Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class E. Virgil Neal: Hypnotist, Fraudster, Tycoon, Part 2 About this episode In the early 20th century, Neal's company Force of Life was investigated for fraud. But somehow, Neal managed to get through the scandal and went on to found a cosmetics company that became very successful.
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2:08 Speaker 02 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:18 Speaker 02 Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey. And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. This is part two of a two parter, and this is an instance where you really do have to listen to the first part before you jump into this one, or it's not going to make any sense, because we are picking up right in the middle of the fraud case against E. Virgil Neal's company, Force of Life, for the completely bogus treatments that it advertised and sent consumers through the mail. We are also, in this episode, going to get to the company that finally shifted Neal into a position as a head of a pretty respected business in the beauty industry, although it too had some roots in its old charlatan ways in its
3:01 Speaker 02 beginnings. So we left off in part one, as the news was breaking that investigators on a joint task force headed up by the postmaster general, had been digging into Neal's business dealings for about a year to put together a case against Force of Life, and that is where we are picking up. So the investigation into Force of Life quickly revealed that not only Neal and his immediate associates, but also a number of prominent men were all part of this company. A lot of them were high ranking officers at one or more banks. Others had invested heavily in a company called New York Food and Chemical Company, which was a wholesaler
3:45 Speaker 02 that Force of Life purchased medications from. But the biggest scandal was that the company was tied to General James R. O'Byrne, sometimes reported incorrectly as John R. O'Byrne. James Rowan O'Byrne was born in Ireland on September 25, 1839. His family moved to the US before he turned one to escape the Great Hunger, and O'Byrne grew up entirely in the US. He attended Fordham University, was valedictorian of his graduating class, became a lawyer before enlisting at the start of the American Civil War. He was part of the 37th New York Regiment, which was known colloquially as the Irish Rifles.
4:30 Speaker 02 He was a decorated soldier. He earned a Medal of Honor after being wounded in battle. He suffered three bullet wounds, one through the lung. He was discharged and became the Provost Marshal of Washington DC. He very famously was part of the manhunt that ended in John Wilkes Booth capture after President Abraham Lincoln was shot and then he guarded the president's deathbed. He held a number of posts in Washington DC after the Civil War ended and eventually moved back to New York City. And this man, frequently referred to as a hero, understandably based on all that stuff I just read, apparently ended up tangled with E. Virgil Neil.
5:14 Speaker 02 O'Byrne was listed as the president of Force of Life. And the New York Times, like other papers, followed this entire case closely. By January 17th of 1906, the paper was reporting that the company's offices were being dismantled. And according to the Times, quote, "E. Virgil Neil, the originator and first president of the Force of Life Chemical Company, for whom post office inspectors armed with warrants have been searching several days in this city, Washington and Syracuse, is still at large." Neil is charged with conspiracy to defraud by use of the United States mails jointly with Dr. William Wallace Hadley, chief medical director, Mrs. Laura M. Wilson, consulting
5:58 Speaker 02 medical director, and Arthur H. Williams, treasurer of the Force of Life concern. These three Force of Lifers have already been arrested and are now out on $2,500 bail each. That write-up also noted that O'Byrne had made a statement through his attorney that he had no part in the company's day-to-day management. Another article appearing in an Illinois paper noted, quote, "General O'Byrne was seen following the arrests, but his counsel refused to allow him to be interviewed."
6:32 Speaker 02 If it sounds like a lot had happened in the lead up to this story breaking publicly, that's because it had. The investigation, complete with those ongoing back and forth correspondences between the force of life company and federal agents posing as customers, which we talked about in some detail in part one, had been quietly playing out for a full year before any warrants were issued or arrests were made. And as the investigation was made public, it was revealed that the whole thing had been a joint effort. After Roosevelt had gotten the US Post Office involved, Assistant US District Attorney Clarence Houghton was also brought on, as well as two men who served as counsel for
7:14 Speaker 02 the New York County Medical Society, Champ S. Andrews and John S. Cooper. As investigators were working on collecting evidence, the legal team was building their case. One of the documents that came to light in the investigation was a letter written by Dr. Hadley's colleague Laura M. Wilson to E. Virgil Neal. It hinted that Obern may have been either suspecting something was going on at force of life, or just really wanted to be on top of the company's business activities, and that Wilson and Neal were trying to figure out how to keep some aspects of the business away from him by preventing the company's secretary from taking down everything that was said in a meeting.
