From “Notable Men Of Cincinnati” 1903, Page 201
Over its long history, our beloved city has never lacked for cranks, kooks and oddballs. If Cincinnati ever unveils a Screwball Hall of Fame, it will be densely populated, but Samuel Lawrence Barriett would certainly occupy a central display.
Barriett was known as an inventor, and it is true that he held some patents, but his greatest talent was self-promotion. The fact is, lots of people acquired patents for their inventions, but Barriett built his reputation on descriptions of inventions he never actually finished. So effective was his salesmanship that Cincinnati newspapers shamelessly compared Barriett to the “Wizard of Menlo Park” himself, Thomas Edison.
So, what did Barriett actually invent? You must certainly be familiar with the self-oiling ring oiler, the improved punch, the automatic switch for electrical apparatus, and the automatic return rheostat. No? How about the electrical process to depilate sealskins? Or the self-belter for sewing machines? All very useful devices, no doubt, but hardly on the scale of electric light bulbs, phonographs and motion pictures.
Barriett was certainly adept at promoting his own image. When Cincinnati’s entire electrical system went kaput in 1902, the relatively new Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company (previously the Cincinnati Gas, Light and Coke Company) was befuddled. Barriett offered a $30,000 wager to the electric utility as a guarantee he could solve the problem within two hours. CG&E President Andrew Hickenlooper may not have known electricity, but he did know flim-flam, and told the Enquirer [September 27, 1902]:
“We will have nothing to do with this man Barriett, because he talked in a manner that impressed me he would be unable to aid us in anyway.”
This is not to deny Barriett’s creativity at all. During the Spanish-American War, Barriett was hired to churn out artillery shells at a factory connected to West Point. He dramatically increased production while lowering costs. Barriett also developed an electric motor of his own design and built a factory in Cincinnati to manufacture it.
But the inventions that built Barriett’s reputation never saw the light of day. Barriett created quite a stir with his announcement that he would soon offer for sale a device that sounds remarkably like Dick Tracy’s Two-Way Wrist Radio. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer [October 23, 1904]:
“Barriett has about perfected a little instrument which a man may carry like a watch. It is in fact a limited wireless telephone affair that will carry messages, he says, over a radius of four miles and is for pocket use.”
He also claimed to be working on a sort of videophone, long before television itself had even been invented.
“Barriett has for over a year been working at times on a system all his own, whereby he proposes to make it possible for a person talking over a telephone to see the one at the other end of the line. This has been wrought upon by others, but he affirms that he has a scheme by which this will be accomplished.”
From "The Electrical Engineer," August 20, 1890, Page 182
But perhaps the farthest-out unpatented invention Barriett boasted about was his method for contacting the dead. He told the Enquirer:
“If the dead speak they shall be heard, no matter if they speak here or elsewhere. I have a plan by which I hope to artificially produce a magnified or refined sense of hearing. When I have concluded one step in this direction it will lead to others, which will culminate in an instrument, by which a man hidden away in a cave or under the sea, far removed from ordinary sound, may hear the spiritual voice, if it exists in the universe.”
For someone so interested in listening to the dead, Barriett was abnormally reluctant to join the departed. He was obsessively paranoid to the extent he would not open mail addressed to him, either business or personal, because he was convinced someone was trying to kill him by an explosive device. He had no qualms about letting his secretary open all of his mail.
For someone so averse to dying, it is therefore beyond ironic that Barriett apparently died by suicide in a Dayton, Ohio, boarding house in 1905. Although friends and business associates vociferously protested that Barriett had no reason to take his own life, investigators discovered that he had locked himself in his room and turned the gas up to full pressure. According to the Enquirer:
“They claim there was a stifling odor in the room Tuesday night, which was doubtless created by unconsumed gas. This, they believe, produced asphyxiation.”
Whether his death was intentional or accidental, Barriett created a most interesting afterlife when three widows appeared to assert their claims to his estate and it was revealed that his business partner was probably also his mistress.
The first wife to emerge was Georgia Barriett, living in New York with two daughters aged 15 and 9 and an infant son. For several years, Samuel Barriett had lived with this family in an apartment on Park Avenue in Walnut Hills. About a year before his death, he and Georgia separated and she moved to New York City, taking the children with her. It came out that Samuel Barriett had applied for a divorce from Georgia five years previously, but the divorce had never been finalized and he continued to live with her for four years as man and wife, qualifying her—even if the divorce had been finalized—for status as a common-law wife.
No sooner had Georgia Barriett staked her claim, than Mamie Barriett of Brooklyn announced her intention to prove that she was the only true and legitimate widow of Samuel Barriett. She arrived in Cincinnati with a young son. It appears that Samuel Barriett married Mamie in 1888. Samuel was arrested on their wedding day for “some mysterious charge, in which a woman was involved.” It proved unclear whether they had ever divorced.
As the two Mrs. Barrietts and their attorneys lined up for a legal showdown, word arrived that there was yet a third Mrs. Barriett in Texas with another child. The Texas widow was identified as Barriett’s first wife and it appeared they were legally divorced.
The source of much of this marital information was Mrs. Lena Behrens, regularly described as Barriett’s secretary. Mrs. Behrens was indeed the secretary, but she was no
From Find-A-Grave
stenographer. She owned and operated her own saddlery company and was a major investor and an officer in Barriett’s corporation. As his business partner she held the position of secretary in the Barriett Motor Corporation of which Samuel was president. Their tangled relationship caught the attention of the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, which published [February 16, 1905] an exposé outing Mrs. Behrens and Mr. Barriett as something more than business partners. The newspaper revealed, for example, that they just happened to live at the same address. Mrs. Behrens, herself a widow, was described as “a most attractive woman of 28.” She (actually 38 years old) denied anything other than a business connection:
“People circulated romantic stories, and I have suffered much to be with him and aid him to the success that seemed within his reach just before his death. Mr. Barriett was one of those peculiar men given to study and experimenting, and not disposed to make love, but, nevertheless most lovable.”
In other words, “We were just good friends.”
Curiously, the two battling widows and Mrs. Behrens all admitted to pouring large sums of money into Barriett’s business. It was not a good investment. At his death, Barriett’s estate was worth just $5,000 and his debts far exceeded his assets. The widows were fighting over the widow’s allowance—a few hundred dollars—rather than any windfall. It appears neither got anything because the estate was declared insolvent, although Mrs. Behrens may have received a small amount as a creditor. The corporation reorganized and renamed itself and was eventually sold.
Samuel Barriett, who has not communicated from beyond, is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery. His widows rest elsewhere. Lena Behrens died in 1949, aged 82, and is buried in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.
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