December 2024

Glen Spey 12 yo (43%, OB, Flora & Fauna, +/-2024)
Glen Spey 10 yo 2012/2022 (54.6%, Lady of the Glen, ex-wine barrique, cask #800062, 311 bottles)
Glen Spey 2011/2024 (56%, Malts of Scotland, sherry hogshead, cask #MoS 24005, 3…

Penelope Bourbon introduces Havana Annual release in Penelope’s Cooper Series of cask finishes stands apart as an indulgent bourbon experience that balances tropical elements with rich, warm maple notes  ST. LOUIS (Dec. 10, 2024) – Penelope Bourbon announced its latest innovation in cask-finished bourbon with the release of Havana. Always at the forefront of innovation, the […]

Continuing our teeming throng of industry leading Tweet Tastings into the new year – and just ahead of Burns Night, we’re thrilled to announce that on January 22nd we’re teaming up again with our very good friends at The Dalmore Distillery for another …

 

                            

The man known to Americans as Dr. Charles W. Robeck made a lifelong career out of chicanery.  Forced to flee his native Sweden for his misdeeds, he found a home in Cincinnati, Ohio.  From there he sold liquor and phony nostrums to Americans nationwide.  The drawing left is Roback, as he desired to be seen, a Medieval scholar and savant.

The Roback Imposture Comes to America:  In 1854 Roback self-published in Boston what has been called a “fantastical autobiography,” shown right, in which he fabricated his origins and ability as a seer/scientist to provide “valuable directions and suggestions relative to the casting of nativities, and predictions by geomancy, chiromancy, physiognomy.” The volume purported to tell the story of his life and accomplishments, beginning with his invented origins.

There Roback described his mythical birthplace:  “The building was the ancient castle of Falsters, in Sweden, my ancestral home.  Within its walls, the family of Robak, or as it is spelled in the old Norse records, Robach, had dwelt from time immemorial….I have no recollection of my parents, both of whom died in my infancy….”   By the age of ten. Roback claimed, he had certain prophetic gifts and a special talent for magic, astrology and other occult lore as the “seventh son of a seventh son.”  The purported autobiography spins along extolling the charlatan’s remarkable talents.

The facts tell a somewhat different story.  Roback was born in Sweden in May 1811 and baptised Carl Johan Nilsson.  Later for reasons unclear, he adopted the surname Fallenius, becoming known in some circles as Fabello Gok.  In June 1833 at age 22 he married Greta Nilsdotter, 20, and they had two sons, Nils Johan and Karl Wilhelm.  Roback/Fallenius became a dry goods merchant in the city of Oskarshamn, shown here, and when the business went bankrupt turned to confidence scams involving stock and commodity markets.  Arrested in 1843, he was sentenced to five years in a Swedish prison.

Abandoning his wife and children, he fled to America landing in Baltimore, at first calling himself William Williamson aka Billy the Swede.  About 1847 he moved to Philadelphia where he was transformed into Dr. Charles W. Roback, astrologer.  Ever restless, in 1851 he moved to New York City and two years later on to Boston.  Apparently finding neither city satisfactory, after a brief sojourn in Montreal, he settled in Cincinnati about 1855.

Along the way, now divorced from Greta, Roback married Mary H. Sinnickson, a New Jersey native.  Mary’s mother was from a French Quaker family, her father, Seneca Sinnickson, an American born Swede.  Seneca had a somewhat rocky past, condemned by the Quakers in 1819 “for marrying contrary to discipline” and subsequently dismissed from the congregation “for disunity.”   Mary may have known about Roback’s past and thought him not unlike her father.  In fact, Roback was old enough to be her father.

Chicanery in Cincinnati:  Rok’s occupation in the Eastern cities as astrologer apparently was less lucrative than he might have imagined.  Few Americans had ever heard of a Swedish savant or cared to hire one.  Now married and moved to Cincinnati, he entered the liquor trade as shown in the letterhead above, calling himself a “distiller, rectifier, manufacturer” of domestic wines and liquors.  Roback assuredly was not a distiller, a phony claim made by many dealers.  He possibly was a recifier, mixing up his own brands from whiskey bought from others.  He most assuredly, however, was a manufacturer of alcohol-charged medicinals.

About 1855 in addition to selling whiskey Roback introduced a group of proprietary medicines, calling them “Scandinavian” Remedies.  These included his Scandinavian Blood Purifier,  Blood Pills, and Roback’s Vegetale Dyspepsia Complaint tonic.   Subsequently he issued Roback’s Stomach Bitters featuring a likeness of the faux doctor on the label. 

The highly alcoholic bitters were vigorously advertised nationwide. In one ad he began by asserting that this potion would not remedy all human ailments, but had broad application:  “In the Bilious districts of the West and South there has, for a long time, has been much needed an article of Stomach Bitters which, if taken in proper quantities, and at the proper time, are a sure preventative of Bilious Fever,  Fever and fatigue, Liver Complaints, Dyspepsia, Indigestion, Jaundice, Kidney Complaints and all diseases of a similar nature.”  The nostrum was sold in distinctive ribbed bottles in varying shades of amber, as shown below.

