E. Virgil Neal: Hypnotist, Fraudster, Tycoon - Part 1

is this all the same guy? And I was like, yeah. His career had this seemingly bright start as a writer of accounting and banking textbooks that were very well regarded and used for decades because of how good they were, and then his life took some very wild turns into hypnotism, patent medicine, and fraud as well as an odd success. He is not a rags to riches story. He is

a swindler and flim flamman to riches story. Although he was plagued with the accusations of all kinds of crimes throughout his life, including collaborating with an enemy during wartime. So we're going to tackle e. Virgil Neil today and next episode because there's a lot to get through. It is a lot. We'll start with how youing. Virgil Neil was born in Georgetown, Missouri, to Armistead Arthur and Ellen Neil. That was in September of eighteen sixty eight. His birthplace

is frequently listed as Sedalia, Missouri. Georgetown is a smaller municipality that's just a few miles north of Sedalia. While Neil would later in his life claim that he had been born into a poor farming family, his father was actually a school teacher. They did own farmland, but that was not really the source of their income. Yeah, his

dad was a really well respected teacher. While Neil's earliest years aren't particularly well documented, which isn't that odd for somebody in his place in life, he did, we know, enter a two year business school program at Central Business College in Sidelia at the age of twenty. He went this route instead of attending a traditional university. Even before he graduated from the school, which happened in eighteen eighty nine, he was already working there, teaching courses like penmanship and

mental arithmetic. Basically how to do sums and ledgers in your head. Biographer Mary Schaeffer Conroy theorized in her biography about Neil that this arrangement may have been a deal that the school made with him to make paying for his courses more viable. After he graduated, he continued to work at the business school. Neil would later claim that he devised an arithmetic program that was taught to students so that they could quit we make calculations in their heads.

The school did taut a program like that in their marketing materials over the years, but whether or not he was the originator of it is not substantiated one way or the other. From Sedalia, Neil moved on to Philadelphia. He claimed to have worked at the Pierce College of Business in Pennsylvania Briefly. There's not substantiation for that either. Next, he moved on to Rochester, New York, and he worked at a textbook company there, and as part of his assignments,

he wrote the book Modern Banking and Bank Accounting. His company sold the rights to the book to the American Book Company, and Neil is said to have made a significant amount of money in that deal. American Book Company published the material as two separate books, Modern Illustrative Banking and Modern Illustrative Bookkeeping. He earned royalties on those two titles for the rest of his life. The books are

really quite practical. They represent a shift in the way that such concepts were taught to offer students a model of real business practices to work through so that they could understand the real world applications of their business education. Modern Illustrative Banking walks readers through the process of running a bank. Per its opening pages, the book quote is designed to reproduce as nearly as possible the practical workings

of a national bank. This came with sample documents and transactions quote to cover, in abbreviated form two days business of the First National Bank, Rochester, New York. During the first day, all of the business forms of the bank are handled by the student, but during the second day the business forms are dispensed with, and only the entries to the various transactions are recorded. Historical data for them being furnished in the text just for the purposes of

explaining my understanding. This isn't a course that you would take in two days. It just is broken out as though it is covering two days worth of business FYI. It breaks down what duties are done by various positions at the bank, and then at the end of these two days worth of sample business quote, dividends are declared,

statements made, and the books closed. Modern Illustrative Bookkeeping opens with the promise that it offers readers a new practical approach to the topic instead of the ways the bookkeeping has been taught up to that point. Quote. This book is designed to teach bookkeeping as it is practiced by the best business houses. We have no apology to offer for the innovations in methods or the deviation from the school forms of balance sheets, statements, loss and gain accounts,

et cetera. We believe the time has arrived when all progressive teachers will welcome practical business methods, even though they supplant long cherished school forms and practices. The book is pretty solid in its information. It basically lays out a two book system, one the journal day book to record transactions as they take place, and then the other the ledger into which those transactions are recorded as sorted into the accounts. The whole thing emphasizes checking and rechecking your

