t caught up with change yet out there on the Ohio, and, with the massive influx of immigrants, the river was daily posing a greater and greater threat to the survival of millions. Something had to be done to ensure a more reliable delivery system. So along with Alvin Lloyd’s beloved steamboats, the glistening river marvels of his childhood, was the railroad. These tracks, and the smoke-belching engines that rumbled along them, thrilled Alvin, transported him, obsessed and finally ruined him.
On November 10, the Persia docked at Louisville, 139 miles down the Ohio from Cincinnati.71
The very evening the Persia arrived in Louisville, a large meeting was taking place there to contemplate the possibility of running a direct rail line to Memphis. It was the beginning of a massive and vital project that would see its fruition just as the Civil War was breaking out eight years later. The line would become a vital leitmotif running through the story of W. Alvin Lloyd. The coming of the trains into the south heralded the most difficult, thrilling, and dangerous days Alvin Lloyd was yet to see.
The steamer Persia now had 1,409 miles to go. She pressed on down the Ohio, with the state of Kentucky always, always on the left and, to the north, the state of Indiana merging into Illinois at the Wabash. She finally passed Paducah and reached Cairo, where the Ohio meets the Mississippi. There, on the Mississippi, she turned south and headed toward Memphis.72
The Persia pulled into the landing at Memphis on November 16. A small group of passengers boarded, recorded as William Alvin Lloyd and his family and another unknown person traveling with them. Had he been attending to his family, or was this a passing interlude, a tease?73
The Persia, like all other better-class riverboats, had not only outstanding accommodations available to those who could pay for them, but also food of almost unparalleled luxury. Perhaps Lloyd’s family were on a lower deck, eating plain fare and dreaming of the wondrous feasting that was going on in the first-class dining room. A typical dinner meal on such steamers included, among much else, sheep’s head, knuckle of veal, fricasseed veal, pig’s head, calves’ feet, smothered heart with port wine sauce, rich desserts, claret, and sauternes. Other wines and liquors could be had at the bar.74
On the Persia went, to Vicksburg and down into New Orleans, where the Lloyd party arrived on November 19, 1853, and checked into the City Hotel that day. On November 21, 1853, “W.R. Lloyd [sic], G.B. Nagle and lady, Ky.” checked into the St. Louis Hotel in New Orleans. (Often the newspapers confused or misprinted initials.) It would soon be known that Lloyd left the City Hotel without paying his bill and moved on to the St. Charles, where again he vanished without anteing up the requisite money. There is every reason to believe that he would do the same at the St. Louis. But the paper does not mention family. So who is the lady? Did she belong to Nagle, or to Lloyd? And Kentucky? Well, of course, William Alvin Lloyd was from Kentucky. But when he checked in to the City Hotel on the nineteenth, he announced or signed that he was from New York.75
The lady remains a mystery, as do the Persia passengers listed as “family” accompanying Alvin. Had he left Lizzie, Belle, and Charles somewhere, if they were ever with him at all? These are the moments—in newspapers—recorded arrivals and departures, when William A. Lloyd is a flicker, a passerby. These are glimpses that capture a moment, a riddle of a moment, and do not always allow for more.
Whatever else Alvin was doing in that come-alive, roaring city, on November 22, 1853, three nights after arriving in New Orleans, and a couple of hours after Captain Hutchinson took the Persia upriver at five o’clock on its return trip to Pittsburgh, Alvin went on a spree: a crime spree that was repeatedly noted in the papers: “William A. Lloyd was arrested on St. Charles Street, on the charge of obtaining money under false pretenses.”76
The Times-Picayune of November 23, 1853 says: “Recorder Vaught’s Court. William A. Lloyd was last night arrested in St. Charles Street on the charge of having obtained money under false pretenses.” The same paper, same edition, also says, but of a different crime: “False pretences. W.A. Lloyd was yesterday charged by the clerk of the steamboat Persia with having swindled the owners of that boat out of $35 in passage money by some story about some trunks. The examination will take place on the 25th inst.” The Daily Crescent reported: “False pretenses. The clerk of the steamboat Persia, Mr. Guthrie, made a deposition in this court [Recorder Winter’s Court, First District] charging him with having obtained passage on said boat from Memphis to this city for himself, family and another person by means of false pretenses. The case will be examined today.”
