Dirty Doc Ames and the Scandal that Shook Minneapolis

By Erik Jonathan Rivenes

The story of Albert Alonzo "Doc" Ames is perhaps the greatest political scandal in Minnesota history. As mayor of Minneapolis, Ames exposed the city to national humiliation–and helped jump-start an era of reform.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Minneapolis was moving away from a time of political rings, frontier justice, and old boys' clubs to a more civic-minded way of governing. But in 1901, the affable, degenerate Doc Ames, a former Minneapolis mayor well past his political prime, duped his way back into the office. Ames appointed his brother as chief of police, and together they assembled a rogues' gallery of thieves to squeeze as much money out of the city as quickly as they could. Under Ames's leadership, criminals walked beats wearing policeman’s uniforms. City detectives robbed prominent citizens. Police maintained arrangements with madams and saloonkeepers, extracting pay for the privilege of openly ignoring the law.

With a card game gone bad, and a complaint to a newspaper, it all fell apart. Ames fled Minneapolis in mid-term to avoid prosecution. And at Doc Ames's spectacular downfall, the citizens of Minneapolis finally woke up and took their city back.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
• Release date: Apr 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781681340937

Erik Jonathan Rivenes

Erik Rivenes, founder of the St. Paul Gangster Tours, is a writer and historian who produces the Most Notorious podcast.

Book preview

Preface

ALBERT ALONZO DOC AMES, four-term mayor of Minneapolis, was a colorful character in Minneapolis civic life for nearly four decades. He was a medical doctor with a larger-than-life personality—comfortable hobnobbing with Minneapolis movers and shakers but equally at home in low saloons, consorting with the destitute, the common laborer, and the criminal fringe. Known for his generosity when patients were unable to pay for medical care, Doc offered his services free of charge. He fought hard in the 1880s for an eight-hour workday, and helped establish the Minnesota Soldiers’ Home, which assisted veterans of the Civil War. It was a cause that remained dear to his heart until his dying day.¹

He was also a preening narcissist, not only demanding attention, but also insisting on being at the center of it. He hacked and slashed his way through political campaigns, unafraid of losing and unyielding to his enemies. All through 1901, the first year of Ames’s fourth term, the local newspapers were peppered with the astounding details of his capers in articles published almost daily. Readers followed with astonishment as Doc Ames created a crime syndicate centered on Minneapolis City Hall that would have made Boss Tweed envious. By late 1902, when journalist Lincoln Steffens exposed Doc’s misdeeds to the nation in McClure’s Magazine’s famous Shame of the Cities series, Minneapolis had already been to hell and back.

To understand the scandal that shamed Minneapolis and ended Doc Ames’s political career, you must understand the story of Doc himself, as well as the stories of the people he used to carry out the corruption. Here you will find these backstories, as well as a careful reconstruction of how Doc’s world fell apart.

The Sources

I first considered writing a biography of Doc Ames, with the scandal as the climax. That direction posed a major problem: necessity dictated I that use period newspapers as a major source, and Doc had kicked up enormous political drama from his first foray into civic service as an alderman in 1875, through seven runs for mayor (four successful), plus campaigns for US Congress and governor. He was even rumored to be a Democratic contender for vice president. Accounts of his exploits filled the newspapers for twenty-five years—far too much material to cover in a book like this. The story of his fourth term, however, provides an opportunity to portray the man and his times in high relief, and that is the era I chose to focus on.

Relying on period papers for a balanced accounting of events, however, presents its own set of problems. Newspapers at the turn of the twentieth century were notoriously biased, operated by editors and backed by advertisers with their own political agendas. The newspapers that served the Twin Cities’ communities in 1901 offered reporting from every political viewpoint. Minneapolis was a traditional Republican stronghold, and of the city’s three major newspapers—the Minneapolis Tribune, the Minneapolis Journal, and the Minneapolis Times—the Tribune and Journal unabashedly leaned Republican. The Times touted itself as independent, but it was accused of swinging Republican more often than not.