arithmetic to make sure your books are accurate. Next, after his success in these books, Neil decided that he would actually like to have his own publishing house, and he set one up in Rochester, New York. This was a case where he didn't look for writers to create new works, nor did he write anything himself during this time, but he sure did publish a lot. He looked for material that was out of copyright, and particularly poetry, and he

just republished that with no author to pay. His publishing company, which was pretty much just him, kept all of the money from sales. On June fifteenth, eighteen ninety three, as publishing success was making him a nice amount of money, Neil married a young woman named Molly Hurd. He was also developing a growing interest in hypnotism during this time, and he started studying it in earnest by the mid eighteen nineties. Some accounts say that he became interested in

this after seeing a stage hypnotist. That's not really something that can be verified, but there really would have been plenty of opportunities for him to have been exposed to this concept at the end of the nineteenth century in the US. We've talked about this recently on the show. This was a period when mysticism of any kind was becoming very popular, and it turned out that after learning the tricks of the trade, he was pretty good at

hypnotizing people. Was also during this time that a name we mentioned in our Emil Kua episode emerged, and that was Exlamotte Sage. Sage was a stage name that Neil assumed to advertise himself as an expert hypnotist toward the United States on bookings as Xenophon Lamont Sage, assisted by Olga Helen Sage, who was of course his wife Molly. The two of them were frequently booked in various vaudeville theaters, and it turned out that Exlamant Sage was pretty good

at bringing in the ticket sales. Hypnotism paid better than any position that business school had ever prepared Neil for, and seeing that the demand for hypnotism material was high, Neil leaned back into his publishing experience and wrote a correspondence course under that name called The Philosophy of Personal Influence. He also wrote a book called Hypnotism As It Is a Book for Everybody, which we talked about quite a bit in the Koua episode. These works were published at

Neil's latest company, he started so many. The New York Institute of Science and the works of Exlamant Sage were wildly popular. An account of Neil's life that was written in the nineteen thirties estimated that the New York Institute of Science made one point five million dollars from sales of books and hypnotism courses, all of which were shipped directly to customers' homes. That business model of direct sales eventually got the company and Neil into a lot of trouble.

The US Postal Service went after them for mail fraud because, among other things, he was teaching palmistry, and the company had to shudder. Coming up, we'll talk about a strange business arrangement that E. Virgil Neil established in the early nineteen hundreds, But first will pause or a sponsor break. Starting in nineteen oh three, the E. Virgil Neil and Company banking firm and the Columbia Scientific Academy, where Neil was a board member, kind of up the whole thing.

We're both operating out of the same offices at nineteen thirty one Broadway that was in the area west of Central Park where the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts now sits. And that combination of businesses seemed like an odd arrangement to members of the press. The New York Sun on March third, nineteen o three ran a piece titled Here's a hypnotic Bank, psychotelepathy, and a loan shop in one office.

That article describes how a British journalist had been investigating the Columbia Scientific Academy and had come away declaring it to be part of quote, the American Magnetic and Psychic

Force swindle. When this journalist had tried to cancel an order from the Academy and have his name removed from all future distribution lists, he got a letter signed by R. F. Robertson psych DCD, which read, in part quote, when I got your letter, I was attracted by your handwriting, like the educated eye of an artist who sees in a rough piece of marble an angel. My I caught in your handwriting at a glance, a whole life pictured vividly

before me. There was so much history in your handwriting, so much undeveloped power and latent energy and talent, that I could not destroy the letter without writing and extending my previous offer. The letter continues to talk about the journalist's handwriting, calling it quote one of the strongest I have ever seen, and accusing the journalist of having quote

neglected the development of those God given faculties. However, that lied dormant in every individual until brought to light and cultivated. The letter even claims that a special meeting of the board of the Columbia Scientific Academy was called to discuss this promising handwriting and make its writer a special offer on one of their courses. So when a reporter from the New York Sun read about all of this in the British periodical Truth, he decided to go to the

academy offices and see exactly what was going on. When he got there, he asked for mister Robertson and was presented with someone by that name, And when he started asking questions about that letter that had been republished in Truth, he suddenly got passed off to Evirgil Neil, and Neil was surprisingly frank in some of his answers to the questions this journalist posed, which he later almost certainly probably

wished he had not been. He was asked about the claim that the board of directors had met to discuss this amazing handwriting on a canceled order. Neil told the reporter that was actually, quote, a form of advertising, you know.