For other less larcenous-minded visitors, there was a time to be grateful, and days of peculiar amusements. December 22 was Thanksgiving Day in the state of Louisiana, the date having been appointed by Governor Hebert the previous month. At the Southern Museum, on Charles Street, you could slip a quarter to the man at the door and go in to see the world’s largest woman, Madame Graham, weighing in at 706 pounds with a five-and-a-half-foot waist. Or you could go to Dan “Daddy” Rice’s, and see the man of Jim Crow legend himself. For those into boxing or shooting, one could always jog along to Roper’s Sparring Rooms, next to Travis’s Pistol Gallery, over the shades on Perdido Street, or, if you feared your fate and wished to know it, you could pay a visit to Madame Alwin, the German fortune-teller just in from New York and now at 123 Julia Street, upstairs on the second floor, second door down from Camp Street.77
On January 8, 1854, with a bit of confusion about the first initial of his name, but seeing that Alvin was working his cons with astonishing regularity, the New Orleans Times-Picayune noted: “Swindling. J.A. Lloyd was, this morning, arraigned on the charge of having swindled the proprietors of the St. Charles and City Hotels, by false pretences. The arrest was made by J.L. Page. The examination will take place on the 11th inst.”
A few days later . . . “Recorder Winter’s Court. Swindling. J.A. Lloyd was yesterday examined on the charge of having, by false representation, swindled H.M.O. Key out of $9.60 at the St Charles by pretending that he wished to pay for telegraphic despatches which he never received . . . The accused was sent before the Recorder’s court.”78
The Daily Crescent, still in error over Alvin’s initials: “A respectable looking individual named F.A. Lloyd was yesterday sent before the First District Court charged with having borrowed a small sum of money from the clerk of the City Hotel by means of false representations.”79
By January 14, 1854, the papers rattled off Alvin’s crimes. The New Orleans Times-Picayune says this: “Recorder Winter’s Court. Swindling. W.A. Lloyd, whose name nearly every day graces the police books, was last night again arrested for obtaining $4 in money by false pretenses from Jesse R. Irwin of Irwin & Co, of 40 Camp Street, under the pretense that he was a clerk of Ward, Jonas & Co, and wished the money to pay a freight bill.”
And again: “False pretences. An affidavit was made against Wm A. Lloyd charging him with having come to the store of Irwin & Forno, No. 40 Camp street, and obtained four dollars, stating that he was a clerk in the store of Ward & Jonas, and wanted the money to pay a freight bill. Deponent charges that Lloyd was not at the time a clerk of Ward & Jonas, and that the money was obtained with a fraudulent intention. Accused was required to give bail for his appearance before the Criminal Court.”80
It is probable that he posted bail and when a man like Alvin for whom court appearances were often daily doings moved upriver, it was no surprise. In those years, it was ridiculously simple to steam away. From everything. That was to change.
By May 1854, Alvin and his little brother J. T. were in Cincinnati, starting a new enterprise. They had decided to go into the publishing business together. The brothers took a post office box at the central post office in downtown Cincinnati and an office in the building of the Daily Cincinnati Commercial, on the northwest corner of 3rd and Sycamore. To make it all look better, much more of a national concern, J. T. traveled to St. Louis, where he took a space in the Herald building. 81
Like their competitors the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Times, and the Gazette, the Commercial had rapid steam-power presses on-site that never stopped running. Not only did they print their own paper on a daily basis, but they also did job printing for anyone who was prepared to pay—journals, books, pamphlets, circulars, labels, checks, and cards, anything printable. In addition to all that, they rented office space in their building to entrepreneurs such as the Lloyd Brothers.82
By mid-year 1854 Alvin and J. T. had formed a publishing company, with Charles C. Rhodes. The safest name for this new corporation was James T. Lloyd & Co., so that was what it was called. This little enterprise would last until February 11, 1857, by which time J. T. Lloyd’s new wife Ella had been enlisted as a front woman, so as to avoid the Lloyd brothers’ notoriety, and Lambert A. Wilmer as the resident intellectual, a writer who would go on to write a paean to J. T. praising his honesty and fine character, was part of the organization. But by the time the company folded, it had gained a reputation as one of the principal pirates of the Philadelphia publishing world.83
On June 7, 1854, the New York Daily Tribune advertised Tallis’s Pocket Map of the City of New York, which showed the numbers at the corners of each street, together with a railroad and steamboat guide, and a business directory of the principal merchants in the city, with other valuable information for citizens and strangers. The Lloyd Brothers thought this was a good idea, and so their first venture as James T. Lloyd & Co., Publishers, was to commence work on their Great New York Business Chart for the Western States.84
