From Hero to Humbug

This is the 18th in a series examining significant unpublished documents related to the Polar Controversy.

In all of the Polar Controversy, perhaps the most telling piece of evidence produced against Frederick Cook’s claim to have discovered the North Pole had nothing to do with his 1908 polar expedition. It came instead out of his previous expedition to Alaska in 1906, which was aimed at the first ascent of the tallest peak in North America. At its conclusion, he announced that he and his burly packer, Edward N. Barrill, were the first to reach the summit of Mt. McKinley on September 16 of that year. That claim led directly to Dr. Cook being feted at the annual dinner of the National Geographic Society in Washington, being elected the second president of the Explorers Club of New York, two well-remunerated articles in Harper’s Monthly Magazine and a contract to write a book about the exploit. It also led indirectly to his obtaining the backing of the wealthy gambler John R. Bradley for his attempt to reach the North Pole the following year. But in its immediate wake, it had left Cook flat broke.

Cook’s Alaskan journey had been sponsored by the millionaire Philadelphia saw manufacturer, Henry Disston, who gave him financial support in exchange for Cook’s organizing a big game hunt for him at the expedition’s conclusion. However, Disston had a change of mind, failed to show up for the hunt, and so did his money. But Cook had already contracted to rent a pack train for the prospective hunt, and when he tried to cancel this arrangement without paying, he was hauled into Alaskan court and lost, wiping out all his cash on hand. As a result, he could only give the men he had hired to enable his attempt to climb the mountain promises to pay in the future rather than what he owed them then and there. When Cook went off with Bradley to the Arctic in July 1907 and didn’t come back, all those debts were still outstanding, and remained so until after his return to the United States in September 1909, after claiming he had attained the North Pole on April 21 of the previous year. Those unpaid debts were to be his undoing as it turned out.

As there were doubts from his first announcement of his polar conquest, there had also been doubts in Alaska that Cook had actually made the summit as he claimed. Some of these were simply the result of envy. Many Alaskans thought the mountain unclimbable, and resented the idea that some “effete” Easterner from “the Outside” could have come and so easily plucked the prize that the Sourdoughs and Pioneers of Alaska coveted for themselves. No one had real evidence that Cook had not actually done the deed, but there were some reasons that fed these suspicions beyond pure jealousy. Cook’s timetable for the climb, which he gave before a meeting of the Mazamas in Seattle shortly after his return, seemed too short and too pat for the accomplishment of such a titanic undertaking. The only member of Cook’s own expedition who voiced public doubt, however, was Herschel Parker, who had returned from Alaska after being assured by Cook that no further attempt to climb the mountain would be made that season. But after Cook met with him upon reaching New York, Parker seemed persuaded that Cook had indeed climbed the mountain, but the nature of his accomplishment, Parker felt, was only that of a sporting event, with few of the scientific results Parker hoped to obtain from the conquest.

But as the Polar Controversy grew between Cook and Robert Peary over who had been first to the Pole, many saw opportunities developing to exploit their former associations with Frederick Cook in Alaska and get their back pay they were due—or perhaps even more. J. E. Shore, a U.S. Commissioner in Leavenworth, WA, alerted Herbert L. Bridgman, Secretary of the Peary Arctic Club, that Cook’s unpaid debts might provide useful fodder to use against Cook.

Bridgman passed on Shore’s letter and enclosures indicating that several of Cook’s former expedition members had complained of Cook still owing them back wages to General Thomas H. Hubbard, the Peary Arctic Club’s president. Hubbard immediately engaged his law correspondent in Tacoma, James M. Ashton, to act on his behalf to obtain affidavits concerning what they knew about Cook’s Alaskan claims. After all, if it could be shown that Cook had not actually reached the summit of Mt. McKinley, that would set a glaring precedent for a dishonest claim to have reached the North Pole. No doubt, however, Hubbard realized that the key figure among those named by Shore in his letter was Barrill, because he alone had been with Cook in the days immediately before and after September 16, 1906, and so he alone knew for sure the truth or falsity of Cook’s claim to “the top of the continent.”

James M. Ashton

Ashton later reported that he had indeed been hired by Hubbard to seek out these men, but denied his efforts had a predetermined agenda. “I received word from Gen. Hubbard to ascertain the exact truth concerning Dr. Cook’s climb of Mount McKinley and had not the remotest idea what side I was on or would be on,” he told the New York Globe on October 16. “I sent [Walter] Miller [who had been the photographer on Cook’s 1906 expedition] to Barrill and other members of the expedition and had them brought to Tacoma. They were all carefully examined. Barrill spoke openly and squarely from the start.” However, this is not exactly the way things actually went down.

As Ashton met with the various expedition members, he kept up a running report on his progress via telegraph with Hubbard. On September 21 he reported:

[“Armstrong” was William Armstrong, one who assisted Cook with his 1906 pack train.]

September 25:

September 27:

September 30:

[Difficulties account parties increasing claims Make sure protect drafts which will run over amount stated [i.e. $2,000]. Many interferences causing continuance wild demands and indecision of parties.]

October 1:

On that day Ashton drew a customer’s draft for $5,000 on the Fidelity Trust Company of Tacoma, charged to the account of Thomas H. Hubbard, 60 Wall St., NY.

All the items reproduced here except the portrait of James Ashton are in the Peary Family Papers at National Archives II, College Park, MD.

This is the 17th in a series examining significant unpublished documents related to the Polar Controversy.

Of all the bizarre incidents of the Polar Controversy, perhaps none has more unanswered questions surrounding it than the Dunkle-Loose affidavits. On December 7, 1909, the day after the so-called “proofs” of Dr. Cook’s polar attainment had been locked away in a Copenhagen bank vault, two men signed a lengthy affidavit at Westchester, NY, claiming that they had been hired by Frederick Cook to fabricate a set of astronomical observations that would convince a panel of Danish scientists about to sit to consider Cook’s proofs that he had reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908. Cook had agreed to send them first to the University of Copenhagen in appreciation for the acclaim and honorary degree he had received there when he landed at the Danish capital in September 1909, after wiring from Lerwick, Shetland Islands, that he had attained the Pole.

