A DENTIST BECOMES A DOCTOR
By 1906 Chicago had grown from its origins as a tiny, frontier trading post to a metropolis of nearly two million people. After the city was rebuilt following the Great Fire of 1871 there was a wave of immigration. People arrived from all over Europe to work in factories, railway yards and slaughter houses. Instead of the American Dream, many found only poverty and disillusionment. As a result, Chicago became synonymous with militant unionism and violent strikes, but its spirit was unquenchable.
The teeming city would have been an exciting environment for Victor Ratten, with its dance halls, nightclubs, bars and billiard saloons. However, given his love of the turf, Victor was probably disappointed to discover that the city’s numerous racetracks had been forced to close. the previous year. In 1905 racing was outlawed in Illinois due to corruption and illegal betting On the plus side, the young dentist loved innovation and Chicago boasted the nation’s first skyscraper, along with a brand new network of electric trolley cars.
STATE STREET, CHICAGO IN 1907
Shockingly, the real reason Victor had made the journey to America was to procure a bogus medical diploma. For anyone wishing to do this, Chicago was the destination of choice. In the late 19th century, political forces in Illinois had led to the resignation of the Secretary of the State Board of Health. The weakened board allowed a proliferation of poor quality medical schools, with more than twenty ‘diploma mills’ being established between 1890 and the early 1900’s. This unhealthy climate also led to the selling of completely fake certificates. In 1910 a book length report on medical education in the United States by Abraham Flexner damned Chicago as ‘the plague spot of the country.’
How Victor was introduced to William Gayle French, who helped perpetrate his audacious fraud, remains a mystery. The plan must surely have been in place before the wealthy young dentist left Brisbane. At the time Victor arrived in Chicago, French was only 21 years old.
A TEACHING HOSPITAL IN A BANK
Here is how the scam worked. There had once been a legitimate college in Chicago called The Harvey Medical College. It conducted evening courses for working class men and women in Clark Street. When the college closed in 1905 the building was demolished and in its place rose the seventeen storey Fort Deerborn Bank.
THE FORT DEERBORN BANK BUILDING, CLARK STREET, CHICAGO
William French rented a small office at the bank and registered a fake medical college with a very similar name; The Harvey Medical College and Hospital. Its capital was listed as $3,000, no doubt put up by one Victor Ratten. For this reason the resulting diploma was far more expensive than the usual mail order variety. However, it would prove to be well worth the outlay.
When it was printed, the final two words ‘…and Hospital’ were omitted. Victor Richard Ratten was thus presented as a graduate of the original Harvey Medical College. Since the address of Clark Street was correct, the document appeared genuine. It was signed by the following men;
William Gayle French, A.M. M.D. President of Board of Directors
Harry P. Hurley. M.D. Dean of Faculty
M.A. Brown, M.D Secretary of Faculty
W.E. Warner, M.D. Secretary of Board of Directors
Harry P. Hurley was another charlatan, roped in by French. It appears that ‘doctors’ Brown and Warner were simply fictitious.
In a list of outstanding examination results, Victor was awarded almost perfect scores in the subjects that would become his greatest passion; surgery. Well, what a surprise!
Practice in surgery – 99%
General surgery – 98%
Diseases of the eye, ear, nose and throat – 80%
Optical -85% Diagnosis – 89%
Diseases of children – 85%
The five month wait for his diploma was not because Victor was undergoing even rudimentary training. It was because the fraudulent registration process was lengthy. In the meantime, he took time out for some unusual sightseeing.
The previous year, Upton Sinclair had published The Jungle, a best selling expose of corruption and unsanitary practices at the vast, Chicago livestock yards and abattoir. The centralised system had revolutionised the meat industry, but Sinclair wrote of horrors such as cholera infected hogs being processed and sold as potted meat.
From its inception the meat works had been a ghoulish tourist attraction, and Victor visited on two occasions. Ironically, his second visit was in company with, ‘a fellow medico’, probably William Gayle French. It is fair to say that the only demonstrations of anatomy and dissection Victor witnessed in Chicago took place at the meat works!