In a way, this chart was a forerunner to today’s yellow pages, and the brothers proposed to the most reliable business houses in New York City that they could advertise in this mammoth chart, which would be going all over the West—everywhere, to all merchants and tradesmen. The issue date of this chart would be August 20, 1854. “The long connection of the undersigned with the press, and general acquaintance with the Western people, we flatter ourselves . . .” etc. “All letters directed to us at the St. Nicholas Hotel, or at the Post Office, will meet with prompt . . .” etc. The St. Nicholas was in St. Louis, and the Post Office in question was the one in Cincinnati. The ad was signed “Jas T. Lloyd, St Louis Herald” and “William A. Lloyd, Cincinnati Commercial.”85
It would cost advertisers twenty dollars for ten lines or less, and display ads would be charged accordingly. A bunch of agents sallied forth to sell this product on a commission-only basis, hoping that they would, in due course, actually receive their hard-earned cash. If they had only known the truth about the Lloyds they would never have embarked on such a fruitless exercise. And of course, J. T. was never associated with the St. Louis Herald. The yellow-pages-like project didn’t work out, and the chart was never published. There were no refunds forthcoming to all those disappointed New Yorkers.86
On October 30, “Wm A. Loyd was charged with taking and receiving from the US Post Office in Cincinnati a letter directed to James Sparks McCormick, and of destroying said letter.” Alvin was required to post bail of one thousand dollars to answer this charge.87
By late May 1855, J. T. was advertising his company’s new steamboat directory, which was to come out in October: Lloyd’s Steamboat Directory, and Disasters on the Western Waters. It was, at this moment, “in the course of preparation,” but it would be, J. T. assured his readers, “one of the most interesting books ever published.” He then informs us: “The author has, for six years, been gathering together all the facts and items in regard to the numerous steamboat disasters on the Western and Southern waters, and now intends publishing them in book form.” Washington & Co. of Cincinnati would issue it. By remitting only one dollar to J. T. Lloyd & Co., you would receive in the mail a copy of the above work. This ad ran for weeks—months—in many of the nation’s papers. Of course, such advertising would have cost a fortune, but J. T. presented himself very well, as did his brother Alvin, and the monies collected were never a problem, not for the Lloyds. It was only bad news for the publishers who got cheated by the brothers.88
Beginning in June 1855 the Lloyds sent out advance sheets of the publication, which contained humorous or interesting nuggets, the sort of things newspaper editors frequently like to use as filler. That was also free advertising for the upcoming and always imminent directory. Their ads were always taken out for a month’s run. At the end of the month the paper had a choice. If it was big enough, such as the Evening Star, it could drop the ads immediately once it became evident they had been swindled by the Lloyd brothers. Smaller, more provincial papers could do that too, and some did, but there were others who were more desperate for the promised revenue of such a big, long-running ad, and so they kept it running a lot longer than they should have in the hopes that some money might eventually come their way. It rarely did. Besides, for the Lloyds, there were always new papers to con, all over the place, big and small. And the Lloyd brothers sometimes paid, if they felt a particular paper needed placating.
Alvin revived the idea of the business chart, but now included the southern states as well as the western ones, and switched his targeted victims from New York to Philadelphia, a city in which he was now beginning to spend more and more time. In August 1855 this directory, as he now called it, came out, and attracted press, not so much for itself as for Alvin’s attacks on anyone he felt like attacking. This was a method of operation he would use when he came to publish his famous steamboat and railroad guide a few years later.89
Aside from this new blackmail enterprise of his, Alvin was also the chief salesman of the Steamboat Disasters book, crisscrossing the country, selling ads, visiting newspaper editors, and hyping like P. T. Barnum. Successfully. Late in 1855 he was in Charleston, South Carolina, staying at the Charleston Hotel. This from the December 17, 1855, edition of that city’s prominent newspaper, the Courier: “We had the pleasure yesterday of receiving a visit from W.A. Lloyd, Esq., one of the editors of ‘Lloyd’s great Steamboat Work,’ which is to contain . . .” etc. The Courier continued: “The first edition is to exceed one hundred and forty thousand copies, as there are said to be at this time one hundred and twenty thousand copies ordered. Mr. Lloyd is pursuing his inquiries here, and informs us that the work will be positively ready by the first of January.”