The New York Times, which had been vehemently pro-Peary since the start of the controversy, ran the exclusive story December 8; it covered nearly three full pages—by far the most space devoted to any one story on a single day that whole year—that spared its readers no details of the alleged transaction. Those details are related fully in the pages of Cook and Peary, the Polar Controversy, resolved, so there is no need to take them up again here. In the end, after the Danes had examined the materials submitted by Cook, they ruled that they did not contain any proof he had reached the North Pole, but no trace of the calculations Loose said he had provided the doctor, a copy of which the Times had thoughtfully forwarded to Copenhagen, could be found in them either. As a result, although the University’s verdict on the value of Cook’s proofs was devastating to his credibility, the elaborate affidavit became a non-factor in settling the questions surrounding the explorer’s claims.

In their affidavit, the two men claimed that Cook paid them only a fraction of the agreed upon $4,000 price ($100,000 in today’s money) that they asked if their efforts resulted in the explorer’s claim being accepted by the Danes. In all, they received a mere $240 from Cook. What they may have received for their affidavit from the Times is unknown, but considering the length of it, one could reasonably conclude it was considerably more than they got from Cook. The unnatural recall of detail included in their statement indicates they kept very precise notes and that their real intention may not have been to help the explorer prove his claim, but rather was designed to destroy his credibility by exposing his secret efforts to artificially bolster what inadequate original proofs he already had, if any. Even so, that same detail make it unbelievable that the story their affidavits contained was a fabrication. And even Cook’s private secretary acknowledged that Cook had met with Dunkle and Loose.

It is even possible that the pair was put up to it by William C. Reick, an editor at the Times who had an old score to settle with his former employer, James Gordon Bennett, owner of the rival New York Herald. Letters in the National Archives II between Reick, Bridgman and Peary suggest as much. The Herald was the most important paper in the city at the time, and had printed Cook’s original dispatch claiming his discovery, and it also ran his detailed serialized account of his feat. It therefore had a large stake in the establishment of the legitimacy of Cook’s claim, which from its first announcement had been questioned by pro-Peary forces, and it had much to lose if Cook’s claim was discredited.

William C. Reick

Whatever they got from Reick, it was apparently all they got. As a result of the unwanted publicity, George W. Dunkle, who worked for a New York insurance company, and who had originally approached Cook with a proposition of insuring his original “proofs,” was dismissed from his job. August Wedel Loose, an itinerant sea captain who Dunkle introduced to Cook, and who claimed that he worked up the bogus calculations, seems to have fared little better. In January 1910 he wrote to Herbert L. Bridgman, editor of the Brooklyn Standard Union and secretary of the Peary Arctic Club, which bankrolled Peary’s attempts to reach the North Pole:

Shortly after, Loose left the United States, never to be heard of again.

Not only are the exact origins of the Dunkle-Loose affidavits shrouded in mystery, but also are the men themselves. After their 15 minutes of fame in the Times, the pair dropped totally from sight—literally and figuratively. During the years of research I spent in preparing Cook & Peary, I never saw a single photograph of either man. None appeared in the New York Times, or apparently anywhere else, until recently I recovered a copy of a press photo from an Ebay auction site that sells off photographs from the morgues of various defunct newspapers. As far as I know, it is published here for the first time and gives us our first look at these two slippery characters in the flesh. (Loose is the one with the mustache on the left).

The origins of the picture can be surmised from the back of the photo, which bears this penciled inscription: “Capt. Loose and Dunkle who revealed Dr. Cook’s effort to have them prepare a ‘log’ for him.” The photo is backstamped “Nov. 16, 1910,” or nearly a year after the New York Times story broke. Apparently, it came from the morgue of the Cleveland Press, indicated by another backstamp, which reads: “N.E.A. Reference Department, Press bldg, Cleveland.” N.E.A. stands for the Newspaper Enterprise Association, a syndication service started in 1902 that supplied comics and pictorial matter to hundreds of newspapers nationwide. It is the only such syndication service still in business.

The Loose letter is in the Peary Family Papers at NARA II, College Park, Md.  The photo of Dunkle and Loose is the possession of the author.

Happy 113th Anniversary of Dr. Cook’s non-arrival at the North Pole.

Of all the souvenirs that were marketed in the wake of the Polar Controversy, perhaps the most artistic are the porcelain items produced in Germany, then a leading exporter of such wares. The two character mugs have already been highlighted in the February 2022 post of this blog. Two other pieces symbolize the struggle between the two claimants for first rights to the North Pole.

The first is a figurine showing the two explorers gripping a world globe from opposite sides. Cook, on the right, wears a confident smile, while Peary on the left seems to be throwing his head back, mouth open, howling in outrage. The explorer’s name is written below each figure’s outstretched arm on the globe.

The suit of each explorer is covered with tiny porcelain grains, which has led many to confuse this piece with the later, so-called “snow babies” of the 1920s, which use a similar decoration technique.

Here is a strip of photos showing the figurine from all sides and in detail.

The piece is found in two sizes; one is 3.75 inches x 5.5; the other is 4.5 inches by 6.25. Whether these are both original 1909 figures is not certain. One or the other may be a later copy. That there are later copies is suggested by the wide difference in the quality and color of the painted decoration on this figurine. All of these German porcelain exports were hand painted before firing, but in the portrait mugs these decorations are much more uniform in color and quality. Several specimens are shown here to illustrate this point. I suspect the cruder looking pieces are not originals.