In an added twist, one of the Times’ former editors was James Gray, who was the Democratic mayor of Minneapolis in 1900, and the Times wholeheartedly embraced his reelection bid against Doc in the 1901 election. To add more layers of complication, Doc Ames had abandoned the Democratic Party for the Republican Party, but not all Republicans trusted or supported their newly minted member. The Tribune, the de facto mouthpiece of Doc’s administration, would stick with him the longest, but the Journal lobbied for a purebred Republican and opposed his mayoralty from the beginning.

Farther east, St. Paul was considered a Democratic bastion, and the St. Paul Globe (also appearing over time as the St. Paul Daily Globe and the Daily Globe) made no bones about how much it despised the turncoat Doc Ames. The Globe also acted as a political counter to the Republican Pioneer Press. Like the Globe, the People’s Press, based in Owatonna, was an aggressive promoter of Democratic ideals. Many other publications in Minnesota catered to their own unique demographic, including the Irish Standard, the Svenksa Amerikanska Posten, the Appeal: A National Afro-American Newspaper, and the Minnesota Issue (published by the Anti-Saloon League)—all of which chose to support or not support Doc based on issues important to their readership, issues which sometimes went back decades in parallel with Doc’s long political career.²

Reporters often made errors, exaggerated facts, and even fabricated aspects of their stories to help sell papers. With all of these points in mind, I read carefully through as many papers as I could in an attempt to extract something close to the truth. Many times accounts of the same event from papers with opposing viewpoints were contradictory, and in other situations they matched up surprisingly well. Interestingly, many of the stories that sounded the most outrageous in the newspapers were the ones corroborated by witnesses under oath in later trials. In this book, all quoted dialogue is taken directly from newspaper accounts and court transcripts.

Aside from these newspapers, few other primary source documents still exist regarding the life of Albert Alonzo Ames. There are no known memoirs or collections of Doc’s private papers or correspondence. In summary, the task of piecing together this era in Minneapolis municipal history and portraying, as accurately as possible, the man behind the tumultuous events has been both challenging and fascinating.

The McClure’s Exposé

Lincoln Steffens’s famous article in McClure’s Magazine, The Shame of Minneapolis, written during the trials of Mayor Ames’s cohorts, was both a launching point and an important touchstone in the overall telling of this tale. Samuel S. McClure, the cofounder of the magazine, had dispatched Steffens to Minneapolis in the summer of 1902 to write the article as part of a series documenting corruption in multiple American cities. Steffens, one of a number of muckraking journalists making names for themselves at the time, was interested in studying municipal governments with rigged political systems and determining the origin of their corruption. Of special interest to him was the question of how men deemed honorable in the eyes of society could shamelessly rationalize the pursuit of profit using deceitful practices. McClure hoped the exposés would awaken public perception and motivate the people to take back their democracies.³

Once in Minneapolis, Steffens ingratiated himself into the lives of many involved in the scandal, from reporters, grand jury members, and police officers to the grafters sitting in jail. He was able to piece together the story using both personal interviews and crack investigative work that revealed pivotal evidence never before seen by the public. The Shame of Minneapolis rocked the country when it was published in mid-December of 1902, selling out the issue almost immediately. Teddy Roosevelt called Samuel McClure and invited him to the White House to congratulate him on the success of the exposé. Steffens later recalled walking into a train washroom and overhearing men discussing him and his article in approving tones. And there was no question that the article had an eye-opening effect. For readers around the country, it was proof that powerful financial forces conspired to exploit and disenfranchise common hardworking Americans.⁴

Lincoln Steffens in Union Square, New York City, 1914

The role of civic responsibility in municipal government was being debated across the country at the turn of the century. The era of the Tammany Hall–style political machine, with its ward bosses, smoky back rooms, patronage systems, and accompanying graft had dominated large city politics for the latter half of the nineteenth century. But there had been a growing demand for systemic change as well. In the United States the Progressive Era, a period of political reform and social action that lasted from the 1890s to the 1920s, was a response to the corruption that infested governments across the country. The movement encompassed a number of groups, all hoping to bring some positive improvement to the status quo. Suffragists believed that giving the purer sex a chance to vote could add a moral influence to the male-dominated establishment. Prohibitionists sought to sever the unsavory relationships between saloons and the politicians profiting from them.⁵

