Years ago, there lived a man in Brooklyn by the name of Calvert. This Calvert was pretty well fixed, and had nothin’ to do but to make himself comfortable. So he set to work deliberately, and made himself and other people wretched by inventin’ a gun with a new kind of bore, and borin’ his neighbors and the Patent Office and the United States Government about it. The Calvert gun, according to Calvert, was better than the Krupp gun is to-day, and was destined to blow all the armies who were not lucky enough to have Calvert guns into eternity. This Calvert Gun was Calvert’s hobby, and he rode it to death.
Then he had a rather pretty wife, and she had her own hobby, too. It was “style.” She didn’t care who or what people or things were, so they were only “stylish,” and though her father had been a boss carpenter, and her mother used to take in plain sewin’, you would have thought from her airs that her father had been a boss politician, and her mother had “taken in” and entertained some time or other Queen Victoria. One day there came to New York a very handsome and swell-lookin’ Englishman who called himself Colonel Marmaduke Reeves, of the British army. This fellow Reeves stumbled across this fellow Calvert, and at once took a fancy to him and to his gun, or pretended to.
After a while he told Calvert that he had been commissioned by the British Government to examine anythin’ new in the way of firearms, and to report thereon, and said that as he liked the Calvert gun he would report to the British Government very favorably upon it.
This tickled Calvert and he loaned the illustrious colonel thousands of dollars, forced the money on the colonel, in fact. The two formed a sort of partnership, Calvert furnishin’ the gun and the money on this side of the Atlantic, and Reeves furnishin’ the “influence” on the other side.
Meanwhile Reeves worked his racket with Mrs. Calvert on the “style” side of her, which was her “blind” side. He talked of his extensive acquaintance with the nobility, his aristocratic relatives, and all that, till Mrs. Calvert’s head was completely turned, gave parties in his honor, and insisted upon his bein’ her “pet boarder,” her constant guest.
One day the Mayor of Brooklyn and a number of army officers were invited to meet the colonel at Mrs. Calvert’s at dinner, and at this dinner Reeves put in the best work of his life. He directed the talk of the company to battles, and then got Mrs. Calvert to hint that he had been one of the famous “Six Hundred” that made “the charge of the Light Brigade.”
Of course the colonel was asked to tell the story of this “charge,” and after bein’ coaxed a good deal, and pretendin’ to be modest, the colonel told the story of the Six Hundred, and told it so well, too, putting in all the military points, and the names of people and places, and describin’ the whole affair so vividly, that an old army officer, who had been at the dinner, got up and crossin’ over to the colonel, said, “I wish to apologize to you, sir.”
“Apologize! What for?” asked the colonel.
“For doubtin’ you,” answered the old army officer. “For I did doubt you, sir. I thought till this minute that you were a humbug, sir; a deuced humbug. But I am mistaken, sir. You are a gentleman, a soldier, and a hero, sir, and I ask your pardon.”
Of course the colonel granted it, and the two became such friends that in a few days the colonel got the old army officer interested in the Calvert gun and borrowed several thousand dollars from the old army officer.
Altogether, Reeves was about $15,000 ahead from Calvert and his new old army friend, and besides this, Mrs. Calvert was interestin’ herself in making a match between him and a rich widow, a friend of hers, and on the strength of his luck Reeves put on more airs than ever.
One day he was walkin’ along Broadway with the old army officer, now his partner, when a middle-aged, worn-out lookin’ woman came along, solicitin’ alms, and among others, she begged from the colonel.
He dropped a small coin in the woman’s hand with a grand air, just for buncombe. It was his first charitable act, and he regretted it immediately afterward, for lookin’ up to his face to thank him, the woman uttered a cry, dropped a basket she held in her hand, and rushin’ to the colonel, dressed up to kill, in a British army uniform, and puttin’ her skinny arms around him, kissed him and squeezed him and slobbered over him in a way that, while it nearly smothered the colonel, astonished his companion and amused the crowd, who had gathered around to see the fun.
The colonel, as soon as he got out of the woman’s arms, pretended not to know her, and called on a policeman to protect him from further annoyance, but the woman said that she was the colonel’s wife, that she had married him in London ten years before, when his name was George Brackett; that she had lived with him two years, and had a child by him, and that then he had deserted her.
She told the story right on, didn’t catch or contradict herself once, and stuck to it, and stuck to the colonel, too, in spite of the policeman, followed him long Broadway, makin’ the devil of a racket. The colonel tried to “explain matters” to the old army officer, but the latter gentleman began to be suspicious, and as soon as the colonel got rid of the woman, he got rid of the colonel.
Then he employed a detective to make some inquiries, and after awhile he came to the conclusion that the colonel was the first-class fraud. He told Calvert what he had found out, and the two men together went for the third, and had him arrested as a swindler.
The colonel kept up his spirits, though, and his cheek and got the keepers in the Tombs, old stagers as they were, to believe in him. One day he told his “Charge of the Six Hundred” story over again to the prison keepers in New York just as good as he told it to the ladies and gentlemen in Brooklyn, and so interested a gentleman visitor who happened to be present that this gentleman offered to become his bail and got him out.