At least one specimen exists that does not have the granular coating on the explorers fur suits and the faces are not decorated, but left plain white. This piece allows an appreciation of the care taken to realistically reproduce each of the explorers facial features on this item. Cook’s face, for instance, even takes into account the droop in his right eyelid, that gave his face an asymmetrical, quizzical expression.

This figurine has been incorrectly ascribed to Gebruder Heubach, a German porcelain manufacturer best known for porcelain doll heads. The generic “Made in Germany” maker’s mark on the bottom of the figurine (see above) is the one most commonly encountered, but some bear the mark of Heber and Co., a manufacturer based in Neustadt, Bavaria, Germany. Heber not only produced doll heads, but also a wide variety of other porcelain wares as well.

This piece is fairly common, falling somewhere between the Peary portrait mug, which is more common, and the Cook portrait mug, which is much less common.

Scarcer still is another little known piece. It shows the two explorers in fur suits reaching for a pinnacle of “ice” labeled “North Pole.”

The fact that the inscription is in English shows this piece was intended for export. The explorers are not identified by name as they are on the first piece, but are merely indicated by a large “P” for Peary on the left and “C” for Cook on the right. Like the first, that this piece also favors Cook’s claim over Peary’s is indicated by the date on the “North Pole” as 21.4.08 = April 21, 1908, the date Dr. Cook claimed he attained his goal. Below the figures is an “ice cave” which indicates the piece may have been designed as a pin or trinket holder.

The back of the piece bears the style number near the base. The painted decoration is sparse beyond the faces, consisting of black dabs to the fur suits and several tan “rocks” below the opening of the snow cave.

The faces are less true to the explorers actual features than the previous piece, but make each recognizable. The position of the hands indicate that each of the explorers originally grasped a small flag. Peary lifts his toward the “Pole,” only to find Cook has his firmly atop the Pole already.

Again, Cook looks confident, while Peary looks dismayed. Although born in New York, Cook was a pure German, the son of two recent immigrants, so naturally he would be favored in Germany over Peary.

In 1909, the rival claims of Cook and Peary to have reached the North Pole produced scores of individual postcards, many pairs of related designs and several series. By far the largest was that issued by Kawin & Co., mostly known for its stereopticon views, based in Chicago. It issued a series of 50 cards entitled How Cook and Peary Discovered the North Pole, divided equally between the two explorers. About half the cards were either photographs or drawings based on photographs. The rest were drawings, some of them total fantasies, that purported to show scenes from the expeditions. The cards have a different frame for the vertical and horizontal designs.

They came in a red cardboard box with one of the card’s images reproduced on the cover.

This picture shows 46 of the cards along with the box’s top and bottom. It doesn’t show the cards numbered 22, 23 or 24, and leaves out card 33, erroneously reproducing 28 twice.

The cards have a common reverse with a short text elaborating on the card’s image.

Illustrations of each card in the set follow, along with some comments concerning the individual cards.

1-3

Card 2 is the only card with a unique frame design.

4-6

Card 5 has Capt. Bartlett marked with and “x.” In the front row from the left are Ross Marvin, Peary’s private secretary, murdered on the expedition by an Inuit, Dr. John Goodsell, the expedition’s surgeon, Donald B. Macmillan, and George Borup, assistants to Peary.

7-9

Card 9 shows Josephine Diebitsch Peary, Robert E. Peary, Jr. and Marie Ahnighito Peary. Although Peary’s son was called “Jr.”, they actually had different middle names. Peary’s was Edwin, his son’s was Emile, named after Josephine Peary’s brother, Emile Diebitsch.

10-12

13-15

Card 13 shows the catch-as-catch-can accuracy of many cards in the set. This view, because of the in-line hitching of the dog team, the dress of the figures, and the presence of a river steam boat in the background, indicates that it was taken probably in Alaska.

16-18

The first two cards are examples of many fantasy scenes in the set based on no known photograph.

19-21

22

This scene is probably based on a photograph taken in Danish Greenland. Notice the house.

23

24

25-27

Card 26 is based on a photograph of Dr. Cook made after he returned from his service on the Belgian Antarctic Expedition in 1899. Card 27 does not show the Bradley, but rather the Roosevelt. The Bradley was never “ice bound” at any time on Cook’s expedition. The view is a reworking of the view used on Card 12.

28-29

Cook did not use sails on his way to the Pole, or carry an odometer to measure distance.

30-32

Card 32 is based loosely on a photo of John R. Bradley with a polar bear trophy.

33

34-36

Card 36, another fantasy, shows permanent Inuit dwellings in Greenland rather than a “polar camp.”

37-39

Card 38 is also a fantasy. Cook had no “aluminum sledge” on his expedition. All of his sleds were made of hickory after a design of his brother, Theodore.

40-42

Card 42 shows Helen Cook, Dr. Cook’s natural daughter, Marie Fidel Cook and Ruth Cook, Marie’s daughter by a previous marriage.

43-45

46-48

Card 46 is based on a photo taken on Cook’s 1903 expedition to Alaska. Card 48 is a fantasy. The Bradley was a small schooner that did not require so large a crew.

49-50

Card 49 is based on an illustration that appeared on the cover of the French magazine Le petit Journal.

Twenty-five years ago today, February 17, 1997, Cook & Peary, the Polar Controversy, resolved, was published.

I’d first taken an interest in the titanic dispute over who first reached the North Pole in the mid-1970’s and read the narratives Cook and Peary had written about their attainments of the North Pole. I also made an effort to read all the books that had been written about the dispute going back to Captain Thomas F. Hall’s pioneering analysis of 1917, Has the North Pole been Discovered? I had also read many magazine articles published during the controversy, so that I had a good grounding in the primary published sources on the subject. There things rested until the controversy was rekindled by a discovery in Peary’s papers at the National Archives in 1989 that seemed to indicate he had fallen far short of the Pole in 1909. With Peary’s claim in doubt, the claim of his rival, Dr. Frederick A. Cook to have beaten him to the Pole, though long discredited, received new attention.

