School of Humans. It's nineteen sixteen in Chicago at the Hotel Blackstone's restaurant dining there is Edward R. West and Edward is the president of the CD greg T and Coffee Company, the largest importer of tea and coffee in the United States at the time. Yes, the tea and coffee game makes you the big bucks che ching. Edward's wife had died several years before, so you know, this evening he might have been out on the prowl looking for some a hot thing to soothe his pain, and
he found someone. At the restaurant. He sees a beautiful young lady. One of the spiciest things about her is, according to one newspaper, she had let down her hair in a girlish fashion. Hot The Chicago Tribune said she was a small brunette, a distinct beauty with the look. Anyway, she sees Edward looking at her, and she's like, Hi, my name is Buddha, Godman, what's yours? And it seems
that Edward was quickly seduced. He and Buddha started getting friendlier and friendlier and maybe engage in some hanky panky at some point over the course of their rendezvous. Buddha tells Edward about herself. She says she has independent means, a desire to see something of the world, and she was not averse to enjoying it in Edward's company. A little while later, Edward needs to go to New York on business. That's right, tea and coffee business, and Buddha's like,
I want to go to New York. Please, you have that fancy packard car bad boy take me there. And Edward is hesitant at first. He says to a newspaper later that it was she and not I who proposed this trip. I hadn't thought of the significance of that until recently. I tried to persuade her out of it, but to no avail, so he finally succumbs to her plating and is like, Okay, Buddha, doll, I'll take it
to the Big Apple. The pair travel in his car from Chicago and reached New York on May ninth, nineteen sixteen. Edward gets them a room at the Ansonia Hotel. A few hours later, they suddenly hear a heavy knock at the door. On the other side of the door, there are some men gruffly saying this is the law the United States Department of Justice. Let us in. Edward opens the door and three men strut in, flashing their badges and warrants. They're like, we all know about you, mister West.
Bringing this young girl from Chicago to New York. That's crossing a state line, a lot of state lines. That's a federal offense. Buddy, You're violating the Man Act. And Edward is like, sweet Fanny Adams, Oh, tom Tit No, I don't want to be violating the Man Act. By the way, sweet Fanny Adams was a slang word that meant fuck all, and tom Tit meant shit. But anyway, Edward doesn't know it at the time, but he is being scammed. Cue the theme song. This is American Filth.
I'm Gabby Watts. Every week I tell you a filthy story from American history. Today's episode exploiting the Man Act. So our poor little man, Edward West, seems to have gotten himself in a bit of a pickle. So these scammers, disguised as law enforcement officers, tell Edward that he is violating the Man Act. And before we see what happens to him, let's do all the boring stuff and look at this law. What is it, you might ask, or perhaps you've heard of it, because that was what r.
Kelly was charged with. But when the Man Act was passed in nineteen nineteen, it was passed to prevent white slavery. Yes, white slavery. Doesn't everyone love it when you bring that up. So in the early twentieth century there was a public panic. The progressive reformers at the time are like, our white girls and white women are getting kidnapped and being forced into prostitution. And yes, it's only a white woman problem. Black and brown women, it's not a problem at all.