The book itself contains a history of the first application of steam as a motive power, lives of John Fitch and Robert Fulton, a history of early steamboat navigation on western waters, sixty very good maps, lists of steamboats and disasters, a history of all the railroads in the country, photos galore, sketches of cities plagiarized from Lippincott’s 1854 Gazetteer, a hundred fine engravings. It also served as a guidebook for the traveling public. It was published in Cincinnati by James T. Lloyd & Co., and in Chicago by D. B. Cooke & Co., and stereotyped by J. A. Tiernan, the superintendent of Jesper Harding & Sons, of Philadelphia, the printers of the book. The long section on the steamboat disasters is clearly J. T.’s work, and is a signal contribution to nineteenth-century, fact-based research. It was, in fact, a singular achievement. But like all such accomplishments, the brothers and, later, Alvin on his own, would find a way to compulsively sabotage everything.
Meanwhile, J. T. Lloyd made the Cincinnati Sun into a spicy independent gossip sheet, a “thumb paper,” a vicious anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party rag, solidly behind Fillmore for president in the race of 1856—that is, until July, when he deserted a sinking ship and transferred his allegiance to John C. Fremont, whose stand against slavery was bold and decisive.
However, one of this paper’s principal designs was to obtain money from businessmen by using the old trick of blackmail. Those who paid were left alone; those who did not were mercilessly attacked and often ruined in the hate columns. Here were the Lloyd brothers: fiercely devoted to each other, fiercely energetic, talented, bright, ambitious, and larcenous.90
For the most part, the Cincinnati Sun became so offensive that, toward the end of the year, J. T. was forced to leave town and moved to Philadelphia, where he took an office in the Inquirer building at 57 South Third Street and continued work on his Steamboat Directory.
Likewise, Alvin was run out of Cincinnati in 1856 for publishing a scurrilous article about M. D. Potter, the owner of the Daily Commercial. He hightailed it down to New Orleans, and from late December began to publish a cheap fifty-cent edition of what he was now calling W. Alvin Lloyd’s Steamboat and Railroad Directory and Disasters on the Southern and Western Waters. “Fifty advertisements will be taken. 10,000 copies have already been sold.” This was done from an office in the Times-Picayune building. That didn’t last long, and in January 1857 he moved over to the offices of the Crescent.91
It was Alvin’s success with the cheap edition of the Steamboat Directory that led him to consider making it a monthly publication. He settled on the title W. Alvin Lloyd’s Southern Steamboat and Railroad Guide, and the first edition came out in April 1858.
In spite of the birth of the guide and the pride apparent in such a splendid birth, Alvin exploded. In the press. In an attempted murder.
On the evening of Wednesday, February 24, 1858, “W. Alwyn Lloyd [sic]” shot J. C. Mackey in front of the City Hotel in New Orleans. Lloyd had owed money to Mr. Constance and said he’d pay; Mackey was Constance’s thug; earlier, Mackey had gone to see Lloyd to collect; Lloyd had said nasty things about Mackey’s relationship with Constance; naturally Mackey took offense, and went for his cane; Alvin’s hand went to his breast pocket, but the gun never emerged; instead, he called Mackey a “damned puppy.” (A strong insult at that time.) Then, a little later, on the twenty-fourth, came the shooting. Apparently, Alvin shot at Mackey’s head, but missed, the bullet passing through Mackey’s hat. On the twenty-sixth there was a warrant out for Alvin’s arrest, and the following day he was arraigned in Recorder Stite’s court for the attempted murder.92
And of Alvin’s brother? On May 31, 1858, J. T. was arrested in Philadelphia for swindling. It was fast becoming too hot in the City of Brotherly Love for Alvin’s bilking brother. On June 4 he was bound over for trial. Down in New Orleans, on June 11, 1858, Alvin jumped $750 bail over the issue of the shooting of Mr. Mackey and set out for Mobile, where he continued, with remarkable impunity, to put out his railroad guide. But he now had other things on his mind, aside from publishing.93
While still married to Lizzie and with his family—the family he visited when it moved him to visit—not anywhere in sight, Alvin headed to Chicago and the eastern cities. Somewhere along the way he had become a serious collector. Of women. On November 12, 1858, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, fifty-eight miles east-northeast of New York City, Alvin married Virginia Van Rensselaer Higgins, of Brooklyn. She was thirteen. Toward the end of January 1859 she became pregnant. She was still thirteen.94
Virginia was a Norfolk, Virginia, girl originally, born in 1845 to Eugene Jeremiah Higgins and his wife Juliet Hutchings. Whatever Alvin Lloyd was, or wasn’t—mesmerist, outlaw, scofflaw, libertine, liar—Virginia and her brother Eugene would remain in Alvin’s life to the end of his days. Especially Virginia: the child bride Virginia, the lover and mother, the betrayed wife, the accomplice-wife, and finally, the caretaker.