I made contact with the Frederick A. Cook Society to see if access could be had to comparable papers of his discredited rival. I was told Janet Vetter, Cook’s only direct descendant, owned Dr. Cook’s papers, and after writing to her, I received a letter hinting that she might grant such access. But before I could arrange anything more concrete, Ms. Vetter died suddenly on August 10, 1989, at the age of 51. Under the terms of her will, her grandfather’s papers were to go to the Library of Congress, just 40 miles from my home.

When I read of the gift, I wasted no time in contacting the Library of Congress and was told that Vetter’s papers would be arriving sometime in early 1990. A further inquiry revealed, however, that there were no plans to catalog the papers in the near future, but that some of the most important ones, including Cook’s original field diaries had already arrived and could be seen by appointment. After I examined these, I urged the head of the manuscript division, Dr. James H. Hutson, to expedite processing of Cook’s papers, and by that Summer I was at work reading the entire gift.

Not far into this examination, I began a parallel examination of the vast Peary gift, housed just seven blocks away from the Library of Congress at the National Archives. For a person as steeped in the published Cook-Peary literature as I was, I quickly realized that despite all the previous articles and books already written on the Polar Controversy, there was much significant that had never been known about the dispute between the two explorers. I was certain that I could make an original contribution to the subject through a systematic and careful examination of these original materials. I decided then and there to write a book evaluating their content and how they related to the historical controversy and the larger question of it as an example of historical truth.

The result was published seven years later as Cook & Peary, the Polar Controversy, resolved. It was the fruit of three years of intensive research into not only the papers housed in Washington, to which I commuted three times a week for nearly six months, but also into just about every accessible collection of primary documentation on the subject, including a detailed reading of much of the massive printed literature, primary and secondary, personal interviews with living connections to the story, hundreds of letters of inquiry, tens of thousands of miles of travel and eventually eight years of writing and revision. All this primary material was documented by more than 2,400 source notes at the book’s end. By 1993 the manuscript, which filled an entire box of continuous-feed computer paper, was in reasonably good shape, and I set off on another three-year quest to find a publisher for it.

Many publishers were enthusiastic after they read my cover letter; they were less interested when they weighed my manuscript. Eventually, I sent only the first three chapters to Stackpole Books after getting a positive response to my proposal, avoiding mentioning the bulk of the whole manuscript. There I found an editor on the same page as I, Sally Atwater; she asked for three more chapters, and by the time she had read them, she was hooked. A contract was signed. But even as I prepared my manuscript for actual publication, new things came to light, new leads developed and new revisions were made as a result, some even after the galley proofs were printed.

The book got a lot of attention upon its release, with feature articles in the Washington Post ’s “Style” section and the US news section of the New York Times. These led immediately to a number of interviews, including segments the night of publication aired on ABC World News Tonight and MSNBC, and later, appearances on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show and The World, as well as in two documentaries produced by the BBC.

Apparently, however, few absorbed the import of the new evidence I had uncovered, let alone that of the whole sweep of my 1,000+ page book, even those with prior knowledge of the subject or those who had the patience just to study my book thoroughly. It was dismissed out of hand, of course, by Cook’s partisans. They had convinced themselves that I was writing a book that would vindicate Cook and were shocked that it produced convincing evidence that he had lied about the results of his attempt to climb Mt. McKinley, and his real, but equally failed, attempt to reach the North Pole. But even some others scoffed at the subtitle, “The Polar Controversy, resolved.”

They may not have been Cook partisans, but they had some stake in wanting to see the controversy continue, like proprietors of “adventure” companies that promoted ultra-expensive “Last Degree” treks to the North Pole, and persons with some previous self-interest in justifying their version of the controversy that they had put into print, or others who simply liked to argue over it interminably. They said there would never be an end to the controversy, simply because there would never be possible to produce actual documentary evidence that proved Cook’s story a lie—the proverbial “Smoking Gun” that would end it, absolutely.

In the wake of my publication of Cook’s fake “summit” photo in DIO, following my recovery of it from a badly faded copy and its subsequent publication in the New York Times in 1998, Cook’s McKinley claim, that also still had its advocates even beyond The Frederick A. Cook Society, and which was called in mountaineering circles, “The Lie that Won’t Die,” finally breathed its last.

After my book was reviewed widely, reference after reference published subsequently cited Cook & Peary in their evaluation of the rival explorers’ claims. By the time of the centennial of the outbreak of the dispute between the two explorers in 2009, it had become a virtual consensus that certainly neither Cook nor Peary reached the Pole when he said he did, or ever. Even the National Geographic Society had nothing officially to say in support of Peary on the 100th Anniversary of his supposed attainment or to commemorate it, something they had never failed to do on any significant occasion in the past involving Peary’s alleged discovery.

Even the publication of what was, in effect, a feeble rewrite of Andrew Freeman’s The Case for Doctor Cook, that appeared in 2005 under the title True North, did nothing to stem the tide of dismissing Cook’s polar claim out of hand, as it had been early on, reversing the trend of a more positive consideration of Cook’s polar attempt in the light of the collapse of Peary’s claim.

However, my subsequent publication of The Lost Notebook of Dr. Frederick A. Cook in 2013, which closely analyzed a notebook whose existence had been unknown to scholars before the publication of Cook & Peary, finally provided the “Smoking Gun” that skeptics doubted would ever be produced, proving Cook could not possibly have reached the North Pole in 1908. Between the two books, the greatest geographic controversy in history, The Polar Controversy, had finally and truly been resolved.

Among the handsomest items that was marketed in the wake of the Cook-Peary dispute were small portrait mugs of the explorers made in Germany. Germany was the leading exporter of inexpensive bisque and decorative pottery items at the beginning of the 20th century.