Beyond these specific interests, many middle-class Americans feared economic mistreatment from business interests. In Minnesota and other midwestern states, anxieties over unfair corporate and banking practices ran deep, leading to antitrust legislation, railroad regulation, and banking and currency reform. Laborers, immigrants, and African Americans also found a voice within the Progressive movement. Among issues relevant to these reformers were workers’ compensation, child labor laws, and factory reform. Under the large and diverse Progressive umbrella, however, were some who did not trust the people they fought for. They maintained a wariness about the poor and their tendencies to follow political bosses, even to the detriment of their own self-interests.⁶

Many of these battles were waged during Doc Ames’s fourth term as mayor. Ames, despite his public denials, had long championed the wide-open policy, which encouraged Minneapolis saloons, gambling houses, and brothels to operate with as little regulatory interference as possible in pursuit of the greater municipal good: tourism, growth, and economic prosperity. Because these businesses often walked the fine line of legality, they were easy targets for graft. By 1900, many Progressives in Minneapolis were looking for change and accountability from their politicians, so when Doc Ames, an antiquated old-school politician representing much of what the Progressives opposed, took advantage of changes to primary election laws and slid into a final term as mayor, it came as a colossal shock.

This book chronicles the events leading up to that infamous election, the election itself, Doc Ames’s ransacking of the city in 1901, and the downfall of his shaky empire. It provides a glimpse into Doc Ames and his world: how he came to power, how he chose to use it, and how he would let it be wrested from his grasp. But perhaps most importantly, the story shows how various reformers, including both Progressives and plain civic-minded citizens, were able to clean up, at least temporarily, a scourge on the city of Minneapolis.

The Beginning of the End

ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1901, a man named Roman Miex marched into police headquarters at Minneapolis City Hall and demanded to see the chief of police. He had been buncoed, he claimed. Taken advantage of in a card game just a couple of hours earlier, and swindled out of hundreds of dollars. And by a detective of the Minneapolis police force, to boot.

Miex was told to wait. So he waited. And waited. And waited some more. For several hours he sat outside of police chief Fred Ames’s office, with plenty of time to stew over the afternoon’s events.

Roman Miex had arrived in Minneapolis the day before. He was passing through, having finished work on a log drive in Washington State. En route to his home in Alpena, Michigan, he had stopped in Minot, North Dakota, to pick up a payment for a job he had done some years before. It was $800, a huge sum for the career laborer; the average annual salary in 1900 was $450. He had immediately consulted an attorney, who advised him to convert $775 of it into a draft check—a bank check, safer to carry than cash.¹

With his money safe, Roman Miex could relax. He was in good spirits, and although it was Thanksgiving Day, he was ready to enjoy the sights and sounds of the big city, a quick respite from the long train ride before heading home. And turn-of-the-century Minneapolis certainly was big. Swelled to its limits, in fact, and full of excitement and promise for tourists like Miex.

Five-story skyscrapers stretched to the clouds along the primary downtown business arteries, Hennepin and Nicollet Avenues. The cedar-planked streets carried lumbering wagons dragged by workhorses, shiny two-seat gigs pulled by sleek bays, and yellow trolleys that announced their approach with clangs and gongs and shouts from the conductors. An occasional steam-powered horseless carriage even chugged by, although this newfangled technology was rare in 1901 Minneapolis: just a few dozen automobiles existed in the city, almost evenly divided between steam, electric, and gasoline.²

A vaudeville show might provide an entertaining respite. The Metropolitan, Lyceum, Bijou, and Dewey Theaters all had matinees, even adding extra ones for Thanksgiving, and Miex could get a front-row seat for thirty cents. A trip to Minneapolis’s Palace Museum was a worthwhile amusement for a curious visitor. Past acts had included the Wise Sisters, Eliza and Martha, Anoka natives who had conspired to murder their own parents in cold blood. And instead of wasting away in some dank prison cell, they were the star attractions in a stage show supported by the mayor and chief of police.³

