The Indianapolis journal., 1898-09-26
THE CHAMPION BIGAMIST
c. w. WOODRUFF SAID TO HAVE HAD
PROBABLY FIFTY WIVES.
Former ST. LOuis Physician Under Ar
rest at Buffalo on the Charge of
Marrying Too Many Women.

ST. LOUIS, Sept. 25.-The Post-Dispatch's
Buffalo correspondent says: The police have
been busy the last two days taking women
to headquarters to identify Charles w.
Woodruff, a prisoner, as the man who mar
ried them. 1t is believed that he has been
married at least half hundred times.
Woodruff once posed a physician in ST.
Louis, and later was superintendent of baths
in the new Planters House there. He is
ffty-two years old, gray-haired and dissi-
pated. but the success he has achieved in
the marrying line is unprecedented. He has
met and married women in an hour. He has
captivated victims in every part of the
country. and now he has so many wives he
cannot always recognize them when he
meets them on the street.
Woodruff takes his arrest very much to
heart. When he was taken into custody he
said, with the weariness of a man broken
down by the weight of woe: I'm a biga-
mist, know, but I'm old and done for now
and it seems to me you might let me live in
peace He does not appear to think there
has been anything wrong in his wholesale
woong and wedding, and is inclined to pose
more as a long-suffering man than as one
that has committed any crime. That he is
adept is shown in the 5000 letters that
the police have found in trunks in his
rooms. They showed that he has posed as
a physician in st. Louis, professor in New
York, an engineer in San Francisco, min
ing expert in New Mexico, and has had var
ious other vocations in other places.
In the mass of correspondence found in
Woodruffs trunks, Detective Lynch has
picked out letters from more than twenty
five women who believed themselves to be
Woodruffs wives, or expected to be. In
most cases full names and addresses were
not given, and in instances where the ad-
dresses are at hand, the police do not care
to reveal them for fear of doing injury to
good women. These letters are dated from
almost every State in the Union. Pictures
of half dozen st. Louis women were found
in the trunk, but the police have no way of
identifying the pictures with the writers OF
the letters. Woodruff will give them no help,
although he did admit to-oay that for time
he was superintendent of the Turkish bath
in the new Planters Hotel. In New York
he lived in various lodging houses and adj
vertised himself as Prof. G. w. Woodruff,
Massage Treatment"
Woodruff did not go into the business of
wholesale marriage early in life. He was
born in Wesville, Ontario, and welded his
first wife there. With her he lived many
years, until her death, in 1885. The others
of his matrimonial ventures have come
within thirteen years and at the rate or
three or four year one OF ms davorioe oe
women was TO advertise for women to go on
the stage. Then he would select the one
who appeared TO have the most money ana
iewelry and pay court to her 1t was in
this way that he made the acquaintance or
Laura Scott, of Buffalo He promised to
make her the leading lady of a melodrama.
In the same month he secured an intro
duction to Annie Schettner. One night they
drove to the house of the Rev. Henry A.
Ward and were married. They returned
home and he told her to pack the trunk
while he went to get bottle Of brandy and
some cigars. AT the door he turned back
and suggested that it would be well for him
to carry her jewelry while on their honey
moon. She gave him two diamond rings,
watch and $685. He never came back. lie
remained in Buffalo, however. Not long aft
erwards Mrs. Susan A. Sample, a widow,
tainted in an elevator in a Main-Street Office
building. Woodruff helped her to the air.
and the next day they were married. Mrs.
Sample is now living In Massachusetts.
Still another Buffalo woman, now happily
married. was relieved of ner jewelry after
& two days honeymoon at the Gratiot Hotel,
Dunkirk Only last year woodruff returned
by marrying Lorette Dart an actress, at
Fort Erie.
Woodruff languidly pleaded not guilty in
the Supreme Court today TO two indict-
ments charging him with bigamy. These
indictments were found in September 1890.
when Woodruff was al the height or his
marrying career. The indictments name
three women living in or near Buffalo whom
he married within short period. None OF
these women are willing to appear against
him, and he has taken a defiant stand, and
viii insist on the police proving the case
against MIN.
c. w. Woodruff, the bigamist under ar
rest in Buffalo, n. Y. is remembered by
several of the attendants at the Planters
Hotel Turkish bath. He began to work for
the hotel manager of the bath when it
was opened, but displayed little ability and
was discharged after a service of three
months. "He seemed about fifty" said one
attendant. He was heavy-set man and
wore a mustaohe. There was nothing peeul-
lar about him. except that he seemed just
too nice for anything. He didn't know this
business. While he was here he carried on
q spirited correspondence with a female
employe over at the Southern. He seemed
a favorite with the ladies'. but so far as
know ne didn't marry anybody here. The
last time / saw him was about three years
ago when he was peddling notions on the
street So he's been arrested for being
champion bigamist? Well, I'm not much
surprised"