The mugs are made of glazed pottery and hand decorated. The one of Dr. Cook is based on a widely published photograph of him from 1894. It shows him in a fur outfit, fully bearded. The mug shows his right, mitted hand holding a pair of binoculars. At its bottom it has “COOK’ inscribed in block letters.

The Peary mug is based on a photograph taken about 1898 showing him in a seal-fur hat and fur coat. He has a small pouch strapped across him which he is clutching with his left hand, and a curved brown object in his pocket. Just what this object is supposed to represent is not obvious. “PEARY” is inscribed at the bottom.

Each mug stands about 5 inches tall and is about 4 inches at the broadest. They hold about 10 oz. of liquid. That these two were issued as a pair is not only obvious from their common design but from the positioning of the arms so they can be stood next to each other in a balanced array.

The back of the mugs have the inscription “Germany” and a style number. The Cook mug is #5568 and the Peary #5569. They also say “Déposé” and “Ges. Gesch;” “depose” means “deposit” in French; “gesh” is an abbreviation for Geschützt, which means “protected” in German. Both are similar to “Copyright” in meaning, and might be translated as “legally protected.” No maker is indicated.

There is a similar portrait mug of William Howard Taft. Whether it is directly related to the explorers’ mugs is doubtful. It’s style number is #5440, indicating it was made in advance of the ones of Cook and Peary. Taft assumed the presidency on March 4, 1909, six months before the start of the Polar Controversy, so the mug was probably issued to commemorate Taft’s inauguration. The close similarity in style and coloring indicate that Taft’s mug was issued by the same company, however. Instead of just saying “Germany” on the back, it says “Made in Germany Ges Gesch 5440 Déposé.”

Although probably unrelated to the Cook and Peary mugs, the Taft makes a fine show standing as a buffer between the two rival explorers.  Considering the relative frequency the Peary comes onto the market compared to the Cook indicates that the Cook mug is far, far more scarce.

Dr. Cook returned to America aboard S. S. Oscar II after a week of adulation in Denmark. At half-past midnight the ship proceeded to quarantine, arriving at 4 AM. There she was dressed in flags to meet the reception committee aboard The Grand Republic, chartered by the secretary of the Arctic Club, B.S. Osbon. During the night a number of boats bearing newspaper men tried to board the ocean liner, but were unsuccessful. The best they could do was shouting questions at Dr. Cook who was standing at the gangway as he awaited the arrival of his wife, Marie, and children, Ruth and Helen, aboard the tug John K. Gilkinson.

At dawn, as the tug approached, the Gilkinson was accompanied by a number of boats including the New York Herald’s dispatch boat Owlet. The Herald was then running a serial of Dr. Cook’s narrative of his expedition. As the tug came along side, Cook descended the rope ladder and leapt to its deck. For half an hour the tug lay dead in the water while Dr. Cook visited with his family in the cabin, while the passengers on the Oscar II broke out into a chorus of “For he’s a jolly good fellow.”

The Grand Republic soon appeared, and at 9 AM Dr. Cook and his party transferred to the steamer, which was visibly listing to one side from the weight of its 424 passengers lining the deck rail.

In this postcard view, left to right are: The Grand Republic, John K. Gilkinson, Owlet, and Oscar II.

It was planned that the doctor would pass through an honor guard of the 47th Regiment, where he was supposed to be met with a wreath of white tea roses, to be placed ceremoniously around his neck by Miss Ida A. Lehmann of Brooklyn, daughter of the secretary of the Dr. Cook Celebration Committee of 100. As it was, the honor guard in their white and blue dress uniforms were too busy trying to help Captain Osbon keep the guest of honor from being crushed to death to perform their designated function, and Miss Lehmann barely managed to lasso the doctor with the wreath, which itself was soon crushed to lifelessness as he was buffet around on the deck by the happy crowd.

Cook managed to take refuge on the hurricane deck, from which he gave a short speech that was all but inaudible over the shrieking whistles of all the ships in the harbor that had been assembled for a naval parade as part of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration.

It was now 9:30, and the reception was not set until noon, so to kill time The Grand Republic cruised slowly up the North River as far a Spuyten Duyvil, then docked briefly at 130th street to let off some of its passengers before passing back down the river. After one more turn, she docked at Williamsburg’s South Fifth Street wharves below the sugar refineries to a tremendous cheer from the thousands waiting on shore, accompanied by a great blast of whistles from the factories and the ships on the river.

With the assistance of 100 police officers, Cook’s party struggled through an estimated crowd of 5,000 on the wharf to enter a car to start a parade, led by a flatbed truck with a brass band, to start along the five-mile route to the Bushwick Club, where the official reception was to be given.

Left to right: Bird Coler (with hat in hand), Brooklyn Borough President, B.S. Osbon, Ruth Cook, Dr. Cook, Mrs. Cook; William Cook, his brother, stands behind the policeman.

Along the parade route stood 100,000 people. It seemed everyone in the whole borough was in the streets, and as he passed along, Cook acknowledged their plaudits by raising his hat, smiling and bowing.

As the procession turned the corner directly opposite his old home on Bushwick Ave., the doctor caught sight of the triumphal arch erected by his neighborhood association over the intersection of Myrtle and Willoughby. It was a huge canvas and wood frame structure as high as the El viaduct next to it. Surmounted with laurel wreaths and garlands, it bore a giant golden globe with a flag flying from its top. It dripped with painted icicles and electric lights and was decorated with arctic scenes, shields, more flags, and a portrait of Cook crowned with the words “We Believe in You.” Four snow white pigeons were released as the doctor’s car passed under the archway by a man atop the arch. (both sides of the arch are shown here)

Eventually the motorcade of 200 autos reached the flag-enshrouded Bushwick Club and as the police kept back the crowds, Cook alighted from his car and entered the club. He appeared briefly on the building’s balcony, but despite cries for a speech, he could not be heard and once again simply bowed.

