The Lost Tribe of Coney Island

by Claire Prentice

  Just as soon as he’d collected the takings and paid a quick visit to the hospital, he would go home and tell Sallie to pack a bag. As he walked toward his office, Truman was startled to hear a voice in his ear. Beside him was a man in the distinctive black peaked cap and bronze badge of the New York Police Department. The man announced himself as Officer John J. Allen. There was another man with him but Truman didn’t catch his name. They handed Truman some official looking papers. Looking down, Truman saw the typewritten words wife abandonment and bigamy. He felt his stomach lurch.

  Trying to hand the papers back to the officer, Truman said there must have been a mistake, the matter had been cleared up the previous day. When Officer Allen persisted, Truman grew exasperated. The officer held up the warrant, signed by Magistrate Sewell Barker of the Fifth District Court in Manhattan. The complainant was Mrs. Else W. Hunt. Truman didn’t want to cause a scene, not here in his own workplace. He agreed to go with the officer, but first he said he must have a brief word with one of his business associates.

  Gumpertz was in his office when Truman called. Problems with the law were not unheard of at Coney. When Truman explained the trouble, the Dreamland manager offered to go with him. He could post bail on the spot if necessary. They must secure an attorney. Gumpertz knew of a first-rate chap, named Ridgway. He would telephone his office immediately. The last thing Gumpertz needed was to lose the manager of his most popular attraction.

  Across Surf Avenue in Luna Park, Fred Thompson roared with delight as he read of Truman’s night in the cells in that day’s newspapers. Thompson picked up the receiver. He was going to telephone his newspaper friends to give them a few more juicy tidbits about his former business partner. That would teach Truman to double-cross him.

  Truman’s day was going from bad to worse. He found himself back in the Harlem courtroom of Magistrate Voorhees on Friday, September 1, and this time Else Hunt, the complainant, was there too. Truman listened as the charges of bigamy and wife abandonment were read out. Voorhees asked Else for her address, which she gave as 109 West 135th Street, Manhattan. Then Voorhees invited her to state her case. The magistrate detected a lilt to her accent. Truman looked at the woman standing across the courtroom with barely concealed loathing. Purposely avoiding Truman’s gaze, Else said that she was born in Germany and had come to America in 1888, aged eighteen. Her home since that time had mostly been in New York. She was a trained nurse and in late 1899, her work had taken her to the Philippines.

  There she met Truman Hunt and they had a whirlwind romance, marrying on June 9, 1902. Two days before the couple celebrated their first wedding anniversary, Else gave birth to a son, whom they named Philip after the Philippine Islands where he was born. In 1904, she and Philip had journeyed back to America with Truman, who had a job at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Truman worked long hours at the fair and Else felt isolated, spending her days at home with a young baby. Truman suggested Else and Philip go to live for a time in New York, where she had many friends. Else had agreed to the plan. But after she moved to New York, she had hardly heard from her husband. Since the spring of 1904, she had seen him only once, when he had come to her apartment and had stayed just an hour.

  Else wept as she explained she had been trying to find her husband since December 1904, when he had abruptly, and without warning, stopped paying her a monthly sum of one hundred dollars to cover the living costs of herself and Philip. She knew Truman wasn’t hard up. He had earned at least ten thousand dollars from the St. Louis Igorrote Village and she believed he had earned many times that at Coney this summer. Someone in the press gallery whistled. That was a lot of money. The magistrate called for silence and invited Else to continue. She explained that she had finally been alerted to the whereabouts of her missing husband when a friend of hers had read about the Igorrote Village at Coney Island.

  Else paused for a moment. Swallowing hard, she continued: mutual friends had informed her that Truman had married another woman, Sallie Gallagher, despite still being married to her, Else. Sallie and Truman had been cohabiting in New York all summer. Looking down, Else spoke softly, as if she couldn’t bear to hear what she had to say next. Truman had cheated on her—not just with Sallie, there had been other women too. The magistrate asked her to speak up. Else repeated what she had just said. Do you mean to allege that your husband committed adultery with more than one woman? asked Voorhees. Yes, sir, replied Else, her face a picture of misery.