When he was questioned about who Robertson was and what the credential site dc D ment, he was told that Robertson was a banker who got a Doctor of Psychology from Iowa College, which accounted for the first D, and that the CD that followed stood for character delineator, a degree that Neil claimed Robertson got from the American College of Sciences in Philadelphia. Neil did not elaborate on what

that degree would actually involve. My research of that phrase only connects it to data set sequences and computer science should not have existed in nineteen oh three, so it seems to have been, you know, kind of one of those it will sound good and no one will know how to even question me about it kind of phrases.

The Columbia Scientific Academy, which former banker Robertson was president of, offered correspondence courses in the art of what it called chi magie or chi magi I don't know, which encompassed a variety of skills, including character reading. When the reporter asked about the bank located at the same age. Neil's initial response was, quote, how did you know about the bank? Maybe not media savvy yet at that stage of his cow.

Then he told the reporter that it was a private bank, not a public bank, and that as such it did not have to adhere to national laws, only to state laws, and that those were quote a little more lax. He also explained that because the bank's customers were mostly people and institutions who wanted short term loans, that only made

about five thousand dollars a year. The masterful part of the way this article was written is the way that the reporter kind of connects the dots between these two seemingly oddly paired businesses operating out of the same offices without ever like saying, hey, this is obviously wacky and fraudulent.

It states at one point, quote to show how nicely the chi magic end of the Columbia Scientific Academy dovetails with the banking end, and how harmoniously finance and the occult might be blended, the literature of the institution has just let himself loose. In one of the pamphlets, here's what it says. If you have not the money it will pay you to borrow the money if you invest in our course of instruction and master our course and

follow its teachings. It is probably the last dollar you will ever find it necessary to borrow as long as you live. So the article doesn't state whether there is any kind of direction or suggestion for the reader of such advertisement to borrow from the E. Virgil Neil and Company Bank. But even if it didn't, a bank that specialized in short term loans also housing a business with dubious claims that encourages people to take out such loans

pretty dicey at best. But though the copy definitely leads the reader to consider that problem. As I said before, the write up in the Sun is very careful not to explicitly state that these two businesses are connected. The next day, The New York Sun ran an article with the headline Worried about Neil and Company depositors You see don't like hypnotism in banking. And in this article, the paper shared a phone call that Neil had made to the paper in which he blamed the paper for causing

him problems. He stated on the phone quote that article printed in This Morning Sun about the bank has caused the bank some annoyance. Some of our depositors have been around this morning to find out what it all meant. They were uneasy, you see, about the money they had on deposit with us, and were inclined at first to withdraw their accounts. I told them it was all a mistake about the bank, and that I'd like to have

the Sun do something about it. When contacted for more information on what he wanted the paper to do, Neil said that quote, it was wrong to mix up the bank with the academy. There's no connection between the two. He was adamant that Robertson wasn't involved in the bank at all, and that the academy didn't teach hypnotism, but only included literature about hypnotism as an extra with its

regular courses. He went on to say that he had a report made by commercial credit reporting agency RG Dunn in Company that indicated that the banking concern was sound and above board. When The Sun contacted the State Superintendent of Banks, Frederick D. Kilburn, he said that the State Bank Department had quote no jurisdiction over such concerns as the banking house of E. Virgil Neil and Company, so far as an illegal supervision of such concerns goes, there