But the next day, while walkin’ along with this new friend, a ragged little child, with the dirtiest, greasiest kind of a face, ran up to him, got hold of his knees, and called him “Papa! Papa!” and wanted a kiss. The colonel got mad, cursed the little brat–who was rubbin’ against his pantaloons like a cat–said he had never seen her before in his life, and all that. But the child burst out a cryin’, a big crowd gathered round, most of whom noticed, just as the colonel’s new friend did, the strikin’ resemblance of the ragged child to the swell colonel; and then the old beggar woman, who claimed to be Mrs. George Brackett, the child’s mother, appeared on the scene and got a policeman to arrest Colonel Marmaduke Reeves, alias George Brackett, for abandonment and neglect to support his family. His new friend, who began at this time to smell a big rat, refused to help him any further, and the colonel was marched to the jail at the head of a long procession of men, women and small boys, headed by the beggar woman and the little eight-year-old brat; one denouncin’ him as her brute of a husband and the other halloain’ out, “Papa! My papa!” while the colonel twirled his gold-headed cane and pretended his best to be merely takin’ a walk for the good of his health with his friend, the policeman, and not havin’ anythin’ to do with the crowd behind him.
But the colonel still kept a stiff upper lip, and kept his “cheek” in good condition. He still insisted on his being the victim of a mistake or an imposture, persisted that he was a British army office,r and told his “Charge of the Six Hundred” story over and over again, till at last, one day, he found a rich lady who, on the strength of his “Six Hundred” story, believed in him and paid enough money, on his account, to the old beggar woman and her brat to get him off.
This was the third time his Six Hundred story had got the colonel out of his scrapes; but he was “crooked” by nature, and as fast as he got out of one trouble he tumbled into another. Pretty soon he swindled a young lady out of her trunk, and the young lady got out a warrant against him from Alderman Brady, who was actin’ police justice at the time. After a week’s hunt he was caught and taken to the Tombs again, as cool and as cheeky as ever, thinkin’ all he had to do was to tell the Six Hundred story over again, but the charm didn’t work this time. He was detained for some weeks and at last brought up to the court-room for trial, handcuffed in all his “fancy” rig to a big [ethnic slur].
And the first person he saw in the court-room was Mrs. George Brackett, more ragged and dirty than ever, but lookin’ as happy as a princess at seeing him in his present plight. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to five years in Sing Sing prison. When the sentence was passed Mrs. George bracket bounced up from her seat for joy, gave a yell like a wild Indian, and it went on so generally that she had to be removed bodily from the court-room.
But she hadn’t done with the colonel yet. She hurried off, got to the prison before him, and when the colonel was retaken back to his cell, preparatory to being taken to Sing Sing, he found Mrs. Brackett waiting to receive him, and with her not only the eight-year-old brat, with a dirty face, who claimed to be his daughter, but two of the raggedest, cussedest bootblacks in the city of New York, who claimed to be his twin sons, born after he had deserted his wife, and a bony old wench, two-thirds drunk, who called herself his maiden sister.
There was a family meetin’ with a vengeance, such a family and such a meetin’, and the whole affectionate five rushed for the colonel at one and the same time, the ragged old mother, the dirty eight-year-old brat, the two yelping bootblacks and the skinny old maid, while the colonel, still in his swell clothes, and still strapped to the [ethnic slur], tried to push off the gang as they rushed at him, kicked the two bootblacks, cuffed the dirty-faced brat, shook his fist, the best he could, at the old maid, but could not get rid of the old woman, who clung to his neck and gummed him and chawed him as if he was good to eat, the prison officials laughin’ ‘emselves half to death all the time; and to make it worse, some people who had known the colonel in his “big bug” days, lookin’ on out of curiosity.
When he saw these last the colonel caved in, and begged to be torn from the old woman and taken to his cell. But it took all the strength of two of the keepers to part the lovin’ wife from her husband, and in leavin’ him she took a bit of his chin which had she had bitten off with her as a memento.
Reeves, or Brackett, or whatever his name was, served out his full time, and then turned up in Jersey City as a bounty agent.
I don’t know now whether he is alive or dead, but if he is livin’ I stand ready to bet ten to one that he can tell his Six Hundred story as good as ever.
[Editor’s notes: Police detective Phil Farley devotes a chapter of his Criminals of America to John W. McAlpine, alias Col. Marmaduke Reeves, and covers some of the same territory as the column above, but Farley’s account otherwise differs greatly from the Harry Hill column. The Hill column uses the name “George Brackett,” which Farley does not list as one of McAlpine’s aliases; likewise no newspaper accounts or prison records mention “George Brackett.” Farley concentrates more on McAlpine’s talents for romancing women and stealing their jewelry.
The Brooklyn rifle-maker’s name was Frederick Griffin (not Calvert), and he was co-owner of a patent for a bored rifle barrel. With other partners, notably Casper D. Schubarth, he provided tens of thousands of breech-loading muskets to the United States Army at the onset of the Civil War.
While contemporary newspaper accounts state that McAlpine, as “Col. Reeevs,” claimed to have seen service in the Crimean War, no account specifically relates that he claimed to have been involved in the Charge of the Light Brigade.]