Then, after a light lunch, the doors of the Club were opened, and more than 5,000 passed by the doctor. He could not shake hands with so many, however, so he kept them firmly clasped behind his back as he nodded to each passerby. After three hours the doors of the club were closed to the disappointment of thousands more waiting to get in. Dr. Cook’s day ended at 9:30 PM, with a formal dinner at the club before finally retiring, under police escort, to a suite reserved for his family at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Cook’s momentous day produced very few souvenirs. In fact, the only one I have ever seen is this small celluloid pinback that was doubtless hawked to the enormous crowd waiting for Cook to pass by. Other than that, only some hastily prepared postcards were produced and sold after the events of the day.

This one from the author’s collection is inscribed by Dr. Cook in his distinctive handwriting to a man sharing his given name, “Best Regards from another Fred,” and dated October 3, 1909.

Another showing Cook’s former home on Bushwick Ave. taken from the El viaduct above it and the triumphal arch spanning the street below, was also on sale a few days after the parade.

While Cook was off on his polar expedition, Cook’s wife was forced to sell their  three-storey red brick house when her considerable personal funds were lost in the collapse of the Knickerbocker Trust Co. during the Panic of 1907. However, it still stands today on Bushwick Ave., where it is divided into several apartments. Shortly after the parade, it was announced that on the small triangular plot across from it, a monument to the Discoverer of the North Pole would be placed, but due to Cook’s downfall, it was never built. Instead, a monument to the fallen of World War I now occupies that space.

In the summer of 1893, after his return from Greenland where he had been surgeon to Peary’s North Greenland Expedition, Frederick Cook was hired to be “guide” for a tour of Greenland aboard the yacht Zeta. The ship had been chartered by a Yale professor on behalf of his half-addled son, who had developed an uncontrollable obsession with the notion of seeing the Far North after hearing Peary speak of his experiences there at one of his lectures the previous winter. It was on this voyage that Cook first conceived of an American Antarctic Expedition with himself as its leader. To that end he traded for fur garments and dogs while in the Danish settlements. But how to finance it?

When the Zeta touched at Rigolet, Labrador, he met an Inuit man who worked for the Hudson’s Bay Co. who had two teenage children. Before the Zeta sailed Cook somehow persuaded the man to allow him to take the two, a 16-year old girl named Kahlahkatak, and a 14-year old boy named Mekok, back with him to the United States, promising to return them the following year. For convenience, Cook renamed his wards Clara and Willie.

Once back in Brooklyn he put the two children up at his brother’s house on Bedford Avenue. It wasn’t long before the New York newspapers carried amusing accounts of the first “full-blooded Eskimos” ever to visit America. The children were amazed by the tall buildings and feared the heights of the bridges. They detested ice cream, and complained about the weather being too cold. All the time, Dr. Cook continued to plan his assault on the nearly-unknown Antarctic continent.

He petitioned the American Geographical Society for financial support, and when that was not forthcoming, he contracted with the famous impresario of the lecture platform, Major James B. Pond, for a series of lectures on his experiences in the Arctic and the curious culture of it’s inhabitants.

Throughout the winter Cook toured New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts, at admission prices ranging from 25 to 75 cents, illustrating his lecture with a hundred stereo-opticon views of Greenland. At his appearances he exhibited some of his dogs and also Willie and Clara, got up as if they were “wild people” in fur costumes he had obtained in Greenland. He never mentioned that instead of an igloo, the two children lived with their parents in a civilized log house in Rigolet, but implied instead that they lived in the traditional Inuit style.

After the tour ended, Cook continued to exhibit at Huber’s Dime Museum at $300 a week, where he appeared nine times a day on a stage set up to look like and Inuit encampment. He populated this “village” with not only Willie and Clara, but also four of the ten Labrador Inuit who had been abandoned by their exhibitors after the close of the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago the previous fall. His initial run of appearances at Huber’s was a big success, and the owner wanted him to continue longer, but Cook cut them short when one of the World’s Fair Inuit took sick and died.

To supplement his income from his appearances, Cook had made up a large number of stoneware milk pitchers trimmed in gold and bearing a colored transfer image of either Mekok with a native dog, or Kahlahkatak holding a puppy, based on photographs he had used in his promotional literature for his lectures. These he sold as souvenirs, probably for 25 cents each. Judging by the proportions they turn up today, it appears that Kahlahkatak’s pitcher was the better seller. It seems about three times more common than Mekok’s pitcher.

Cook also was accompanied by Clara and Willie at lectures he gave to the New York Obstetrical Association and the Brooklyn Gynecological Society, at which he first described the hitherto unrecognized details surrounding the spacing of Inuit births and the seasonality of the menstrual cycle in Inuit women. As a result of these lectures, Cook was elected a member of the American Ethnological Association. He also took the children along when he entered some of his wolfish dogs into the Westchester Kennel Club show in 1894, winning three prizes there.

None of this produced either the kind of money or the backing he needed to attack the Antarctic fastness, however. So Cook hatched the idea of a “tourist jaunt” to Greenland in the summer of 1894 aboard the steamer Miranda for well-healed excursionists at $500 a head (about a $3,500 today), with famously disastrous consequences. The ship hit an iceberg, ran into a reef and foundered on the way home, but all the passengers were saved.

On the way out on that ill-fated voyage, Cook stopped again at Rigolet to return not only Willie and Clara, but also the nine surviving World’s Fair Inuit, who came from the same region of Labrador.

Today, these sturdy  stoneware pitchers remain as lasting reminders of this little known early phase of Dr. Cook’s eventful career.

In too many instances modern interpretations of history ignore the true context of events. Individuals’ attitudes and actions are today often criticized or condemned because they do not conform to current thinking on social or moral norms. But to treat the past as if it were the present, completely distorts history and thwarts an understanding of the past as it was actually lived. Even the simple fact that Frederick Cook was a medical doctor must be put in the perspective of his own times without the intervention of current attitudes and expectations. Otherwise, without any historical context, many might ascribe attributes of social status or character now associated with being a medical doctor to him that would not have applied in Cook’s time.

