4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL MAY 24, 2017
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History: Albany's Faker's Queen
When D.C. Davis
fi
rst
met Hazel Petter-
For The Sentinel
son, she was lying, frail
and sickly, in a hotel
bed in Yacolt, Washington. She’d been taken there
following a horrifying mishap on the Northern
Pacifi c Railroad on April 9, 1909.
It seemed someone had left a suitcase in the
aisle, and the train’s crew hadn’t noticed. As the
train had pulled into Yacolt, there had been a sud-
den lurch, and poor Mrs. Petterson, her baby in
her arms, had been thrown forward and tripped
over the suitcase. Crashing to the fl oor with a dra-
matic scream as she held her baby safely away
from harm, she’d writhed there in agony, spitting
teeth and blood and clutching her side.
Hastily removed to the hotel bed in which she
now rested, they had learned the extent of her in-
juries — and they were astonishing. Her ankle
appeared to be broken, with a bone out of place,
although it had not yet started swelling. She ap-
peared to have at least one broken rib. One of her
pupils was dilated while the other was normal —
a known sign of either eye injury or brain trauma.
And she’d spat two teeth out upon the fl oor of the
train amid a welter of blood, the apparent result
of a lung hemorrhage, possibly punctured by the
broken rib.
This was bad. And it seemed to be getting
worse. Davis learned that Mrs. Petterson was a
wealthy widow from Calgary, the sort of person
who could be expected to take legal action against
the railroad if she felt unfairly treated. So Davis
spent nearly a week attending to her. A local doc-
tor examined her, confi rmed her injuries and set
her ankle in a plaster cast.
Davis’s fi rst priority was to forestall any litiga-
tion and attendant bad publicity. So as soon as he
could, before any additional symptoms could ap-
pear, he hurriedly started negotiating a settlement
with the injured woman. She fi nally accepted a
payment of $1,250, and he wrote a bank draft out
on the spot.
By Finn JD John
Then he set about getting her ready to go back
to Calgary. She was loaded in a stretcher on a
baggage car and sent to Vancouver; then she was
placed in an automobile and gingerly driven down
into Portland, in the care of two nurses hired by
the railroad. They fi rst took her to the railroad’s
banking house, where Davis vouched for her iden-
tity and she cashed the draft — taking most of it
in gold. This was probably the moment when the
fi rst hints of doubt started to cross Davis’s mind.
Why would a wealthy widow faced with nothing
more than a week-long train trip home want the
trouble of lugging all that gold along with her?
Mrs. Petterson checked into a hotel. Davis
went out, at her request, to fi nd an attorney for
her, make an appointment with an eye specialist,
and arrange accommodations on a train back to
Calgary. She then sent one of the nurses to make
travel arrangements.
Immediately after the nurse departed, Mrs.
Petterson hopped out of bed and made a phone
call. Within minutes she’d left the hotel — having
somehow made a miraculous recovery — and dis-
appeared into the night.
When Davis returned, she was gone.
Following a quick series of inquiries to Calgary
by telegraph, the dismayed Mr. Davis learned that
there was no recently widowed Mrs. Petterson.
He also learned that a very odd thing had been
found in Mrs. Petterson’s hotel room in Yacolt: A
small packet of red powder, which had been rec-
ognized immediately as fake blood.
There could now be no doubt: D.C. Davis had
been taken for a ride. And, worse yet, he knew ex-
actly who had conned him. All the railroad claims
agents, all over the West, had been talking about
her. She could be none other than the “Queen of
Fakers,” Oregonian Maud Myrtle Johnson — a
smooth and talented actress who over the previ-
ous few years had bilked railroads and streetcar
companies all over the western United States to
the tune of at least $200,000.
And, in what must have been a particularly bit-
ter revelation to poor Mr. Davis, it turned out that
the train she’d been riding on had been carrying
Maud Johnson away from the courthouse in Seat-
tle, where she’d just been acquitted on charges of
soaking the Seattle streetcar company for $600 in
precisely the same way.
Maud Johnson was born Maud Myrtle Wagnon,
on a farm near Albany. After her mother died, her
father left her in a convent in Salem and moved
to Portland, where, in an ironic twist, he became
a police offi cer.
Maud seems to have been something of a hel-
lion. When she was 14, she sued a man for se-
duction under promise of marriage, and at 16 ran
away from the convent to which she had been
committed with another man.
She soon drifted into a life of crime — and, it
seems, of Vaudeville. At the same time she was
becoming well known to the police departments
of Salem, Portland, and Pendleton, she was also
acquiring a very unusual set of skills.
By 1906, Maud could dislocate an ankle, a
knee, and a rib at will. Born with a slightly mis-
shapen chest, she learned to pose it to maximize
an illusion of brokenness. One of her eyes was
noticeably different in appearance than the other
— possibly the result of some old injury — and
she could exacerbate that by dilating its pupil at
will. And she developed a macabre ability to bite
on her gums in a way that produced blood on de-
mand.