  When it was his turn to speak, Truman’s attorney, James W. Ridgway, insisted that his client was an innocent man and dismissed Else’s claims as an outrage. “My client, Dr. Hunt, is under $10,000 bonds to the United States [government] to guarantee the Igorrote people, and such an action in taking a man of his education and refinement and throwing him into a cell is simply outrageous,” he continued, referring to the showman’s recent incarceration.5 The judge set bail at five hundred dollars and adjourned proceedings until the following Wednesday. Gumpertz paid the bail money and Truman was released. How Truman wished Else would crawl back into whichever gutter she’d emerged from. He sincerely hoped he could keep Else and this unpleasantness a secret from Sallie.

  Two days after Truman’s second arrest, on Sunday, September 3, 1905, a reporter from the Nashville American walked up Seventh Street in Louisville, Kentucky, looking for the home of Mr. Patrick Gallagher, a railroad clerk. When he found number 1139, he knocked firmly on the door. He heard footsteps from inside and a few seconds later the door opened. The reporter looked up at the man standing in the doorway. He was in his fifties with graying hair and tired-looking eyes. The newspaperman asked him if he was Patrick Gallagher, father of Sallie. Patrick Gallagher frowned and confirmed that he was. The reporter asked if Sallie was married to a man by the name of Truman Hunt. Gallagher nodded and looked suddenly concerned. Had something happened to her?

  Did you know, Mr. Gallagher, the reporter continued, that your daughter’s husband was recently arrested at Coney Island on a charge of bigamy? Gallagher’s face crumpled in confusion. There must be some mistake. Truman was a doctor and a successful businessman. The reporter asked Sallie’s father if he had any comment to make. Patrick Gallagher stood silently for a moment. Then, slowly closing the door in the man’s face, he muttered that, no, he had nothing to say.6 Inside, Sallie’s father sat down at the kitchen table. It couldn’t be true. They must have confused Truman with someone else. He would speak to Sallie. But how could he bring the subject up? No, he must put the matter from his mind.

  That same day, an article appeared in the St. Louis Globe Democrat under the headline, DID HUNT MARRY FILIPINO WOMAN?7 The article was short, with little in the way of concrete facts, but it was enough to spark rumors among Truman’s acquaintances and those who knew of the recent Igorrote birth at Coney. There had been no mention of the baby’s father. Truman had earned a reputation as a ladies’ man when he was in St. Louis. In the Philippines he had flirted freely with the local women. Could he have gone further and sired an Igorrote’s child? There was more to come. According to the article, when Truman married Sallie Gallagher it was understood by those who knew the showman in the Philippines that she would become the second Mrs. Hunt, the first having gotten divorced while visiting friends in Germany. There was no mention of Myrtle. Sitting at his desk in St. Louis reading the article, Col. Hopkins guffawed. He had been asked to comment but, in the interests of remaining on good terms with his business partner, he had declined to say anything beyond stating that he didn’t know of any Filipino bride.

  On Wednesday, September 6, Hunt v. Hunt was called in the Fifth District Court in Manhattan. Truman could hardly bring himself to look at Else again. Just when his life had been going so well, she had come along to destroy everything—his work, his reputation, his personal life—and had made the last seven days among the most unpleasant of his existence. A pack of reporters looked on, hopeful that they were about to get a juicy story for the next edition.

  The clerk read the charges o
ut before Magistrate Sewell Barker. Truman forced himself to look at Else. She met his gaze and held it for a moment before looking away. The showman found it hard to believe that he had once loved this woman. More than a year had passed since he had last visited her. Else had been beautiful in her prime, her Germanic roots giving her an exotic air. Now, standing there in court, she was unrecognizable. Truman was no longer listening as she described the misery he had inflicted on her. She might as well have been describing someone else. Her vitality had once bewitched him, but it had gone, leaving behind a haggard, middle-aged woman. He looked at her eyes. He had always loved her eyes. But now they were sad and jaded. Truman wondered what Philip, his first and only son, looked like now. He would be two. Whom did he take after? He was bound to be bright. The showman’s second wife might have grown old and lined, but she wasn’t lacking in intelligence.