7:59 Speaker 02 That letter was printed in part in the New York Times, and it read, quote, "You do not state why General Obern wanted you to take the minutes of the meeting. I do not believe he realizes fully what you have to do. I hope you will read my letters to the committee. Ms. Nykirk is trusted with a good many confidential things. It seems to me she might be safely trusted to do this. Should anything of any private nature come up, she could be excused from the room, and you can take this part of the report and mail it as a supplementary report." But if Ms. Nykirk cannot be trusted to take work of this kind, it will be necessary to get someone who can be trusted.
8:44 Speaker 02 Because even if you had time, there are too many things of greater importance that you should do. Yeah, basically, like, just tell the secretary to leave the room sometimes. It's fine. She just won't take that down and he'll never know. He doesn't need to know. So it does seem like they were trading on Oberon's good name. While they knew they were doing really nefarious stuff. And keeping him from knowing about the nefariousness. Yeah.
9:12 Speaker 02 What the New York Times described as, quote, "reams of lurid force of life pamphlets, circulars, and correspondence had been turned over or seized as those various members of the force of life staff had been arrested. And it enabled investigators to piece together the way that the whole operation functioned." Some of the pills the company provided, and I'm using the word pills very loosely, as you'll see in a moment, were touted in this seized material as life ray capsules. And the literature claimed that they contained radium and suggested that they could prolong human life to 200 years. On the upside, they did not actually contain any radium at all. They were found to have phosphorus in them when they were tested.
9:57 Speaker 02 But these were also capsules that you were not supposed to take orally. It was claimed that they just gave off emanations of, quote, "wonderful revitalizing power that would cure disease and improve health." Customers were sent these capsules for free on loan after signing a pledge that they would return them once their treatment was complete. Other courses of treatment laid out in correspondence with patient customers ranged from folk remedies to the reading of poetry. There was also, among the acquired documents, a letter from a person who was very angry that they had not been paid for the fictional testimonials they had provided force of life.
10:40 Speaker 02 And it came to light that those many blood samples that people sent them after they were requested, those had been going right in the trash. No one analyzed them. The only scientific equipment found at the offices was a single microscope and a handful of test tubes. Based on what I read, it didn't sound like those had ever been in use. But all of this theater was part of luring clients into the idea that they were working with a benevolent company that truly wanted to help them. And then, once that trust was established with people who were gullible or desperate, it was really easy to transition to selling them treatments. E. Virgil Neal was also running a food manufacturing business at the same time that Force of Life was operating.
11:25 Speaker 02 This one was called Neal Biscuit Company, and it manufactured foods that were marketed as digestion aids. This company didn't ever get rolled into any of Neal's legal issues, though. It did have ties to the New York Food and Chemical Company, so that was there. The same company that prominent New Yorkers had invested in is the manufacturer of medications purchased for use by Force of Life. So, these things were kind of connected, but no legal fallout from that one. No. This man was so good at shell companies and like obscuring the truth by having 22 different
12:07 Speaker 02 legal entities sprouting off of one another, none of which could be easily traced. We'll talk more about that, but here's the thing. In all of this, everyone wanted to hear, of course, from E. Virgil Neal, but nobody could find him. A thorough search of the company's Syracuse office, where he was rumored to be hiding, turned up nothing. The janitor of the building was questioned, and he told investigators that Neal had last been there late Saturday afternoon. But that information was a little problematic because it contradicted a statement that his mother had made, that he had left Syracuse for Manhattan on Friday, the day before the janitor claims to have seen him last. No one seemed to know where he was, but there were a lot of rumors circulating about it.
12:51 Speaker 02 Various accounts placed him in hiding right there in Syracuse. Others said that he was at a sanitarium because he was very ill and getting treatment. And other accounts, including his mother's, said that he had left the country entirely. Coming up, we'll talk about why federal authorities were so eager to pursue the Force of Life case and how it played out. But first, we will pause for a sponsor break.
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15:28 Speaker 02 Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesse have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy
16:13 Speaker 02 only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
16:27 Speaker 06 Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.
17:09 Speaker 06 This new chicken nugget, reinvented, based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.