So Maud took her show on the road. Adopting
a foundling baby from an orphanage to use as a
prop — she knew a settlement would be far more
likely if a baby were involved — she set out with
a small group of accomplices, bilking railroad
and streetcar companies all over the country and
living high on the hog from the proceeds. Some-
times, after a particularly horrifi c-looking pratfall,
she would even call for a lawyer and minister and
"make out a will" on the spot. (This was great for
convincing railroad agents that she was rich, and
therefore dangerous.)
She was good enough that she might have got-
ten away with this for many years, had she not
been seemingly unable to stick around after being
paid. In case after case, the delivery of a stack of
cash transformed her from a catatonic cripple into
a hale and hearty specimen leaping aboard an out-
bound train.
Her performances were so lucrative, and her
abrupt departures so obvious and galling to the
freshly fl eeced, that the railroad agents actually
formed the Pacifi c Claim Agents Association spe-
cifi cally to try to spread the word of her antics and
share information that might lead to her capture.
Which is why, after she was arrested in San
Francisco for the Yacolt caper, her subsequent tri-
al in Vancouver turned into such an event. It was
a bit like a reunion tour for all the claims agents
she’d defrauded in her long and distinguished ca-
reer. The prosecutor paraded them before the jury,
one after the other, describing her performances
— the horrible falls, the “blood” gushing from her
mouth and nose, the sickening misalignments of
knees and ribs, and always the poor wailing baby
or toddler who was frightened but uninjured in the
crash.
The outcome was never in doubt. Off to the
penitentiary at Walla Walla went Maud Johnson
to serve a fi ve-year sentence. The governor par-
doned her out of the joint after two years, and she
dropped out of sight.
After her release, Maud Johnson appears to
have more or less gone straight, immersing her-
self fully into show business. She appears only
sporadically in the newspapers after that, includ-
ing one time in 1922 when a minstrel’s troupe
she’d joined disbanded suddenly and she had to
raise some cash by kiting bad checks. But as far as
I’ve been able to learn, she never again tried her
fake-injury swindle.
Or ... maybe she did, having learned from pre-
vious mistakes. If so, we'll likely never know.
*This column fi rst appeared May 30, 2016
Dr. Fuhrman: Vitamin D to treat depression?
Winter is a common time to experience symptoms of depression.
When the holidays are over and the weather is cold and dark, it is
more common to feel sad, anxious or hopeless. Whether one is
experiencing a seasonal decline in mood or suffering from major
depression, natural treatments have very high success rates, and are
of course much safer than prescription drugs.
My prescription for natural treatment of depression:
Morning light therapy. Light deprivation, common in the win-
ter, can disrupt circadian rhythms and neurotransmitter production.
The McFarland Cemetary is opening for the sea-
son on Memorial Day and is announcing a new
information kiosk. The public is invited to stop
by between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Bright light therapy, not only in the winter, can be an effective
substitute for natural sunlight – applied fi rst thing in the morning
it corrects the body’s clock and stimulates mood-elevating neu-
rotransmitters. Bright light therapy is effective for not only season-
al affective disorder (SAD) but it also has been found to be just as
effective as antidepressants for treating depression.
Vitamin D. Vitamin D is thought to regulate mood by affecting
daily biorhythms and serotonin production. Reduced exposure to
sunlight during the winter also means less natural vitamin D pro-
duction by the skin. Low circulating vitamin D is associated with
SAD and major depression. Studies of subjects with depression
have found that vitamin D supplementation produces an improve-
ment in symptoms and feelings of well-being.
High dose omega-3 fatty acids. DHA and EPA play import-
ant roles in the brain, and low omega-3 intake is associated with
depression. DHA is an important structural component of brain
tissue, and a recent meta-analysis revealed that EPA is the more
important omega-3 fatty acid for improving depression symptoms.
I recommend DHA plus approximately 1,000 mg EPA per day for
depression.
High-nutrient diet. Nutrition is extremely important for regulat-
ing mood. High antioxidant intake from colorful fruits and vege-
tables helps prevent oxidative stress, to which the brain is highly
susceptible. Markers of oxidative stress are associated with a high-
er incidence of depression. Low intake of folate, present in green
vegetables, also correlates with depression.
Regular exercise. Exercise is known to be as effective as an-
tidepressant drugs or cognitive behavioral therapy for improving
the symptoms of depression. Exercise increases production of se-
rotonin, a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of well being,
which is often low in individuals suffering from depression. In fact,
antidepressant drugs most often work by increasing the amount of
serotonin in the brain. Aerobic exercise plus strength training works
better than aerobic exercise alone, and yoga is also effective.
The combination of all of these approaches increases the likeli-
hood of success, providing people suffering from depression with a
safe, natural, and effective alternative to antidepressant drugs.
C ottage G rove
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