is none. They can run their business like a grocery store. So even though Neil admitted to the reporter that the company lied to people as a form of bad advertising, and even though there was an obvious shady connection between these two business entities, there were just never any real repercussions for this, aside from some of the banks customers

getting worried and maybe closing their accounts. Columbia Scientific Academy and many other shady businesses continued for Neil, and we'll talk more about that after we hear from the sponsors. To keep stuff you missed in history class going, following newspaper mentions of Neil and the Columbia Scientific Academy in the first years of the twentieth century offers a wild

breadcrumb trail of shady dealings. Just four days after Neil's interaction with The Sun, advertisements for the Columbia Scientific Academy seemed to explode in number in papers across the country. And the copy is so obviously dis one that appeared in the San Francisco Examiner is designed to look like a regular article, and its titled personal magnetism. It's subheaders taut how this is something that prominent men used to gain influence, and how a reporter stumbled across secret methods

to quote, charm and fascinate the human mind. And it also notes that this information came from high priests of the occult who had kept the secrets for years. That ad, which again was disguised as an article, says that quote, one of the leading colleges of the city of New York had spent five thousand dollars having ten thousand copies of a book titled The Secret of Power, printed in accordance with the author's wishes to be given away for free. If you sent your name an address to the Columbia

Scientific Academy. The write up said, you could get your free copy in the mail, and in it you could quote develop a wonderfully magnetic person personality and learn how to read the character's secrets and loves of others in

a few days study. That study would be done at home, and then you could use your new knowledge to get quote, lucrative employment or an advance on your salary, or you could just gain friendship and influence, all without anybody being any The wiser about you being in control of their behavior. There are several testimonials from alleged satisfied customers included in this ad. They included all the hallmarks of like modern

infomercial sales. One from a man named Fred Perkins reads quote, I have been in great demand since I read the work of the Columbia Scientific Academy. People are amazed and mystified at the things I do. I believe I could make twenty five dollars per day reading character alone if I were to charge for my services. If anyone would have told me I would receive so much wonderful information,

I would have thought him crazy. The ad then closes by asking that only people who are really interested in this information request a copy, since there is a limited supply of them. This free giveaway, of course, was a way for the Academy to build up its mailing list and then start sending these interested people literature about their courses to lure them into spending their money, just the way that British journalist was told his handwriting was fascinating

and evidence to person with incredible untapped power. We can help you unleash that power if you just send us some cash. There is another interesting exchange in that initial write up in The Sun from March fourth. The report that Neil produced to show that the banking firm was above board also mentioned his involvement in another business, National Protective Association of the United States. When questioned about that one, Neil said that it was an insurance company and that

he was no longer connected with it. It was still operating at the time the reporter spoke with E. Virgil Neil, and it was headquartered in the very same building as the banking house of E. Virgil Neil and Company and the Columbia Scientific Academy. Though Neil acted nonchalant in this exchange between him and the reporter and kind of like he had forgotten that company was under the same roof.

It's a weird detail. This isn't necessarily like a breadcrumb to connect the dots, but it offers up another piece of evidence that he seemed to be constantly on the move from career to career, starting up sort of a shell game of businesses, always looking for the next way to make a buck, often by trading on the hopes of naivete or of his potential customers. He had been dodging negative attention just enough to stay out of trouble.

But his next venture found itself in the spotlight, and a huge scandal broke that implicated a lot of people, many of them very well respected. While Neil faced a number of legal problems all through his life because of his business dealings, he was also sued for more personal reasons. In nineteen oh four, he was sued by a man named John Showerman for using his influence to cause Missus

Showerman to abandon her husband. It's unclear how or if that legal action was resolved, but it is evidence that E. Virgil Neil was kind of perpetually in hot water. Yeah, and reading sort of the longish biography that exists about him, I couldn't even include all the ones there's like. Oh, and then he got sued for swindling a widow out of her money, like on a kind of more one to one swindle basis, rather than setting up a whole company.