17:28 Speaker 02 A lot of the fervor around force of life and the official charges against its officers, that was conspiracy to obtain money under false pretenses by the use of the United States mail, was fueled by the same concerns that led to the creation of the first consumer protection law in the United States, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. That piece of legislation, which was also known as the Wiley Act after the chief chemist at the US Department of Agriculture, was, per its own description, "an act for preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated, or misbranded, or poisonous, or deleterious
18:07 Speaker 02 foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for regulation therein, and for other purposes." So this was obviously not an effort that sprung up out of nowhere. According to the Food and Drug Administration, almost 100 pieces of proposed legislation related to food and drug regulation had been introduced into Congress between 1879 and the passing of the 1906 law in June that year. This was a time before drugs had to be approved by the FDA to go to market, and patent medicines were common, and they were often very dangerous. Like, if it was benign but just got your money, that was the best possible outcome. A lot of these had really, really scary stuff in them. Those LifeRay capsules had been
18:51 Speaker 02 a focus of concern because of all of this, as this whole cause got underway. But the case against force of life sputtered. Among other things, one official testified that he had learned that Neil had been offered consultation from the brother of a Chicago Attorney General that would ensure force of life's literature was written and edited in a way that they would be able to avoid mail fraud charges. In return for money, of course. And Neil apparently refused this deal. From there, the case really unraveled, and then it fell apart. The charges were dismissed on April 24, 1904.
19:34 Speaker 02 There's an alternate version of this story as told by the American Medical Association in its 1915 publication, Medical Mail Order Frauds. That version states that, quote, "When it was found that an influential New York politician, General James R. O'Byrne, was president of it, the investigation ceased. The newspaper publicity, however, killed the business." While the stories in the newspapers certainly didn't help, Neal would later say that the legal costs of defending the company were what had wiped it out. E. Virgil Neal emerged from hiding after the case had ended, and he did not publicly disclose where he had been.
20:16 Speaker 02 At the end of April, the Syracuse Post Standard ran the story, "Neal Returns for Business." The article noted, quote, "When asked last night as to his plans and in regards to his whereabouts and doings for the past few months, he answered, absolutely nothing to say. To every question, he gave the same reply." This article also commented on the rumors that Neal had been in a sanitarium for his ill health, noting, quote, "Neal does not look as if he had been ill." Now, obviously, you cannot tell by looking at a person if they are sick. That is a huge issue in disability rights. But all of the write-ups about Neal during this time noted how very healthy he looked
20:57 Speaker 02 and acted, pointing out that the rumor of illness seemed to have simply been a ruse of some sort to help wiggle out of appearing in court. He still had the Neal Biscuit Company, and for a brief period, went back to his same old claims about improving people's health with his products. He set up multiple other business ventures that operated in similar ways to those we've already discussed. Advertising free services and then offering items for sale using the advertorial style of placement in newspapers that made ads look like articles, and offering up testimonials that weren't easily traced to actual clients.
21:39 Speaker 02 But these other ventures all struggled and in 1907, E. Virgil Neil declared bankruptcy. One aspect of Neil's life that is very, very fuzzy in all of these years around the scandal is his marriage. His wife Molly, who we mentioned briefly in part one, kind of vanishes from his story. According to biographer Mary Schaefer Conroy, she doesn't get mentioned in the public record again until her death in 1944, at which point she was living in Arizona away from E. Virgil Neil. It is unclear if she left when the force of life scandal and the hearing were playing out, or if the couple had been estranged in some way before that.
22:23 Speaker 02 There are even rumors and speculation that he left her for another woman. She was still listed as married to Neil in her obituary, but it's unclear if there ever was a divorce. But in any case, by then Neil had remarried twice. In fact, there is so much haze around E. Virgil Neil's romantic partners and marriages that it is almost impossible to put together a clear picture. This is a problem that stems from a couple of things, right? There is the fact that Neil was a very messy man in a lot of ways, and particularly in his relationships with women. He was involved allegedly with a lot of women. The other problem is that official accounts and records listing the women he was seen
23:07 Speaker 02 with often just call them Mrs. E. Virgil Neil rather than specifying their names. So aside from the fact that people who are married to other people are still humans with their own names and should be recognized as such, the historical record, like the practice of calling women Mrs. their husband's name, makes things like this very, very difficult to figure out.
23:31 Speaker 02 Additionally, he also sometimes traveled with women from his family, like his mother and his sisters. So it's unclear if the women that were sometimes with him, which were sometimes called Miss or Mrs. Neil, were actually, you know, benign relatives or actually paramours.