If you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic. Anyway, Various people wrote pamphlet that said things like there are cartels and gangs preying upon young women, and people perpetrating white slavery are usually foreigners. Here's what the United States District Attorney in Chicago wrote. One thing should be made very clear to the girl who comes up to the city, and that is that the ordinary ice cream parlor is very
likely to be a spider's web for her entanglement. This is perhaps especially true of those ice cream saloons and fruit stores kept by foreigners. Scores of cases are on record where young girls have taken their first steps towards white slavery in places of this character, ah, the ice cream shop. But was this a real problem that only affected white women. Absolutely not. What was happening at the turn of the century was industrialization, urbanization, all that jazz,
and the progressives wanted social control. You know, they're coming out of this repressed Victorian era, and they were probably upset with the amount of social freedom people had. Now there were single people who are just out there doing courtship, messing around, maybe even freaking around without supervision and with whomever they wanted. I mean, that's all to an extent,
of course. Also, a lot of cities at this point had their own red light districts, and so the progressives are like, I wonder if these women are being forced into prostitution, because why would anyone do this on purpose? So the Man Act, often called the White Slave Traffic Act, was passed in nineteen ten, and this federal law made it illegal to transport or cause the transport of women or girls over state lines for the purpose of prostitution
or debauchery, or any other immoral purpose. And here's the tea. It was quite hard to define what a moral purpose was, so the Man Act was often used to prosecute anyone who was doing sex that the progressive reformers didn't like, like some of the punishment made sense, you know, like dudes having sex with underage gals. But the Man Act was also used to prosecute people who were having pre
marital sex, extramarital sex, or interracial relationships. Like in nineteen twelve, the boxer Jack Johnson was arrested for violating the Man Act, but he was targeted because he was black and sometimes had sexual relationships with white women. One of the cases that reached the Supreme Court was in nineteen seventeen, and here there were two men who took their mistresses from
Sacramento to Reno. The two men were convicted, and the decision basically was like, even consensual extramarital affairs could be prosecuted, So if you're trying to get some extramarital sex, best keep it local. And so the Man Act had a lot of dudes shaking in their boots. They're like, you can't do anything anymore. Some dudes were even scared of, like what if I have to take my secretary with me on a business trip. Can I take her across state lines? But a lot of other people also thought
that the Man Act kind of sucked. For example, The New York Times wrote a sassy article about the Man Act with the headline government aid to blackmailer, and the article had said, the Man Law is chiefly a bid for blackmail and serves no other purpose worth mentioning. That's right, They're like, the Man Act isn't helping any white women who are being sex trafficked. Instead, the Act is just
inciting crime. Gangs across the country were using the Man Act to their advantage because it was a great way to exploit people through blackmail. One of the group's running scams was the Collins Gang in Chicago, run by the charismatic con man dapper Don Collins. The New York Times described him as a handsome, clean cut young man of refined appearance. In his short life, he'd already done several cons across the world. He'd already been in prison. He
seduced a lot of women. He even caused a woman to try to kill herself by jumping out of a window. Wow. Super hot and manipulative, my type. The extortion tactic his gang and others used is called badger gaming. Basically, you trick someone into a compromising position and then be like, oh my god, we caught you in this compromising position. If you don't give us money, we're gonna tell on you for the man act. Specifically, here's the scheme. Find
a rich dude, send in a hot lady. She'll be like, hey, wealthy man, let's go somewhere across state lines. And then her cronies will pretend to be law enforcement and be like, wow, I see you just took that lady across state lines. You are a bad boy. Give us money or we will send you to prison. And so you always needed a hot woman to get the badger. And in Edward West case, the badger trapper was Buddha Godmin, that lady he had been hanging out with. We'll be right back
after these soothing advertisements. Buddha Godmin was born in Queens, but she mostly grew up in Chicago. Her dad was a racetrack sheet writer and she was his only kid, and her dad had high hopes for her future. This is what he said about her. Her high spirit and gentle way made her even less predictable than horses. But because he worked in gambling, he was often around pretty shady people, and he was like, I don't want my
daughter to be thus polluted. So he sent her to a convent boarding school when she was fifteen in Adrian, Michigan. But Buddha wasn't going to be tied down by a bunch of nuns. Remember, she's less predictionle than a horse. So she came back to Chicago. And it's been mentioned several times, but one of the few things people actually said about Buddha was that she was hot, Because did
you know that a woman is only defined by her appearance? Oh, in this book called Chicago Confidential, here's how they described her. Before maturity, she stopped traffic on the streets. She was petite, a wee trifle, plumpish, with big steel blue eyes, a top tilted nose, an oval face with a dimple chin, a pee wee mouth, and tiny hands and feet. Yes, isn't that what we always say about beauty. It's important
to have tiny hands and itchy, bitchy feet. Back home in Chicago, she met Tell Taylor and Tell Well he was a small time a ham. He was a songwriter, and his only acclaim was the hit down by the old mill Stream, which was allegedly about Buddha telling Buddha got married and he was able to get them jobs in this theater production called at the time, The Place and the Girl from There. Buddha hit the theater scene hard. Everyone was like, damn, who is this chick married to lose?