And there were a lot of instances like that. Apparently also a bit of a womanizer, so that caused him some problems. But undaunted by all of the legal attention he frequently got, Neil started other questionable businesses, but one, the New York Institute of Physicians and Surgeons, was one that he eventually tried to distance himself from when it got in trouble with authorities. The man who was really the driver of that business was Neil's colleague, Thomas F. Adkin.

They had worked on a lot of these kind of bizarre business schemes together. The main product of this entity that it sold was something called videopathy. Ads for viteopathy are wild, and they were laid out again to look like articles with titles like a Message to the Sick. The claim was that Adkin could cure people of all manner of infirmities and even bring them back from the brink of death. It was free to get a consultation and then, according to their ads quote, charges for treatment

are moderate. There was even a mail order option if you couldn't get to Adkin in person. There were some basic pieces of medical advice involved in the information they would give out. Some medications were issued, There were dietary guidelines that they gave to people to follow, but that all seems pretty benign. There were, however, a lot of

really dubious elements to videopathy. One write up claimed that the in home treatment involved taking some sort of tonic and then staring into the eyes of a photograph of one of the company's doctors who was scheduled to concentrate on you at the exact same time. There was a letter that the company sent out to patients that offers instructions and what sounds a lot like auto suggestion, which we talked about in the KOA episode. It told patients

to think very hard about getting well. It diverbally speak phrases that supported that idea. When Adkins and Neil were charged with fraud, Neil's counsel made clear during the hearing that videopathy was entirely the work of Adkin, not him. A fraud order shut down the New York Institute of Physicians and Surgeons on August second, nineteen oh five, and E.

Virgil Neil kind of emerged relatively unscathed. That next venture was a company called Force of Life Chemical Company, although it was often shortened to just Force of Life Company. In January nineteen oh six, headlines started hitting the papers like claimed to raise the dead and Roosevelt causes the rests in big medical scandal and gigantic swindle probably bared. All of these were about the Force of Life Company. And here's what happened. An advertisement for Force of Life

crossed the desk of President Theodore Roosevelt. It read, in part quote, in the glare of a midnight light bending over his crucible and retorts, Doctor William Wallace Hadley cried, triumphantly, I have it he had succeeded in making a rare chemical combination of concentrated extracts, which might truly be called liquid life. There it was, glimmering in its sheen of ruby, read, while the retort itself seemed to quiver and vibrate, as if in the effort of restraining the tremendous dynamic force

it held. There was less than the force of life, the power that makes men live and think. Without this subtle essence in your system, death would occur before you could read three of these lines. With it in sufficient quantity, you can combat any disease. To discover and make the vital principle of life has been the dream of the chemist and the goal of the medical professor of all ages.

In addition to that ad, a letter was also mailed out by the company to prospective customers, presumably from a mailing list gathered up in one of their many other little industries, and it read quote doctor Hadley's modest art by his mysterious control over disease and death. Doctor Wallace Hadley, the eminent thomaturgic panopathist of this city, has made the human heart beat again in the body of a woman

rescued from the grave. And as a result of his successful experiment, he makes the startling statement that no disease should cause death. He claims to have discovered the vital principle of life itself, the dynamic force that creates and maintains existence. He seems to have absolute control over human life and the diseases that attack it. These materials, which intimated that death could be thwarted by less than, offered

to shipboarders anywhere in the US. And it had been sent to the President after it had been received by a woman from Springfield, Missouri, and President Roosevelt forwarded it to the Postmaster General, George Bruce Cordial, you who open an investigation. By the way, less than might sound familiar because it's used in all kinds of products. It's kind of an umbrella term under which a variety of fatty

substances from both animal and plant sources are grouped. The defining characteristic of less than is that it attracts both bats and water, so it's really effective. It's smoothing out the texture of foods and acting as an emulsifier. Less Than is also taken as a supplement. It's used in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. It is definitely not the Elixir of Life. Its discoverer, though, is on Holly's episode shortlist. Sure is, it's another French scientist trying to space them out. I swear.