23:49 Speaker 02 Some versions of his life list a woman named Emma as his first wife. There was a woman named Emma with him at one point on a ship manifest, but it is unclear who that woman was to him. His first wife's name was Molly. The nature of his relationships with the other women that he married also causes some confusion. His second wife, Harriet Metta Meister, had been called his wife for quite a while before they actually got legally married. And she seems to have been in the picture with perhaps a little bit of overlap with his first wife, Molly. Harriet and Neil were consistently together by 1907. So there's just so much confusion to try to untangle here.
24:30 Speaker 02 And we will get into his third wife later, which has its own set of rumors. As we mentioned a moment ago, Neil started up a handful of ventures in the aftermath of the Force of Life scandal, most of which came and went at a pretty rapid pace. But one that he founded in 1907, after his bankruptcy, actually had some lasting power. And that was Tukalot Manufacturing Company. Like many of his other businesses at that time, it started in Syracuse and it would become a very lucrative international brand. We will talk a lot more about Tukalot after we hear from the sponsors that keep the show going.
25:14 Speaker 02 Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy
25:59 Speaker 02 only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
26:13 Speaker 06 Okay, Chicken Nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old Chicken Nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new Chicken Nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better Chicken Nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself. This new Chicken Nugget, reinvented,
26:58 Speaker 06 based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.
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28:55 Speaker 02 One thing to note about E. Virgil Neil, and we've alluded to it already, and it also would be obvious even if we hadn't, was how adept he had become at obfuscating the details of any given business's ownership and leadership structure. He would register the addresses of businesses, sometimes at his home address, other times at offices, but rarely was he listing them where they were actually operating. Similarly, his executives associated with the business often included people who were only minimally connected to it, or he would sometimes list himself as an owner, president, et cetera, in one filing, but list someone else on another. In instances where he was required to list out a group of executives,
29:39 Speaker 02 they were often mentioned only with a last name, making it difficult to impossible to try to verify or track those people down. There were almost certainly some fictitious employees among them. This was all done to create a muddled paper trail that made things like legal actions and tax tracking more difficult. And with Toukaline, he also made a new choice in marketing only to women, and often making his wife Harriet the front and center in the advertising, which made it less obviously associated with him. Toukaline was also a different path for Neil because it was a beauty brand, and it may have existed as a venture of Harriet's before Neil got involved with it.
30:24 Speaker 02 The name Toukaline was supposedly coming from Greek, meaning the beautiful, although this is a whole concept in the ancient Greek world. It doesn't just mean physical beauty. It's a broader concept than that. The company's advertising followed the same exact playbook and sales tactics that he had been using for years, placing advertorials in newspapers. These would once again include testimonials of people helped by Toucan's products and would offer information and beauty advice at no charge. In some cases, write-ups would include recipes so people could make the products themselves at home.
31:07 Speaker 02 However, they always included an ingredient that needed to be ordered directly from Toucan. These were touted as proprietary ingredients, but analysis later showed that they were usually common things like rosewater that had been kind of doctored up with other ingredients like colorants and glycerin. If a customer didn't want to make the concoction herself and risk making errors with that, she could also just order the pre-made version from Toucan. One ad that ran in numerous papers in 1909 was written, according to a splashy graphic at the top, by the Countess de Curgamo, not a real person.
31:49 Speaker 02 And it described how she had been born into nobility but was, alas, sadly, not beautiful, and how she had sought help from many beauty experts, but they all came up short until she found Toucan products, including Toucan complexion powder, creme Toucan, Toucan perfume, Toucan dentacreme, and Toucan talcum powder, as well as various preparations that made use of these and other products. This very lengthy write-up concludes with a note that a local supplier has plenty of these products in stock to meet the growing demand and that consumers should call and reserve them. The Countess de Curgamo was just one of a long line of fictitious women cooked up by
32:32 Speaker 02 Neal to promote Toucan. The same year there's Ads were running, Neal set up a production facility in France. It appeared the beauty business was going really well. And as France and specifically the village of Grasse on the Riviera was known as the place for quality perfume being made, Neal got a home there to oversee the factory workings. He still maintained a home in New York. Although E. Virgil Neal continued to run a variety of quick money businesses, including a corset manufacturing concern that was also under the Toucan branding umbrella. It seemed as though his cosmetics business and especially the perfume line was becoming
33:17 Speaker 02 legitimate and somewhat respected. As it gained reputation, Neal pivoted away from some of his shadier advertising practices and more toward what you'd expect from a legitimate perfume and cosmetics brand. He still used testimonials, but they almost all featured his wife, Harriet. And the practice of giving something away for free and then offering a tie in for purchase slowly disappeared. He also started expanding into offices in London as well as France and started to more carefully ensure that Toucan didn't have any crossover associations with his more dubious business ventures.