  In St. Louis he and Else had tried to play at being a happy family, but their fights had grown more frequent and increasingly bitter. Truman was hardly ever at home. He had grown tired of Else and of having a screaming infant around. He had also met Sallie during this time. He said he was working day and night, but Else had accused him of going out drinking and taking up with other women. Truman couldn’t stand it anymore and, after a month of arguments, he had suggested that Else and Philip go and get an apartment in New York, where she had lived before their marriage and still had many friends. He told her he would send them money and would visit as often as he could. But he went just once to the Manhattan boardinghouse where she took a room. They spent only a short time together that day in the summer of 1904 and all they did was argue. Truman had left in a rage, hoping never to set eyes on her again. But he hadn’t reconciled himself to losing all contact with his son. He liked to think that he and Philip would be reunited one day. That was, if Else hadn’t poisoned the boy’s mind against him. A son, especially a first son, was a special person in a man’s life.

  Three months after that last meeting with Else, the showman had proposed to Sallie. They held their wedding ceremony in the Igorrote Village in St. Louis. Truman had suggested it and, seeing how much it meant to him, Sallie had gone along with it, but afterward she had begged him to marry her again, this time in a Catholic church. Her Irish Catholic family’s approval meant everything to her, even if they couldn’t be at the service. The couple’s second wedding, in December 1904, was a short service before two witnesses in a church in Portland, Oregon.

  Deep down, Truman knew that he was not at liberty to marry Sallie. But divorce did not come cheap and the laws in New York, where Else was living, were among the toughest in the nation. Besides, his marriage to Else had taken place in the Philippines; it was hardly the same as a bona fide marriage in America. He told himself that what he and Else had in the Philippines was more like a common-law arrangement. Truman could persuade himself of anything if it made his own life easier. The day he married Sallie, Truman stopped sending the checks to Else.

  Truman had a faraway gaze as Else recounted how she had no means of supporting herself and their son after Truman stopped sending her money. She couldn’t return to her job as a nurse with an infant to care for and she didn’t want to write to her family in Germany asking for funds. She still had her pride and she couldn’t bring herself to tell her parents what a rogue her husband had turned out to be. She knew there were charities in New York for women in her position, but she didn’t want to live off handouts. Why should she, when her husband and the father of her child was a wealthy man?

  Else had waited awhile after Truman lost touch, assuming she would hear from him again in time. He had always had a habit of disappearing and then resurfacing again when it suited him, with little in the way of an explanation. But when the weeks turned into months and still she didn’t hear anything, she had grown concerned. She had contacted friends, former colleagues in the Philippines, and people she’d met in St. Louis, inquiring about her husband’s whereabouts. She and Truman had had their troubles like any couple, but she couldn’t believe he would just disappear like that without so much as a word.

  Recently a trusted friend had come to visit and had shown her an article in the New York Times about the Igorrotes who were at Coney Island with their former lieutenant governor, Truman Hunt. Else knew her husband was far from perfect, but how could he have been in New York and not even called to see how they were? Did he really believe he could just cast her and Philip aside as if he had never known them? Had he already erased them from his mind?

  Magistrate Barker looked pityingly at the complainant. He had a good deal of sympathy for abandoned women and children. He was a firm believer in the sanctity of marriage and felt strongly that bigamists should be punished in the most severe terms. But try as he might to find a way to move forward and examine the charges against Truman Hunt, there were legal technicalities. Crucially, it had come to his attention that neither party had a permanent address in New York. This, Barker judged, meant the court had no jurisdiction in the matter. Despite Dr. Hunt’s evident wealth, he had no legal residence anywhere. And Else Hunt was living in temporary accommodation. Under these circumstances, Barker had no option but to discharge the prisoner. The magistrate announced his verdict and declared that any case against Dr. Hunt would have to be brought in the Philippines, where the two had allegedly married and had their child. Truman Hunt was a free man. Else broke down and sobbed.