Or tell? She's hot stuff? But with all this attention, Buddha Intel's relationships started falling apart. Let's just say that Tell seemed a bit possessive. He got so mad at Buddha for all her flirtations and possible cheating. Whoops that allegedly he tried to kill her. Yeah, he tried to shoot her with a gun, but he missed, so instead he was like, I guess we should just get divorced. And apparently he was so mad at the divorce proceedings
that he left before finishing his testimony. During that he said, I married Buddha when we were both drunk, and I found out she was quite in case, capable of loyalty to anyone. And just a little side note, I was unable to actually verify this divorce story about him trying to kill her with a gun. It's just that book Chicago Confidential, even though it was written by journalists. Apparently you don't need to tell the truth and substantiate facts sometimes,
did you know? You can just make history up sometimes. So possibly Tell tried to shoot her, or maybe he was just tired of being with her because she was so flirty with other people. Also, he sounds kind of like a downer anyway. At the time, Buddha was also hanging out with some of her dad's shady associates and other nefarious gents in Chicago, and that's how she met
Hotti con man dapper Don Collins. It appears that they had some sexual entanglements, and then she had some other various entanglements with some of his cronies, like this guy Jimmy Christian, who some newspaper said was her husband. But despite her relationships, we know now that Buddha has entered a life of crime and she is the perfect badger trapper. So let's get back to the badger game featuring coffee
and tea man Edward West. We're back in a hotel in New York City and three law enforcement officers are accusing Edward of violating the man act and one of the goons dressed up as law enforcement is in fact, Jimmy Christian and Edward West is quite incredulous about what was happening. He later described what happened in a newspaper interview. He said, I denounced this as an outrage and demanded the privilege of consulting an attorney. They said I would
go to jail at once, as would Buddha, Godman. She became hysterical. She said she was a convent breed girl, that her parents would commit suicide over the disgrace, and that the whole world would brand her with an everlasting shame that would make her a society outcast forever. She said, it was all right for me, a man, to talk of fighting them, for society would forgive a man where it would not forgive a woman. She asked the men what she could do to save herself from disgrace, and
the question of money was quickly broached. So Edward agrees to pay them, but he doesn't have large sums of cash on him at the time. So Jimmy Christian and the other two guys force Edward and Buddha into a car and bring them back to Chicago. They pull into the Alexandria Hotel and the disguise law enforcement agents say, this is where the US Commissioner, Attorney and DA are staying, and this is where they keep their high class prisoners.
So they keep Edward and Buddha in a hotel room for three or four days as prisoners, and they keep saying, oh, yeah, we're having some new negotiations going on. We'll tell you what's up soon. And yes, listener, you might be like, why didn't Edward realize this was a scam. Well, there are people out there like me who are very gullible. Like one time I thought I was going to go to prison because someone called me and said I had missed jury duty and I need to give them one
thousand dollars immediately. And the thing is, I don't check my mail, so I was like, yeah, I could have missed it. I don't know. I don't look at letters. Anyway. To his credit, in the hotel, Edward might have been having a creepying suspicion that something isn't right, but he thinks he's being chivalrous. He had to get pretty Buddha out of the situation. No matter what, Edward said later, I believed her to be of the unimpeachable reputation she
had represented herself to be. So he pays the scammers the money twelve five hundred dollars when Buddha is finally released, and then another twenty five hundred after he's released. But after he gives up the money, Edward West fully realizes he just got scammed, and Edward he is not alone. In nineteen sixteen, a paper ran an article with the
headline government extends at search for love pirates. This was happening to a lot of people, and the Collins Gang, well, they are already on the government's radar and the real law enforcement officers. They're trying to find a case that can get the gang members indicted. Edward goes to the office of a detective named William C. Dannenberg, and Dannenberg is one of the founders of the Bureau of Identification, which eventually became the FBI. Edward is really embarrassed that
he fell for this ruse, and he's heartbroken. He's like, I've been betrayed by the girl I love. I've been duped by a ring of extortionist of which she's a member. They are making a mockery of the Man Act. Oh no, not a mockery of the Man Act. But Dandenberg is excited about this case because he's like, finally I have enough evidence to indict these guys and gal. So he rounds up several of the con men, including Buddha and Jimmy Christian. And Buddha she's not even really concerned about
being arrested. She says very condescendingly to the district attorney, Oh, what's going to happen to poor little me? Her bail is said it ten thousand dollars. But she doesn't stay in jail for long. She has two friends who bail her out and then she runs away from Chicago. But Jimmy Christian, he doesn't get the chance to escape. He pleads guilty in his sentence to eighteen months in prison.