33:58 Speaker 02 In some cases, this meant founding new companies to handle things like patent medicines so that they could be removed from Toucan's factories. As part of this reorg, Toucan, which had always had a hyphen after its first syllable, so it was T-O dash K-A-L-O-N, became one non-hyphenated word, just Toucan. And beauty products were all under that company. Some of the product line at that point was retired, some of them were renamed, and eventually makeup products like eyebrow and lip pencils, rouge, face powders, and a skin beautifier that sounds like a foundation or a concealer were all added to the line.
34:39 Speaker 02 One aspect of this new setup that Neal was able to really manipulate was the multinational identity of the business. In the US advertisements, he'd talk about Tuchelon's European identity. And then in Europe, he sometimes introduced new products or renamed old products as being the latest development from America. Also in Europe, he was able to parlay his relative anonymity into a rewritten image for himself. He started to tell versions of his life story and education that weren't entirely accurate or left out, things like his various accusations of fraud. And these strategies worked really well. Tuchelon started bringing in massive
35:24 Speaker 02 profits and E. Virgil Neal became incredibly wealthy in the process. He was able to expand sales of the Tuchelon product line into a lot more countries around the world. He basically had a beauty empire. Yeah, when we say a lot more countries, I'm not going into all of it because it gets really big. But like, we're talking like into Russia and the Soviet Union eventually, into Australia, into Asia. Like, he was kind of all of the continents but Antarctica. He was hitting them with product at that point. In Europe, all of the scandal of the early 1900s was kind of left behind. And Neal, who was now a rich and respected businessman,
36:04 Speaker 02 moved in very heady circles. In September of 1910, The New York Times reported that Neal was given an audience with Pope Pius X, along with the former president of the force of life company, O'Byrne. It read, quote, "James R. O'Byrne, with Mr. and Mrs. E. Virgil Neal of New York, came this week from Monte Carlo to Rome, where an introduction from Archbishop Ireland obtained for them the honor of private audience of the Holy Father, to whom they were presented by Monsignor Hermano Svenniero."
36:37 Speaker 02 The Pope was extremely kind and had the whole party sit next him at his desk as the audience took place in the Pontiff's private library. He gave Mrs. Neal a photograph of himself with a long autograph inscription, which he wrote in the visitors' presence. When they went, he insisted on accompanying them to the door of the room. What's interesting is that during all this, he did still have a number of shady businesses and related lawsuits back in the United States. During World War I, Neal and his wife Harriet were back in the US on a number of occasions. And during that time, a product of his called Nuxated Iron was the focus of a fresh accusation of fraud.
37:21 Speaker 02 The product was manufactured by Day Health Laboratories of Detroit, at least on paper. In reality, it was produced in offices Neal had in New York. The claim of Nuxated Iron was that it would, quote, "increase vigor, snap, and staying power." Ad copy talked about how it would enrich the blood and bring color back to the face. Its listed ingredients were, quote, "organic iron in the form of iron peptinate, Nuxvamica, and glycerol phosphate of calcium." Nuxvamica sounds very gross, and there was not much Nuxvamica in it, just 1/500 of a grain in each tablet, but that was actually strychnine.
38:06 Speaker 02 The biggest issue for critics, bigger than that, anyway, was that it claimed to be a wonder drug when its main ingredient, which was iron, was commonplace and readily available. That wasn't the only problem, though. One of the drug's medical endorsers, Dr. Howard James, was convicted for dispensing drugs illegally and admitted that he had a drug misuse problem of his own. Other doctors that endorsed Nuxated Iron had similarly problematic backstories, including faked work histories and fake credentials. In April of 1918, Neal was arraigned on a fraud charge in New York. He entered a not guilty plea and was detained with bail set at 5:00. Thousand dollars.
