Captain Frederick Norton Goddard (1861 – May 28, 1905) was a Republican Party

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...

from New York City. He was an anti-poverty advocate and an anti-gambling advocate.

Biography

He was born in 1861 in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

to Joseph Warren Goddard, and he had a brother, Warren Norton Goddard. He was a descendant of the first wagon master general of the Army, John Goddard, under the command of

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...

. who built the John Goddard House

Brookline, Massachusetts Brookline is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, in the United States, and part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area. Brookline borders six of Boston's neighborhoods: Brighton, Boston, Brighton, A ...

. Frederick Norton Goddard attended the Anthon grammar school and then

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, graduating in 1882. He then joined his father's business, J. W. Goddard and Sons. He married Alice Grenville Winthrop on November 22, 1898 in Manhattan. After the death of his father he formed the Civic Club and became an anti-gambling advocate trying to eliminate the

numbers game The numbers game, also known as the numbers racket, the Italian lottery, Mafia lottery or the daily number, is a form of illegal gambling or illegal lottery played mostly in poor and working class neighborhoods in the United States, wherein a be ...

. In November 1901 he worked to get

Albert J. Adams Albert James Adams (May 22, 1845 – October 1, 1906), known as "The Policy King" and the "Meanest Man in New York," was an American racketeer. He ran the numbers game in New York City from around 1890 to around 1905. Life He was born in Ma ...

, the policy king incarcerated. He died on May 28, 1905 at 9:30 am in

Litchfield, Connecticut Litchfield is a town in and former county seat of Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 8,192 at the 2020 census. The boroughs of Bantam and Litchfield are located within the town. There are also three unincorporat ...

Legacy

He dedicated his adult life to fighting vice and corruption. Though he and his brother Warren Goddard continued to operate J.W. Goddard & Sons (a leading purveyor of tailors' trimmings), Goddard's most notable accomplishment was rooting out the policy racket (an early form of the

) in New York City. Near the time of his early death, Goddard had succeeded in shaming the

Western Union The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services company, headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York, the company chang ...

company out of its active cooperation with wire houses that allowed illegal

off-track betting Off-track betting (or OTB; in British English, off-course betting) is sanctioned gambling on horse racing outside a race track. U.S. history Before the 1970s, only the state of Nevada allowed off-track betting. Off-track betting in New York was ...

. Today's OTB parlors are the legalized progeny of the former wire houses, immortalized in the movie

The Sting ''The Sting'' is a 1973 American caper film set in September 1936, involving a complicated plot by two professional grifters (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) to con a mob boss ( Robert Shaw).''Variety'' film review; December 12, 1973, page ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goddard, F. Norton 1861 births 1905 deaths American anti-poverty advocates Anti-gambling advocates Harvard University alumni New York (state) Republicans