But several months after he married Virginia, Alvin went after the wife of a Louisville photographer, George T. Shaw. Shaw did all the things a “photographist” would normally do at a Louisville gallery—daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, family groups, and children’s pictures. Mr. Shaw’s wife of eighteen, Angeline, ten years his junior, was “possessed of considerable charms.”95
The Louisville Daily Democrat of July 16, 1859, reported that “On Friday night, July 8, the wife of Geo. T. Shaw, a highly estimable photographist on Main Street, deserted her home, and in company with a fellow named Wm A. Lloyd, formerly somewhat known in the community, and now, we believe, a resident of Philadelphia, fled.”
“Hitherto highly regarded,” the press called her. The truant wife barely made it into the next county before the police apprehended her at Shelbyville and brought her back. Alvin was nowhere to be seen. Back with her husband, temporarily, with Annie’s promise never to leave again, on the following Monday she met Alvin at Hobbs Depot and took the train to Lexington, where they stayed at a hotel. G. T. Shaw found out where they were, and again sent a man to have them arrested. It seems he was now fully reconciled to the fact that his wife had left him. What upset him was that she had taken some of his property. By the time the police arrived at the hotel, Alvin and Annie had fled in a carriage, leaving their baggage behind. Mr. Shaw then dashed over to Lexington, and, with the aid of the chief of police, formed a posse. However, they were too late by two hours. Their prey had taken the train for Paris, Kentucky, and then up to Maysville, on the river, “where it is supposed they intend taking a boat for the East.” Lloyd may well have married her, or promised her he would. Mr. Shaw, the “unconsoled photographist arrived back in Louisville on the 14th.”96
The September 16th, 1859, issue of Penny Press of Cincinnati reported that “Bill Lloyd, the notorious libertine, who ran away with Mrs. Shaw of Louisville, is now in jail at Chicago, Illinois. After enjoying the honeymoon, he left her, saying that she was a rather expensive piece of crinoline to suit the state of his exchequer.”
The same Penny Press article reports the words of the Louisville Democrat: “He took with him . . . a diamond breastpin belonging to Mrs. Shaw, a gift from her husband. Incensed at this, she pursued him to Chicago and had him arrested. He is now in jail awaiting the appearance of the husband to prosecute the case. While it is very proper that Lloyd and Mrs. Shaw should pay the penalty of the law, it is to be hoped that the husband will give himself no further concern about them, than to see that justice be done, and that is what the fugitives most fear.”
Mrs. Shaw would eventually return to her husband by whom she would have a daughter. G. T. Shaw died serving the Union during the Civil War, and in 1871 Annie married again, to the recently divorced Dr. John Pirtle. She died of blood poisoning at the age of thirty-nine.97
As for Alvin, on September 30, 1859, at the Barnum’s Hotel, in Baltimore, the town in which he had set up his new base, his wife—or rather, one of his wives—Virginia gave birth to a son. His name was Clarence Alvin Lloyd, and he would lead a most adventurous life, at least as a child.98
Then it was back to New York, this time to the Metropolitan Hotel. W. Alvin Lloyd was now devolving out of Baltimore, and acquiring printing works on Centre Street, Manhattan.99
As Alvin’s life as a bigamist, con man, and publisher is in full flower, the country begins to fracture, on the edge of a great cataclysm. Alvin will take sides, dissolve, reshape, and reappear in an old identity made new again. And he will gather acolytes and accomplices. In time and together, they will find a way to bring off the biggest crime of his career.