38:52 Speaker 02 Neal's behavior in this case was very different from his previous charges with force of life. He did not go into hiding. He showed up for his arraignment with his lawyer. He paid his bail and then he sued the New York Tribune for libel over calling him a quack in their coverage over it. This is conjecture on my part, but all of this seems a little bit as though his took along business was legitimizing and he wanted this nuxated iron problem to be handled swiftly in an way that cleared his name as much as possible. He was, at the same time, named in a lawsuit for mail fraud related to another company he was associated with, the Cartilage Company, which sold a harness by mail that it claimed
39:35 Speaker 02 could stretch a user's vertebrae and increase their height. In these cases, as before, Neal's lawyer also worked to distance E. Virgil Neal from the products, claiming that really they were the work of someone else and thus get him out from under any responsibility for them. I was not able to find any sort of clear indicator of how these few cases we've just been talking about resolved, but nuxated iron was sold for years after this, so it seems to have been resolved in favor of the company in some way. After World War I, Neal appears to have spent almost all of his time in Europe, including
40:13 Speaker 02 building a new sprawling mansion called Chateau d'Azur in a village north of Nice. This was also a time when his second marriage ended that's similarly nebulous, the way his first marriage did, although we do know that he and Harriet legally divorced and that he almost immediately remarried to a much younger woman named Renee Bodier. There were rumors that Neal had become obsessed with Renee after meeting her when she was still a teenager and that she may have lived at his house as a sort of adopted daughter before his marriage to Harriet ended.
40:53 Speaker 02 That's one of many things in these episodes that's not substantiated and it may have endured over the years because Renee lied about her own age to appear younger than she was.
41:06 Speaker 02 We really don't have any additional solid information about how Neil and his third wife met and became romantically involved, but they did get married on July 28th, 1924. A few months later, on October 13th, the couple welcomed a baby, a son that they named after Neil's alter ego from his hypnotism days. The baby was Zen Lamott Neil. Perhaps the most intriguing part of Neil's story is how easily his image was rehabilitated. The many shady dealings of his life largely seemed to vanish from public memory, even in the US. In 1933, Time Magazine ran an article about him titled "Medicine from Sedalia."
41:49 Speaker 02 This write-up opens with a long description of a luxury car that the magazine says is valued at $52,000 and how it was seen sitting outside of a hotel. And then, as this article unrolls, it's revealed that the vehicle belongs to E. Virgil Neil and it's kind of evidence of his incredible success. This article also makes him sound downright wholesome, writing, quote, "His rise to wealth began like that of many another US tycoon on a farm 64 years ago at Sedalia, Missouri. He still talks with a Midwestern inflection: bland, drawling, soothing." This article, incidentally, has been called out for being a kind of a fluff
42:32 Speaker 02 piece and not well researched, but it does go on to mention many of his more nefarious dealings, but the summation is kind of like that Neil was to be admired for amassing such a huge fortune. With the construction of Chateau D'Azur, a period of truly moving to Europe completely, including divesting all ties to US production, started for Neil and for Tuculon. He shuffled the company's primary headquarters around his existing offices in other countries to minimize the amount of taxes that were due for import and export. Throughout the 1930s, both his French and English branches of the company grew, each developing their own lines of products to best suit their specific markets.
43:17 Speaker 02 But as World War II loomed, living in France and having production facilities in both France and London created some challenges. Occupation by Italian and German forces in the two French cities where Neal was based, Nice and Paris, meant that he had to move production if he wanted to keep the business going. He had boasted, when he visited the US in the 1930s, that he and Benito Mussolini were friends, and he called Mussolini "a great man." But just the same, his factory in Nice was seized by the Italian government during occupation. So he opened factories in Monte Carlo and Marseille. Production continued in London and in an already established
44:00 Speaker 02 factory in Switzerland, enabling Tuchelon to survive through the war. At this point, Tuchelon's holdings were so diversified across multiple continents that the shell game he had played to keep his financial situation inscrutable to others kind of helped Yves Jean Neal keep everything running. There were also rumors that Neal and Rene had nefarious dealings during the war that kept them living very comfortably while other people suffered. The FBI compiled a file on him on the suspicion that he had traded with the enemy, in part because Tuchelon had continued its production lines and kept advertising in magazines in Paris all through
44:42 Speaker 02 the war, even when Paris was occupied. He and Rene and their associates had been friendly with the Germans in France, and that got them labeled as collaborators. They denied these claims and asserted that anything that had been deemed suspicious in their activities was simply part of the larger effort to keep the business running and keep people employed. Ultimately, all of the evidence against him, and this was circumstantial. Yeah, this is a much bigger story in and of itself, if you want to kind of pick apart how one person or one company is figuring out how to get through the war. The biography
45:23 Speaker 02 that we mentioned by Mary Schaefer Conroy goes into all of this in deep detail, mentioning all of the various, like, it's a spider web of people they're connected to and how they are connected to German occupation officers, et cetera. That biography is called "The Cosmetics Baron" you've never heard of. It's a very long book, but it's full of a wealth of information. In 1946, the Neils went to Geneva and they ended up spending most of the next several years there. In the early summer of 1949, E. Virgil Neal came down with pneumonia and he died in Geneva on June 30th of 1949. Neal's obituary in his hometown paper, The Sedalia Democrat, reflects the edit that
46:07 Speaker 02 his life story went through as he gained commercial success. It jumps right from his early life to his later business success, reading, quote, "Mr. Neal was a native Missourian, born near Lincoln and attended Central Business College here, later becoming a member of the faculty. Leaving Sedalia, he went to New York and successfully conducted a perfumery business and from there went to France, where his business reached an international scope." Goes on to talk about his beautiful home in France, the last time he visited Sedalia, and how he worked right up until the day he died. There's no mention of any of the legal tangles that happened in the middle and some cases alongside all of that.