During the trial, he insists that Buddha was innocent. He was like, she was a tool we were using, and allegedly when Buddha heard about this, she was like, why that handsome sucker? Dapperdon Collins is eventually rounded up as well, and he's held on a fifty thousand dollars bail, But the case they got Collins rounded up. Was submitted by a woman named missus J Bolton Winpenny. She was like, this guy blackmailed me for eight thousand dollars at nineteen fifteen.
Get his ass anyway, Collins was found guilty of extortion and was sent to Sing Sing prison for two years. And after he arrested all these people, Dannenberg is quite pleased with himself. He even thanks Buddha Godman for her participation in the scheme. He said she did more to eliminate the Man Act as a tool of the blackmailers and to preserve its intended value you to society than
did any of the professional reformers. I will always be grateful to her and her showing the Man Acts weaknesses by her distortion of its provisions to meet her own ends. He's like, oh my god, yeah, because you blackmailed. You showed us like how the Act is weak and how we can make it better. Meanwhile, Edward West turns to the press to warn well meaning gents who are seduced by little ladies on how to avoid these sort of plots.
He says, I have decided to sacrifice my personal humiliation in this case for the sake of others men or women who may innocently be drawn into the same unfortunate situation as I was personally, I am not afraid. Buddha keeps doing some nefarious stuff. She moves to Havana and that's where she meets Charles Stoneham, who is the owner of the New York Giants. He is very rich. They had some hanky panky too, and he is so besauded by her that he's like, hey, come with in New York.
I'll give you an apartment on Park Avenue. There she has a lot of parties with cool people, like some actors and some criminals, and they all hang out and have a good time. And even with these luxuries, Buddha keeps doing some crime. In nineteen thirty two, when she's about forty five years old, she organizes a three hundred thousand dollars jewelry heist, but the New York police stop Buddha inside of a cab and they find all of
the stolen gems. She plays guilty at that trial and ends up serving four to eight years in Auburn prison. But the biggest sin that she committed in her life, according to the book Chicago confidential was that when she was arrested, she had turned white haired and fat, and no matter what Buddha Godman had done, she should have never grown old and never more than chubby, which became
her when she was most ravishing. So isn't that the lesson we learn on today's episode of American Filth that ladies, no matter what you've done, either committing fraud, extorting people, whatever, you don't deserve to be fat. I love men hue the credits. American Filth is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It is hosted, written, and sound designed by Me Gabby Wants. Our theme song is by me and Jesse Niswanger. Our executive producers are Virginia Prescott,
Elsie Crowley, and Brandon Barr. Please follow along with the pod on Instagram at American Filth Pod, and you can also leaves a review, subscribe, share it with your friends, Make your friends listen. If they don't, I'm gonna send Buddha Godman on them. I mean she's dead, but that's gonna be even creepier if there's a corpse. Okay, talk at you next week. Bye. School of Humans.