There were many options for the hungry traveler as well. The Hotel Nicollet, the Creamery Restaurant and Buffet, and the Guaranty were all open that evening. A newspaper advertisement for Schiek’s Palatial Place on Third Street had waxed poetic about its three French chefs and boasted of its fine imported wines, ales, and porters.⁴

As Miex stood by himself, no doubt taking in the city, a stranger approached him. The man introduced himself as Henderson, visiting from Fargo, and after they had shaken hands he explained to Miex that he was looking for a friend to round up the town with. Miex jumped at the chance, as it was far more fun to explore the city with a compatriot than alone.

After a visit to a saloon and then to a theater, Henderson suddenly turned serious. They had had such fun together, and become such good friends so quickly, that Henderson believed he could confide in Miex about something important. He was actually in Minneapolis to see a physician named Dr. Phillips about his ill child, still back in North Dakota. Henderson asked Miex if he would accompany him to the physician’s office for support. Miex, a man with a warm heart and a sympathetic ear, immediately agreed to go.

They arrived at Dr. Phillips’s office, at 242 Fourth Avenue South, and after a brief, private exchange of words between Henderson and the doctor, the guests were escorted to a back room. A friendly game of cards was suggested by Dr. Phillips, and after a silent man entered and joined them, they all sat down to play. The game was stud poker, and Miex knew it pretty well. Dr. Phillips, acting as the dealer, dealt one card face down and four cards face up to each player. The face-down card, called the buried card, was the central piece in the game, as it was the only card no one else could see.

For a few hands the bets were small, and everyone took a turn at winning. It was an agreeable, social way to spend the evening, and Miex was winning more than the others. And once he realized his good fortune, his gaming instincts kicked in. When the next round of cards was dealt, Miex received a pair of aces and a pair of kings, face up. And his buried card was a third ace. It was a spectacular hand, and he realized he was about to make a raft of green.

I’m out of it, Henderson gloomily said, and put down his cards. But I’d like to help my friend, here. He peered at Miex’s buried card and then excitedly whispered into his ear. The ace of diamonds! Gee! You’ve drawn a full house, aces up, and that fool of a dealer thanks [thinks] this other fellow has the other ace. You’ve got him skinned.

Here, said Dr. Phillips, you can’t bet your friend’s hand for him.

I know it, replied Henderson, but if you’ll permit me, I’d like to back him with my roll.

Roman Miex reached for his bank check, snug in the lapel of his jacket. He had no need of help from Henderson, and showed everyone his money to prove it. He was all in, with every hard-earned penny he possessed.

The silent man, still playing, said nothing, but signaled to the table that he would stay in as well.

Now what have you got? Dr. Phillips asked Miex.

Three aces and a pair of kings, a full house, Miex replied, turning over his buried card.

It’s yours, the doctor said, and Miex felt Henderson pound his back in congratulations as he reached for the money. What incredible luck. How much better his life would be with this tidy little sum in his pocket!

Wait just a minute, gentleman, the other man said, finally breaking his silence. I’m still in the game. I’ll see your bet and I’ve got four of a kind.

The man flipped his buried card over for the table to see. It was a fourth three, and he promptly scooped up the money.

Dr. Phillips stood up, dumbfounded. He looked at the man’s hand, and then looked at the cards already played. Miex was also confused, but he could see what had happened when the doctor reached over and spread out the cards. The silent man had allowed two of his face-up cards to fall on the one in the middle, so that each of the end cards covered one spot of the three of diamonds, making it look like an ace.

There, right in front of them all, the silent man had three threes, but everyone had been duped into believing it was an ace instead. Before Miex could even register the significance of what had happened, Dr. Phillips began screaming and shouting and accusing them all of being in cahoots to rob him. In the midst of the chaos, Miex watched as the silent man, with Miex’s bank check in hand, slipped out the door, leaving him and Henderson to fend for themselves. And the night just got worse from there.