In 1890, when Cook received his medical degree from New York University, the scientific basis of today’s medicine was barely understood even by its most advanced practitioners, and because of this doctors were hardly held in the high regard they are today. Most of America’s 57 million inhabitants then lived in rural areas, and farmers still far outnumbered laborers. Babies were mostly delivered at home by mid-wives, and outside the cities, hospitals hardly existed. In 1889 there were only 700 hospitals in the whole nation, and there were only fifteen nursing schools. Even in metropolises like Boston, hospitals were places where only the working poor, indigent or the insane received institutional care. The rest, from the middle class up, were treated at home, usually by a relative, or at best by someone who had some “medical” experience, perhaps during the Civil War. If a community had access to a “doctor,” he was often a self-proclaimed one, with perhaps some experience working with an actual physician. But even then, because there were few regulations on who could practice medicine, that might not be much of a qualification.

Many shunned doctors entirely, and for good reason. As Oliver Wendell Holmes of Harvard’s Medical School said at mid-century, “If the whole materia medica as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind—and all the worse for the fishes.” Through much of the 19th Century medical practice included such ancient practices as blood letting and harsh purging of the bowels. These treatments, though given in good faith, were based on misapprehensions of the causes of disease, which were often thought to arise from miasmas or imbalances of the humors within the body. Even Koch’s announcement of the Germ Theory in the 1870s, and his identity of the specific microbes that caused tuberculosis and cholera in the 1880s, and Pasteur’s proof that microbial agents were the cause of such diseases as anthrax were slow to take hold. It was one thing to identify the causative agent, another to discern a cure for the disease caused by it. Tuberculosis remained the number one killer of adults fifty years after Koch’s identification of its pathogen. Lister’s 1867 demonstrations that led to antiseptic techniques to avoid infection of wounds eventually revolutionized the surgical field, but they were also put into practice slowly, and effective antiseptic techniques did not become routine until the mid-1890s.

Despite the growing acceptance of Germ Theory, in 1890 the causes of epidemics of vector diseases like yellow fever, malaria and typhus remained unknown, and the treatments given them were futile. Poor sanitation, filthy, crowded living conditions in the cities and unprotected water supplies led to massive outbreaks of cholera, gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases. Typhoid fever, syphilis, malaria, measles and diphtheria commonly claimed those TB spared. Vaccination as a preventative to infection was limited to small pox, and it was usually employed only during an epidemic. Basically, before antibiotics, doctors had a reliable cure for almost nothing.

Life expectancy at birth was a little over 40 on the average, lowered by the frequency of death in infants and children who died in childbirth, or of measles, diphtheria, diarrhea, croup, pneumonia or scarlet fever. Those who survived past 40 could, however, expect to live on average to 65. But compared to today, few lived long enough to die of degenerative diseases such as heart disease or cancer.

As a result of the scarcity of rural physicians and a suspicion of their treatments, calling a doctor was a last resort after consulting with family, friends or perhaps a general storekeeper with a stock of patent medicines that often contained dangerous compounds such as arsenic, antimony, mercury or opium, or reliance on tonics whose only active ingredient was alcohol. There were no pure food and drug laws until 1906, and little regulation of drugs, either over the counter or prescription medications. Pharmacists actually competed with doctors in that they were allowed to fill any prescriptions once issued to a patient over and over, leading to sometimes inappropriate self-dosing.

Most state licensing laws did not come into force until the end of the 1880’s, and even then the best educated medical doctors had invested relatively little time in training compared to modern standards. A medical degree could be obtained in three years and the coursework consisted mainly of attending abstract lectures with little or no bedside or laboratory training. Entrance requirements consisted of being of “good moral character” and being 21 years of age. There were no formal educational requirements beyond grammar school. Dr. Cook’s course work at New York University was typical: two winter lecture series lasting six months each and a course in practical anatomy followed by passing written examinations in surgery, chemistry, practice of medicine, materia medica, anatomy, physiology and obstetrics. Practical examinations on a cadaver and demonstration of urinalysis competency were also required.

Their low standing placed most physicians outside of cities in a cash-strapped position. It was considered ordinary to carry at least 30% of owed bills on a deferred, “ability to pay” basis, and to accept in-kind payments in goods and services in lieu of cash. Even in the big cities pay for doctors was not high. In 1909 the average general practitioner in New York City earned $1,300 a year. In modern buying power that would amount to about $30,900 today. A common labor averaged about $500. Cook, like most other doctors of his time, had to work hard to establish a practice and struggle to retain the patients he did attract.

Cook felt it necessary to take a further private course in medical diagnosis after graduating. With little understanding of the underlying causes of disease, diagnosis lay at the heart of being a successful doctor in Cook’s time. Such aides as X-rays, electrocardiographs and diagnostic tests beyond urinalysis all lay in the future. The ophthalmoscope and laryngoscope were then considered the tools of specialists, and even the use of the stethoscope and the thermometer was not yet universal. Clues to the nature of the patient’s illness had to be obtained by sight and touch. As such, observational skills were critical. A doctor’s reputation and credibility rested squarely on his diagnostic and prognostic skills, which may account for Dr. Cook’s success as a physician. He was an acute observer.

The effective medicines the doctor prescribed were limited as well, and as already alluded to, often contained dangerous compounds. Few were without side effects or long term consequences. For pain or diarrhea concoctions containing opium, such as laudanum, were useful. Digitalis was prescribed to manage certain heart irregularities; quinine exerted an effect on malaria. A new drug, acetylsalicylic acid, later commonly called by its trade name, Aspirin, was found effective against fevers and rheumatism. Belladonna was used to treat asthma, whooping cough and cardiac disease; mercury compounds were commonly used against syphilis. Tincture of iodine was a common disinfectant. But like today, most patients equated being given a medicine with proof that something tangible was being done to address their ailment, and doctors of Cook’s time routinely carried a supply of sugar pills when they knew they had nothing effective to offer beyond satisfying this psychological need.

