Illustration from "Cincinnati Post", November 18, 1891
Cincinnati has always tolerated gambling. “Chasing the tiger,” as it used to be known, ebbed and surged in popularity over the years, but placing bets has never faded away. For most of Cincinnati’s history gambling was outlawed yet the laws prohibiting gambling were often entirely ignored.
Especially in the Boss Cox years from the 1880s into the 1920s, gambling prospered because wagers funneled a torrent of bribes, kickbacks and graft into the coffers of the Cox machine. Today’s gamblers would not recognize some of the games that sucked in fortunes in those days. For instance, bucket shops.
Bucket shop gambling was based on the stock market and was made possible by the invention of the stock ticker in 1867. This handy device received telegraphed market information and spat it out on a long paper tape. (From which we get ticker-tape parades.) Legitimate stock brokerages loved the ticker and relied on them until the internet took off in the 1990s. In the late 1800s, gamblers adopted stock tickers as high-tech gambling devices in a scheme known as the bucket shop.
In Cincinnati, around 1890, the most active bucket shop occupied an office on the ground floor of the Mercantile Library Building on Walnut Street. It was operated by a well-to-do wholesale merchant named Mathias S. “Shafe” Forbus. The Cincinnati Post [November 18, 1891] explained how the bucket shop worked:
“If wheat is quoted at 94 cents a bushel, you can purchase 1000 of these measures for the small sum of $10—that is idealistically speaking—and if that modern wheel of fortune, the stock-ticker, typographically imparts the information that the price of the cereal has advanced to 95 1/8 cents, you are the winner to the amount of your wager. Should wheat decline in value to 93 1/8 cents, your $10 have gone to swell the bank account of M.S. Forbus & Co.”
You will note that no stock or commodities actually changed hands. Our gambler owned nothing. He merely bet on that commodity’s or stock’s performance without ever taking ownership of anything. According to the Post, the Forbus bucket shop had all the trappings of a legitimate business:
“Entering, you at once perceive the familiar and unmistakable surroundings, and hear the tickety-tick-tick of the ‘bucket shop.’ All the paraphernalia are presented to the eye—the blackboards, the tickers, the desks, the big safe in the corner, and the 25 or 30 chairs whereon the ‘shoe-strings’ of the euphemistically styled ‘commercial gambling.’”
Shafe Forbus never had to worry about police raiding his bucket shop because, in addition to his business interests, Forbus just happened to be a member of the Police Commission, the board that supervised Cincinnati’s police department.
You read that correctly. The man who ran one of the largest gambling spots in Cincinnati had the ability to hire and fire the police who were supposed to arrest anyone who ran a gambling establishment. Welcome to Boss Cox’s Cincinnati.
The crusading Cincinnati Post, longtime antagonist of the Cox regime, was not amused. In an exposé headlined “Heal Thyself. Advice to the Local Police Board” [November 18, 1891], the newspaper fumed over the conflict of interest:
“What are the police going to do about it? M.S. Forbus intertwines his lily-white fingers over his aldermanic abdomen, winks the other eye, anathematizes the newspaper and profanely ejaculates: ‘The police! D—n it, I am the police!’ If he isn’t the police, he certainly can conduct an unlawful business without police interference.”
Illustration from "Cincinnati Post", November 18, 1891
It’s not that the police didn’t try to interfere, but they were thwarted at every turn. In 1893, Forbus was still in business, but now had competition from another bucket shop, the Nelson Commission Company, who sold bogus stock from a shop directly across the street from the Enquirer.
When Cincinnati Police raided the Nelson rooms, they confiscated record books, stock certificates and even a ticker machine. No sooner had the evidence been logged at headquarters than a court constable arrived, with a writ ordering the police to return everything to the bucket shop. The writ was signed by Police Court Judge John C.H. Hart, who was—surprise!—also retained as the attorney for the Nelson Commission Company.
Police Chief Philip Deitsch complained that the courts refused to convict bucket shop owners unless police proved that nothing changed hands. The bucket shops dodged this requirement by issuing authentic stock certificates to the police or, worse, delivering actual commodities. The chief told the Post [November 14, 1893]:
“Well, we tried to convict them once before, and we spent the department’s money. We had two very excellent cases, but the Grand Jury ignored them. The court has decided that where there is no actual delivery it is gambling. Now, in our last cases, the bucket shops were about to send us 50 barrels of pork, and compel us to pay on the margin. At that time the department was given to understand that if it bought again the goods, whatever they were, would be delivered at Police Headquarters. If that is done, it knocks out our case; so you see our hands are tied.”
At least one honest jurist occupied a bench at the Court of Common Pleas that year. Judge John R. Sayler cut through the defendants’ folderol and rejected an injunction requested by the Nelson gang to prevent police from raiding their business. In denying the injunction, Judge Sayler ruled that where stock was not actually delivered or where there was no bona fide intention to deliver real stocks, the business was engaged in gambling. Attorney and occasional judge John Hart told the Post [November 14, 1893] that the judgement was bad news for all the city’s bucket shops:
“I’ll tell you one thing: The ruling bodes evil to Shafe Forbus’ and other bucket shops.”
Lawyer Hart was either being sarcastic or disingenuous. No one was convicted of anything in the Nelson case and Mathias Forbus carried on exactly as before. He was now chairman of the Police Commission.
Later in the year, the Cincinnati Enquirer, while naming few names, asserted that gambling was rife in Cincinnati. The public accusation was too flagrant to ignore, and so the Police Commission took it under advisement, if only to make the allegation disappear. The Enquirer [December 20, 1893] quoted Commission Chairman Forbus, owner of the largest bucket shop in town:
“We have no evidence of gambling. I guess there is no doubt that it does exist, but the question is to get evidence.”
It was not police interference but national trends dampened the appeal of bucket shops. The real stock exchanges in New York and Chicago took steps to restrict access to trading information. Federal laws carried heavier penalties than local regulations, and federal law enforcement and courts were generally more honest and above-board than local jurisdictions. The handwriting was on the chalkboard. The Enquirer [June 6, 1895] carried the obituary for what might have been Cincinnati’s last bucket shop:
“The Owen Commission Company, running a bucket shop in the Mitchell Building, has shut its doors and returned to Chicago. Cause: Patrons too scarce and too lucky.”
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