A police detective was quickly summoned. When officer Chris Norbeck arrived, he asked them if they had a license to gamble. They admitted that they didn’t. The detective advised them to leave town immediately, or go to jail.

It’s getting pretty warm in here, and I don’t want to be arrested, Henderson said to Miex in a low voice.

Miex was beginning to recognize the con for what it was. But he was in a difficult situation. If he went over this detective’s head to the police station to report what had happened, there was a good chance things might get worse for him, depending on how deep the fix was in. These grafters were certainly counting on him to cut his losses and leave town. But it was a lot of money, and even though the swindlers had his check, they could not cash it unless he signed it over to them. Miex was stubborn, and he was not about to back down.

As for Henderson & Co., they would have no way of knowing that their uncooperative target not only represented the end to their lucrative and crooked livelihoods but would bring about the utter ruin of their boss, the mayor of Minneapolis, Albert Alonzo Doc Ames.⁵

The handsome Doc Ames could easily command a room. He was five foot eleven and three-fourths inches (he emphasized the fraction), with a high distinguished forehead and graying brown hair, and at his prime he weighed about two hundred pounds. A trim mustache sat over a small mouth that could flash an engaging grin in one moment and twist into an angry scowl the next. Meticulously dressed, usually in a tailored suit and tall top hat, with a walking cane in hand, he never stopped to smell the roses. He was the rose. And in 1901 he had returned, for one great, last hurrah.⁶

Ames was fifty-eight years old as his fourth and final Minneapolis mayoral term began in January of 1901. He was known as the Old Man—with ridicule by his enemies and with fondness by his friends and supporters. In personality exceedingly winning because of cordiality, sympathy, generosity, easy-bearing, loyalty, and geniality, he yet lacked self-control, Harold Zink wrote of him in his 1930 book, City Bosses in the United States, summarizing his personality with precision. Unfortunately he was remarkably vain, allowed himself to be ridiculously influenced by flattery, stood out as a poor judge of men, and regarded himself as a martyr when trouble presented himself. He liked conversation, Zink continued, and possessed a far-reaching voice, a good fund of humor, and a friend-neighbor style. As a strong speaker, few on the platform could match him. He was exceptionally kind to children and possessed a splendid memory of faces and names.⁷

Doc was a survivor of life, no question. He had survived wars, marital turmoil, family estrangement, and twenty-five years of nasty, rough-and-tumble political pandemonium. He was a surgeon by trade, but a politician out of desire. A desire to be front and center. To lead. To rule. And he had done it for most of his life. Yes, he had been bruised and battered: hard-lost elections, the deaths of four sons, the seething hatred of his only daughter, with scores of adversaries always eager to knock him down. But he got up, and fought again, urged forward by legions of the down-and-outers, hardscrabble men who worshiped the ground he walked on.

Albert Alonzo Doc Ames, 1889

Doc Ames was a man of the people. A man of some people, anyway. To others, he was despicable, a corrupt relic of the past who abused a new open primary law for personal gain. He rallied his ragtag tin-pail brigade of Democrats to follow him to the Republican fold, where they helped him win the 1900 party primary, despite protests from horrified Republican party leaders. And he breezed into office, with decent margins, because it was a reelection year for a popular Republican president.

Once elected, Doc unleashed a race for loot at dizzying speed. Criminals in policeman’s uniforms walked beats. Madams handed envelopes of cash to emissaries for delivery to the mayor. City detectives connived with bunco men to fleece rubes. The boundaries between the mayor, the police, and the lowest of hoodlums evaporated.

In the first months of the new century, Minneapolis stumbled backward into lawlessness. For this to happen, Doc Ames required the proper army of loyal soldiers. As befitted an old-time politician, he chose the men who had stuck by him through thick and thin. He made his brother the chief of police; an old friend and restaurateur became a police captain. He chose his assistant to handle the collection of bribes and picked a notorious bruiser of a policeman he had known for years as his chief of detectives. He thought he had created a circle so tight nothing could disrupt it. And for one spectacular year, he was almost right.