46:52 Speaker 02 Yeah. The took-along company lived on after its founder, although who exactly owned it at various points is a little bit hazy, like many other things in his life. It was operated by a company that had been founded in the years prior to Neal's death to manage the company's international affairs. And although the owners of that management company are documented, there's been a lot of speculation that they were managing it after Neal's death on behalf of a new owner, but we don't know exactly who that was. Over the course of the 25 years following Neal's death, the company changed hands several times, ultimately becoming part of the larger privately owned Cooper Cosmetics in the 1970s.
47:36 Speaker 02 In his will, Neal left 2/3 of his liquid assets to his wife and the remaining 3rd to his son, Zen Neal. Zen refused his inheritance. Any money made from sales of assets was to go into a trust, which was likely used to be used to manage his debts. Zen went on to work for Tuukaloon for a while. He actually became a member of its board of directors. His wife Renee was also involved in the business for a while, but she was eventually pushed out. His son Zen eventually moved to California and worked in retail as a buyer, and he seemed to largely separate himself from his father's legacy. And Renee
48:15 Speaker 02 died, I think, in 1982. That is the wild life of Eva Jolene. Wild is the word I was thinking of also. I just have so many thoughts. I can't wait for Friday episode. Do you have listener mail? Yes, I have listener mail. This is from our listener Kimberly, who writes, Hi Holly and Tracy. I had previously written in about Mammoth Cave Mummy, but just listened to your behind the scenes on Mirrorballs/Disco Balls. The bathroom you talked about with Disco Balls is actually in a gas station, or a chain of gas stations now, in Kentucky called Hop Shops. The one I heard about first is in northern Kentucky, which I guess kind of makes sense based on what I learned about Mirrorballs in your episode. Anyway, I have never seen
49:00 Speaker 02 this bathroom, as I try to avoid gas station bathrooms at all costs, but know folks who have stopped there on purpose just to push the button and make the Disco Ball come out. Listen, that's the only reason I'd be in there. I kind of love the idea that it's such a random and unexpected place that has the Disco Ball bathroom, rather than a place where you might expect it. Anyway, I have attached a photo of some Disco Ball cookies I did through my cookie business. I often listen to the podcast as I bake and feel like you all are my super interesting coworkers that always have fun stories to tell at the water cooler. I've also included some updated photos of my kitties Calypso, the gray and white fluff, and Jupiter, the tawny. They both love sleeping on my daughter's bed during the day, but never together, so it's a constant fight for territory. They don't seem to care
49:43 Speaker 02 much for history, but maybe they'll grow into it one day. Keep up the good work, Kim. This is so cool, and I love seeing these Disco Ball cookies. And I had seen a mention of where that Where that disco ball bathroom was, but then I lost track of it. So thank you for the reminder. Northern Kentucky hop shops. Go see the disco ball. I kind of want to. Trying to think if I would, my travels would take me there at any point in the near future. Thank you for writing us that email. And also, listen, we always want cookie and cat pictures all day, every day. I can't think of a better thing. If you would like to write to us, show us whatever cookies you've been making, or where you like to use public bathrooms. Weird email, but who knows? Everybody's got their thing. You
50:27 Speaker 02 could do that at [email protected] . If you would like to look at the show notes for the episodes, they are all at missedinhistory.com, connected to the associated episode. If you would like to subscribe to the show and you haven't gotten around to that yet, it's so easy. You can do it on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
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