  The showman breathed a sigh of relief. He never wanted to hear about the filthy business again. Leaving the courtroom, he refused to give any comment to the waiting newspapermen beyond stating that the allegations against him were lies. Those who knew Truman were faced with one of two explanations. Either he was the subject of a bizarre allegation made by a deranged woman or he was a man capable of denying the existence of his own wife and infant child.

  13

  The End of the American Dream

  DREAMLAND, EARLY SEPTEMBER 1905

  Dreamland, 1905

  TRUMAN CALLED JULIO into his office just after one o’clock in the morning and instructed him to tell the tribe to pack up. The interpreter looked puzzled. Truman told him they were going on a trip and handed Julio a list of names. Those whose names were on the list were traveling with him by train that night. The rest were to stay behind at Dreamland until the close of the season. Julio looked at the list and noticed his own name and Maria’s. He read on and opened his mouth to protest. You have split up some of the married couples, he said, begging Truman to allow him to amend the list. Truman looked momentarily confused, then told him to make the changes quickly. Julio’s hand glided over the paper, scoring out names and adding others. When he was satisfied that he had made the best selection he could, he showed the paper to his boss. Truman glanced at it and nodded his approval. Then he shooed the interpreter out of his bungalow with the instruction to make sure those who were leaving were packed up and ready to go within the hour.

  The park gates were locked and all the attractions had been shut up for the night. Julio called to the tribespeople to gather around. He was going to read out a list of names and those people were to start packing immediately. They would be leaving Dreamland before daybreak. Maria looked up at him, unable to believe what she was hearing. Julio began calling out names, aware that many of them would be leaving behind relatives and close friends. The Filipinos looked at one another. Where were they going? Julio shrugged and, with a sorrowful expression, confessed he didn’t know.

  Friday rushed up to the interpreter. Could he take his dog? Julio was about to answer that he couldn’t when he was interrupted by Feloa. How long would they be apart? Would they be joining the others who had left with Col. Hopkins weeks earlier? Julio told them to keep their voices down. He wondered whether Samuel Gumpertz knew he was about to lose half of his Igorrotes. The interpreter sensed that the uncertainty over the arrangements was making everyone nervous. Julio looked over at Maria, who had started helping some of the younger ones to pack. Maria liked Dreamland. Gumpertz had tak
en a paternalistic interest in the tribe and, despite their initial fears, he had not pressured them to eat dog every day. Julio knew she would be sorry to leave.

  While the Igorrotes packed, Truman was gathering his own things. He took out his watch; it was just after one-thirty. He sat down and lit a cigar. He had made this decision on impulse. The reappearance of Else had unsettled him in a way that he did not fully understand. He was used to writing his own story; he hated surprises. Who knew what that woman might do next? Even Sallie, who could usually see no wrong in her husband, had noticed that Truman had been irritable and moody lately. How he hated Else for what she had done. Just as his life was going so well, up she’d popped to make trouble and to try and grab his money. He would do everything in his power to make sure she didn’t get any of it. He had a new wife now, and soon there would be a new baby. If Sallie got her wish, there would be many more children to follow.

  There was another factor, of course, in his decision to tour the tribe: money. Truman had earned a fortune at Coney, but he had also spent one. He and Sallie had been enjoying the high life for months, and in New York a fortune could be lost with remarkable ease. Truman didn’t want to trouble his wife but he was worried about money. Even though he’d gotten off the bigamy charge, it had cost him dearly. Ridgway was a gifted attorney and his prices were scaled to match his reputation.

  The Coney season would soon be drawing to a close. Farther south there were state fairs crying out for headline acts, not to mention amusement parks that ran right through the winter months. As the Igorrotes’ fame had spread out from New York, Truman had been inundated with offers from as far afield as Memphis, St. Louis, Detroit, Dallas, Atlanta, and New Orleans. He had confirmed bookings in Memphis, Macon, and Dallas. He had enough money in his wallet to get half of the thirty-five tribespeople at Dreamland to Memphis, their first stop. They would be living hand-to-mouth for a while, but in Memphis they would soon make enough in ticket sales to pay for their train travel to their next stop. When the season closed at Dreamland, he would send someone to collect the others.