More newspaper citations for Walter Ruby in the Catrow affair and as a boxing manager—but is it our Walter?
While researching Walter Ruby citations in the Newspapers.com database, two subjects of earlier investigations came up in repeated hits. One is the Catrow affair, in which Walter may have been party to a bootlegging conspiracy. The other is the possibility he might have been involved in the boxing business as a manager or promoter.
There are plenty of contemporaneous news accounts of a Walter Ruby that fits both descriptions. The Catrow indictment came down in April 1922. Most of the boxing citations are from May through August of 1923, when the pre-fight arrangements for a featherweight bout in Yonkers was much reported upon.
Whether the boxing manager and the liquor distributor were one and the same, or if either one was our Walter Ruby remains to be discovered. Neither possibility is implausible given what we know of his personal interests and future career path. But there is nothing in these latest articles except the name that necessarily connects our ancestor to the people in the news.
I thought for a moment that I found a connection, a new detail about the Catrow case in an article in the New York Herald, April 12, 1922.
The liqour, it is charged, was delivered finally to Emanuel Kessler and Morris Sweetwood, neither of whom were indicted.
My eyes lit up for a moment over that first surname, thinking maybe Emanuel Kessler could be related to Sidney Kessler, Walter's future associate in the liquor business. That would be a connection. But a quick review of my prior research in Kessler genealogy doesn't show any close male relatives named Emanuel.
The other Catrow articles were from papers around New York state—Albany, Ithaca and Buffalo—reporting what we already know about the indictment.
Moving on to the boxing business, Walter Ruby and his partner Lew Meyers were mainly in the news because of this one fight. They were representing a popular Yonkers fighter Billy Fitzsimmons, who was seeking a rematch against local champion Jack Bernstein. It seems that Bernstein wasn't keen for the matchup and looking at his fight record I don't think a second bout between the two ever happened.
Besides Fitzsimmons, another client of Ruby and Meyers cited in an article in the Brooklyn Daily Times.
...a corking bantamweight prospect Nat Brandt, a product of East New York....Lew Meyers and Walter Ruby are doing Brandt's business.
There was a Lew Meyers who was a fighter in New York between 1897 and 1911, compiling a 9-13-1 record with six knockouts. He could have retired from the ring and continued in the business managing other fighters.
He shows up in articles as a boxing manager beginning around 1916, but citations with him also mentioning Walter Ruby appear only in 1923, so it seems the partnership was short-lived.
As for our Walter Ruby's career in 1922 and 1923, we have heard about his employment with the International Silver Company but I don't think we know the dates for that.
The 1920 U.S. census has his occupation as "traveling salesman" and in 1930 he is a self-employed jobber. Whether he could have been in the boxing or the liquor business in the interim years remains an open question.
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