Investigators quickly uncovered more problematic evidence. In this case, they set up a sting of sorts by writing to Force of Life posing as patients. One such fake patient was named Lucille Hoffmann, and she wrote to the company that she was twenty two and she wrote this sort of plaintive letter where she shared very personal information about herself and her health struggles. And at first she got pretty standard replies about various things she could do to improve

her health. But when she wrote back again she is not a real person. When she wrote back that she was not getting any better, she was asked to submit a blood sample and The investigator that was working this case sent in a bottle of blood from a horse, and he received a reply that Lucille was sadly dealing with an array of medical ailments, some quite serious. This investigator actually said jokingly in his testimony about all of this that the prognosis was so bad that he felt

sorry for the horse. There was also what was alleged to be a personal message from doctor Wallace Hadley to this woman that read quote, I cure disease. I combat any and all maladies, make hopeless invalids well, I unclasp the remorseless fingers of death. I stop the rush with

which Father time hurries you to the grave. Another faux patient created by postal investigators that kind of went through this same process got a slightly different but similar note which invoked the Bible by quoting Matthew eleven twenty eight. It read, do not be skeptical, have confidence in me. Be sure as I am that I can cure disease. Come ye who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Reverently I repeat the words, and sacredly will I fulfill the trust put in me by the great Healer.

I can say no more that seems like a fun place to stop for the day, although we will be saying a whole lot more about this case and E. Virgil Neil next time. Oh, E Virgil Neil, you're cracking me up. Baby. I honestly loved doing this research, but right now I'm gonna love listener mail, kay, because it involves nothing flim flammy, one of my favorite things, which

is sewing, and a particularly delightful project. This is from our listener Katie, who we read an email from not that long ago, but it's an update on what's been going on with her project. She had sent in an email that included some Han and Mansion embroidery that I was very excited about. Katie writes, High, Holly and Tracy, y'all were pretty intrigued with my Han and Mansion embroidery a couple of months ago. It isn't abandoned, but this

is the sewing that was occupying me recently. My ten year old daughter, whose name I'm not going to say just because she's very young, is portraying Abigail Adams for Living History at our small classical school tonight. The whole ensemble having made a Muslim first easily took me upwards of forty hours. She picked the fabric, which I think is gorgeous. Fifth grader's portray American history figures up to

roughly eighteen twenty, and six graders portray anyone. From then on, I've been visiting the classes before they choose their subjects with lists of less obvious figures as suggestions. And yes, many of the people on my suggestion list are people I have heard about on your show. Among others, tonight we have fifth graders as Patrick, Henry, Sybil Luddington to Squantum,

and someone's own ancestors named Nancy Hart. Six grade choices among others are Frederick Douglass, Ted Williams, Sonora Webster Carver, and Henry Ford. Past years have seen Maria Talchief, Milton Hershey, Juliet Child, John Marr, and Alvin York. Anyway, thanks again, and hope you'd like to see the sewing. This dress turned out so pretty and so sweet, and I just love it. I am so delighted and I can't even imagine,

like how joyous it must be. Listen, when I was a kid, before I was good enough to sew my own clothes, it was always really delightful when I got to pick the fabric for something. So it shows on your beautiful daughter's face how much she loves that fabric. I love that fabric. She looks phenomenal. So congratulations. I love this. I love this so much of everything about it. Give me all the cute historical costumes on kids. Who doesn't want to learn about history by dressing up like it?

That was the best part. I just had such a weird flashback to an awkward moment in seventh grade that did not come up in my head until just this moment. We'll talk about it on behind the scenes anyway. Thank you for writing and sharing that beautiful picture with us, and you're adorable letter, and I just love how you're helping people learn about history this way. I'm now thinking about the thing and I can't stop laughing. If you would like to write to us, you can do so

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