THE RISE

A Dogged Ascent

ONE CAN ONLY IMAGINE the wonder ten-year old Albert Alonzo Ames felt as he viewed the vast prairies and sparkling lakes of the future state of Minnesota in the spring of 1852. He was traveling with his family to the small village of St. Anthony, which sat on the east bank of the Mississippi River, next to the majestic St. Anthony Falls. The falls were one of the great natural wonders of the West, at least before the Pillsburys and other flour magnates harnessed their power for mills and rendered them virtually unrecognizable. Despite the sawmills and gristmills already being built and operated there when the Ames family arrived, the falls still retained much of their original beauty.

Albert’s father, Alfred Elisha Ames, had arrived the previous October and built a temporary shack for the family. It had been a bold move, readying his family for such a drastic change of scenery, but he was a man who had forged ahead through adversity all of his life. And now the Ameses were all together, ready to build a new city.

Alfred Elisha set a powerful example for his children. Born in Colchester, Vermont, on December 14, 1814, he had been a sickly child, and his parents were sure he wouldn’t live to adulthood. But the boy persisted and made the best of a tough upbringing. The family was poor, and young Alfred’s labor was needed on the family farm, but he managed to study during the cold winter months. By the time he was seventeen, he had about five years of schooling.

At around that time, the family moved to Orwell, Ohio, where Alfred learned brick making and took on other jobs as well. While teaching elementary school in the winter of 1834, he met Martha Asenath Pratt, and they were soon married. They moved to Illinois, where they claimed 160 acres near Amesville (later Garden Prairie). The name was no coincidence, as the bustling little town was already filled with Alfred’s relatives. In April 1837, he took a job in Chicago as a brickmaker, working for $52 a month; once winter came, he cut rails for more income.¹

Alfred Elisha Ames, about 1865

It was easy for him to rely on his muscles and trade skills, but Alfred had ambitions. Loading up a pack on his back, he tramped to Vandalia, which was still the capital of Illinois. There he met Stephen A. Douglas, who would later become a US senator and the Democratic party’s presidential nominee in 1860 against Abraham Lincoln. Alfred became deputy to Alex P. Field, Illinois’s secretary of state, and then the private secretary to Governor Thomas Carlin, making a total of six dollars a day between the two jobs. It wasn’t uncommon in the mid-nineteenth century for a man of Alfred’s status to pull himself up through smarts and hard work, but Alfred seemed exceptional. When the capital moved to Springfield, he moved as well, continuing to act as both Carlin’s secretary and deputy for the new secretary of state, Stephen Douglas, in 1839.

Not content with his government positions, Alfred yearned for more. He began attending medical lectures in Chicago in 1840 at Rush Medical College, and by 1841 was studying medicine under a Dr. Maloney in the town of Belvidere, about seven miles from Garden Prairie. As he continued his studies, he was elected to the state house of representatives, where he served his native Boone County, and also picked up an appointment as a local postmaster. For many men, these jobs would have been more than enough work, but Alfred was a social man as well and an active Mason, rising through the ranks to Worshipful Master in Belvidere. Martha Ames and the couple’s children must have remained with the Ames clan in Garden Prairie through these years, for it was there that Albert Alonzo was born, on January 18, 1842, the fourth of seven sons; he also had a younger sister.²

Why Alfred Ames chose to pick up his family and move to Minnesota Territory isn’t known, but in the era of western expansion they were certainly not alone. For decades, adventurers, businessmen, farmers, and immigrants hungry for land had flooded onto the lands being taken from the indigenous residents and made available for purchase. Minnesota was the latest opportunity. A treaty in 1851 had forced the Dakota off nearly all their land west of the Mississippi in what is now southern Minnesota, including present-day downtown Minneapolis. When the federal government opened these lands for settlement, Euro-Americans poured into the territory. Alfred Elisha acted quickly and built a homestead shanty between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and Fourth and Fifth Streets. A few years