In early February Victor travelled 40 miles from Chicago to Zion City, on the shores of Lake Michigan. The community had been established as a religious utopia by the controversial Zionist prophet, John Alexander Dowie. Dowie was a Scottish born faith healer and confidence trickster who had begun his ‘ministry’ in Australia. In 1888 an insurance claim following a fire at his Melbourne church allowed him to pay off enormous debts. However, he was suspected of arson, and moved to the United States soon afterwards .
In 1893 Dowie cashed in on Chicago’s World’s Fair. He rented a property nearby where he performed ‘divine healings’. By planting stooges in the audience he attracted thousands of new followers. Many were gullible enough to deposit their life saving. By the time of Victor’s visit, Dowie had been deposed by a rival and was in very poor health. Nevertheless, Victor was impressed by his palatial 25 room mansion, particularly its extensive library.
THE NECESSARY DOCUMENT!
The Harvey Medical College ‘diploma’ awarded to Victor was dated March 8th 1907. Coincidently, John Alexander Dowie died at Zion City the very next day, aged fifty nine. He had once been prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license, so it could be said that he passed the baton of medical fraud onto Victor,
Here is a letter from the reputable Parke Davis Company, which authenticity to the fraudulent diploma.
It is hard to understand why Victor would want to leave his lucrative dental practice in Brisbane. While his diploma fraud was indefensible, he appears to have been motivated by a sense of vocation rather than mere monetary gain. It is possible that the saving of his diseased arm at Sydney Hospital had left him with a messianic calling to become a surgeon.
On the way home from his world tour, Victor called at Adelaide, where he presented his bogus diploma and stated that he had completed four years medical study. He was successfully registered there as a doctor. South Australia and Tasmania were the only two states where American qualifications were accepted. In Melbourne he boarded the Bass Strait steamer Loongana, bound for Launceston. Here. he applied for registration in Tasmania.
At the time, the governing medical body for the State was the Court of Medical Examiners. It would later be alleged that the Secretary, Dr. Crouch, had been unimpressed by Victor’s American diploma, and objected to registration being granted. However, another medico intervened and enlisted the support of the Court’s President, Dr. Edward Crowther. Dr Crouch was overruled. It’s interesting that as Secretary, Dr Crouch placed an advertisement in the Tasmanian Police Gazette dated July 5 1907, asking if anyone knew Dr. V.R. Ratten’s address, and whether he was practicing in Tasmania.
(On December 4 the following year, the examining body became the Medical Council of Tasmania. It ruled that American qualification were no longer to be accepted.)
While in Tasmania, Victor also took the opportunity to visit his family in Stanley. The following snippet appeared in the Circular Head Chronicle on May 29.
Dr. V.R. Ratten, son of the rector of this parish, who is an M.D. of the University of Chicago. is now on a short visit to his parents. He will probably accept an appointment in India in the investigation of the plague.
Good grief! How the Reverend Ratten could believe his son was a properly qualified doctor is a mystery. As for the bizarre mention of Victor investigating the plague in India, such an altruistic notion was completely alien to his character.
The Brisbane Courier reported the well known dentist’s return to the city in early June, also mentioning that he had completed his medical training in Chicago. He settled back into the Hotel Cecil. On July 3 he and his friend Dr Garde attended the theatre with a party which included Blanche Greaves. An advertisement in the Courier announced that Dr V.R. Ratten was about to resume work at The Ideal Dentists. Of course, now that he was a ‘doctor of medicine’, he was already planning to sell the practice.
Meanwhile, the Brisbane Courier had been provided with a fuller, completely fictitious account of Victor’s medical training in America. A lengthy article stated that he had completed a medical degree at Chicago University after previously spending four years there. This raises the intriguing question as what his friends made of the claim, especially Dr Garde and other members of the Automobile Club who were doctors themselves. Surely they realized it was untrue? One possibility, albeit unlikely, is that he had been planning the diploma fraud for a long time and had deliberately invented an appropriate background. That said, it would still have been difficult to explain how four years in Chicago fitted into his pre Brisbane history.