In Cook’s day, as did the ancients, physicians still considered environmental factors to play a large role in the onset and progress of diseases and sought to control them, for example, advising TB patients to move to a dry climate. The use of diet, tonics, and wines as “blood stimulants” were also considered part of good practice.

A glimpse into Cook’s use of the medicines at his disposal in the context of the knowledge and practice of his time can be gotten from the medical advice he wrote out for Peary just before his separation from him on Peary’s attempt to cross Greenland’s icecap in 1892:

The invention of anesthesia using ether, chloroform or nitrous oxide, had made pain-free surgery possible, but major operations, which were usually performed outside of hospitals, remained rare due to the ongoing obstacle of post-operative infection until it was controlled through antiseptic technique. So the term “surgeon” by which Cook was known on the arctic expedition with Peary and with de Gerlache’s Belgian Antarctic Expedition, should not be equated with the common understanding of the term today. Cook was not trained or qualified to handle more than would be considered “minor” surgery today.

With such limitations of effective treatment and diagnostic technologies, the ability to inspire confidence in the patient and assure him he would recover was recognized as one of physician’s most powerful tools, and the “bedside manner” displayed by a doctor was often the determining factor in the selection and retention of a physician by prospective patients. In this area Cook was at a great advantage. His always cheerful, non-fussy, and compassionate behavior was noted by everyone who knew him. While other doctors so jealously guarded against losing their patients to other practices that they rarely took time off or entrusted their care to another doctor for even a short time, Cook was absent on his exploring adventures years at a time, yet when he returned his patients always came back to him.

The patient’s impression of Cook can be sensed from a quote by Admiral Winfield S. Schley, the hero of the Battle of Santiago in the Spanish-American War, that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on September 23, 1909, shortly after Cook returned to America from the Arctic and his claim to have been to the North Pole and his general veracity was being questioned. “Dr. Frederick A. Cook was for two years my wife’s physician,” said Schley. “I saw him two or three times a week, and we chatted many hours. If I have ever known a man of integrity, probity, sincerity and modesty, it is Dr. Cook.”

The astute perception of human psychology that made Cook able to nearly carry out the most audacious circumstantial geographical hoax ever attempted was just as instrumental in his success as a physician. He understood that “the passions” and psychological factors were often as important in medical recovery as actual treatment of illness in his time. He was ever encouraging to his patients as, for example, in alleviating the depression now known as Seasonal Affective Disorder that ran rampant among his shipmates during the first overwintering within the Antarctic Circle aboard the Belgica.

As Roald Amundsen, who was the Belgica’s second officer, attested in his book My Life as an Explorer: “It was in this fearful emergency, during these thirteen long months in which almost the certainty of death stared us steadily in the face, that I came to know Dr. Cook intimately. He, was the one man of unfaltering courage, unfailing hope, endless cheerfulness, and unwearied kindness. When anyone was sick, he was at his bedside to comfort him; when any was disheartened, he was there to encourage and inspire. And not only was his faith undaunted, but his ingenuity and enterprise were boundless.”

His acute powers of observation led him to correctly conclude that a major contributing factor was a lack of sunlight during the Antarctic winter and led his to prescribe a crude form of light therapy, placing them before an open fire as a substitute. He also set an example and always found words to give them hope, the best medicine of all.

This understanding of human nature and the power of the mind over the body was enhanced by his contact with primitive cultures, such as that of the Greenland Inuit, where he observed the power of the native shamans to distract, comfort and sometimes “cure” their “patients” solely by elaborate ritual practices that convinced them they would recover.

Only with all this in mind, can we have a truer picture of Cook’s actual status in his time and avoid the pitfalls of “presentism” and avoid judging the past by modern standards and experience, which would impute to him a much higher status than he actually enjoyed and that his professional training had endowed him with intellectual achievement and scientific acumen that under its then comparatively sketchy requirements he did not necessarily possess. It also avoids the assumption that being a doctor conferred on him a high degree of ethics and moral standing that many now impute to his profession and so would make him less vulnerable to resorting to deceit and dishonesty.

This survey of the state of medicine in Cook’s time is largely based on the article “What it was like to be sick in 1884,” by Charles E. Rosenberg, that appeared in American Heritage, volume 35, number 6, published in 1984.

The quotation from Cook’s medical instructions to Peary can be found among the records of Peary’s first Greenland Expedition of 1891-92, which are part of the Peary Family Collection housed at the National Archives and Records Administration II, College Park, MD.

The Polar Controversy spawned an avalanche of items designed to take advantage of the intense public interest in the dispute between September and December 1909. Most of these were ephemeral items, but they were so numerous that many of them have survived. One such item was a statuette of each of the two explorers that was designed to be sold at newsstands in New York City. They are made of chalkware and cast on a metal armature that runs up through the figures’ legs. They were copyrighted by the Franklin Lithograph Co. of New York, which was located at E. 87th Street.

The sculpts are signed “Geo. Magnani” on the reverse. The statuettes are very similar in pose, but not identical, the main difference being the details of the face so as to distinguish between the two explorers. Each has alliterative attributed characteristics of the explorer encompassed by the first letter of his last name on the globe beneath his feet, and a slogan on the base. Perhaps a bias toward Cook is conveyed by the chosen slogans. Cook’s reads “The Man Who Compelled Belief!”; Peary’s “I have nailed the Stars and Stripes to the North Pole. What Have You Nailed?”

These statuettes are scarce today because of the cheap materials they were constructed of and are very seldom found intact. The relative number of them that have survived seems to indicate that they were put on sale early in the controversy and sold in relatively equal numbers.