A more likely explanation is that Victor was a born risk taker, and glib enough to talk his way out of the trickiest situation. Also, since he was unable to register as a doctor in Queensland, his diploma did not come under scrutiny by that State’s medical authorities.
A young man about to commence practice as a rural GP needed a suitable wife, and Blanche Greaves was his choice. The pair had much in common, both raised with a love of music and the theatre. Blanche had enjoyed her brief stint with the Stephenson Comedy Company and Victor’s brother Frederick was a member of The Muffs, a theatre company in Launceston.
Unfortunately there was a serious impediment to the match. Both John and Maria Greaves were of Irish extraction, and strict Roman Catholics. Blanche had been educated at All Hallows Convent. It must have been extremely difficult for her parents to give their blessing to a marriage outside their faith. More to the point, the children of mixed marriages were considered bastards by the church hierarchy. An article published in The Catholic Press a few years later urged young women to convince their prospective husbands to convert; ‘ There is something radically wrong with the Australian Catholic girl….she is too frequently marrying a non-Catholic , jeopardizing her own happiness; and the souls of her children.’
But of course Victor was the son of a serving Anglican vicar, and a very persuasive young man. He and Blanche were married on October 29 1907 at St Mary’s Anglican Church, Kangaroo Point. It was a huge concession by the devout Greaves family. Blanche chose her younger sister Phyllis as bridesmaid and Victor’s close friend Dr Henry Garde was best man. The reception was a very quiet affair, held at the British Empire Hotel. The couple were toasted in champagne by close friends and family. The inter-faith marriage no doubt contributed to the low key celebrations.
‘Among the weddings of the week is that of one of our most eligible bachelors, Dr. Ratten, and Miss Blanche Greaves, one of a very pretty band of sisters. The happy couple spend their honeymoon in Melbourne at Cup time, and then – off for Tasmania.’ (The Queenslander, 9/11/1907)
Victor’s Ratten’s father would not have viewed his son’s marriage favourably either. In August 1901 he had lectured at Wyalong against a push to remove words in the Coronation Oath deeply offensive to Roman Catholics. ‘..that the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary or any other Saint, and the Sacrifice of the Mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous.’ The severe backlash that followed was the only blemish during his time in the parish.
On the morning after the wedding the couple embarked on the steamer Bombala for Melbourne, where they attended the spring racing carnival. Along with luminaries such as Dame Nellie Melba and Clara Butt, they were at Caulfield to watch a New Zealand bred horse called Apologue win the Cup. No doubt Victor took the opportunity to introduce his bride to his Melbourne relatives before travelling on to Tasmania. His uncle Arthur Ratten was a respected G.P with a practice in the suburb of Brunswick . Whether Dr Ratten was aware of the circumstances surrounding his nephew’s transition from dentist to fellow doctor is unknown.
At the beginning of January Victor and Blanche arrived in the rural community of Sheffield. They spent a few days at the local Caledonian Hotel, to allow Blanche to look around the town and its surroundings. Presumably she was happy with Victor’s decision to settle there; though in the circumstances it would have been difficult for her to raise objections.
The newlyweds then travelled back to Brisbane, to pack for their new life and to say goodbye to family and friends. Blanche was able to enjoy a final city concert. Victor ordered a new, 15h.p. four-cylinder Ford motorcar, which was to be shipped to Tasmania. Shortly afterwards there was another long trip south to Sheffield, where the Caledonian Hotel again became their temporary domestic base. Blanche advertised for a ‘good general servant’ . On March 1 the couple moved into the departing Dr Chisholm’s residence, on the corner of Main and Henry Streets. One can only hope there were some well read medical textbooks in Victor’s luggage, because he had been wielding his shiny new scalpels in the residence’s surgery since the first week of February.
TO BE CONTINUED…