At some point Roback apparently decided that his proprietary medicines, now selling briskly nationwide, were eclipsing his liquor sales.  He created a new corporate name for his nostrums.   Shown here,  the company became the U.S. Proprietary Medicine Company, occupying part of the same building shown on Roback’s letterhead, at 56-62 East Third Street in Cincinnati.  Some writers have assumed this was a different ownership but I can find no evidence  of that. 

Roback’s Enablers and Inheritors:  It appears that virtually from the beginning, Roback outsourced the distribution of his medicinal products.  That fell initially to Demas Barnes, a major figure in his own right as an adventurer, author, one term U.S congressman and subsequently a New York City drug merchant.  Shown left, the young Barnes had left his birthplace in Gorham County, New York, to cross the continent driving a horse and wagon, studying mineral resources in Western states and writing about his experience upon his return.  His publications brought him to the attention of the public and he won a term in the U.S. House of Representatives.  

In 1853, Barnes began a wholesale drug business in New York City.   He rapidly became a prosperous patent medicine manufacturer, developing a national market for his nostrums.  How he and Roback connected is unclear but the Swedish liquor dealer agreed to give control of the national marketing of his pills, potions and bitters to Barnes.  When the law permitted, Barnes early on ordered private die tax stamps for the nostrums. Shown below are stamps for Roback’s bitters in four and six cents, bearing a likeness of the “Doctor’s” Cincinnati headquarters.  

Barnes was just the first of the merchants to see the value in Roback’s medicinals.  The Swedish con man, perhaps in ill health, about 1866 sold out his ownership of the Roback line and was listed in the Cincinnati directory as a manufacturer of “Fine Cut and Smoking Tobacco.” When the Swede died the following year, Cincinnati merchants lined up to claim Roback’s brands.   

From there the story becomes somewhat tangled and hard to reconstruct. It would appear that Prince, Walton & Company was the first to announce ownership of Roback’s Stomach Bitters.  It advertised the potion with an image of a striking nude woman, carrying a bottle and a glass, wrapped in the wings of a large black bird. the company also claimed to occupy the same East Third Street building in Cincinnati that had been Roback’s headquarters.  I can find little about Prince, Walton & Co. In an 1870 Cincinnati directory the company is listed as a liquor dealer located at the northeast corner of Fourth and Walnut Streets.  

By the end of 1871, according to one source, F. E. Suire & Company stepped in to claim ownership of U.S. Proprietary Medicine Company.  A Cincinnati business directory of1867 carried an ad, shown here, that identified this firm as “Importers, Manufacturers and Wholesale Druggists, located at the northwest corner of Cincinnati’s Fourth and Vine Streets.  As the ad shown here indicates, F. E. Suire offered a wide range of products, ranging from glass and glassware, paints and varnishes, snuff and cigars, perfume and druggist sundries, as well as medicine, wines and liquors.

What proprietary medicines F. E. Suire gained from Roback by buying the “medicine company” is not clear.  A clue may lie in the person of Edward S. Wayne, a highly respected druggist and chemist, who had arrived in Cincinnati about 1846.  During the 1850s Wayne had been associated with the Cincinnati College of Pharmacy as a staff member and the Medical College of Ohio as a lecturer in practical pharmacy.  In 1866, he became a partner in the Suire firm and, I believe, instrumental in claiming Roback’s medicine company.

When Suire died in 1874 and his company ceased operations, Wayne joined the wholesale druggist firm of James S. Burdsal & Company.  With Burdsal he created “Wayne’s Diuretic Elixir” and, I believe brought with him the rights to Roback’s products that had come to him through F.E. Suire.  The Burdsal outfit was another pharmacy offering a wide range of products, featuring “medicines, chemicals and liquors” as visible below on its building. Also shown below is a trade card forJ.E. Burdsal that advertises its Dr. Roback’s Scandinavian Blood Pills.  The card also cites association with the U.S. Proprietary Medicine Company.   Finally, the figure at the center of the piece may be that of the self-imagined “legendary” figure, C. W. Roback.

The Passing of the “Fabled” Dr. Roback:   The man who called himself Dr. Charles E. Roback and over time by several other names, died on May 9, 1867, just short of his 56th year.  His body was carried to Mt. Holly, New Jersey, where he was buried in the Sinnickson family plot in Mount Holly Cemetery.   He had been preceded one year by his wife, Mary, who died at 32.  His tombstone is shown below,

The couple, in effect, left no heirs.  They had no children of their own.  Roback’s son, Carl Wilhelm Fallenius is reported to have visited his father in America, seeking money to buy a farm in Sweden.  The “doctor” apparently obliged and also remembered the young man in his will.  After Roback’s death, Carl is said to have declined any inheritance from his run-away father.  

Note:  This post draws heavily, but not exclusively, on a biography of Roback/Fallenius in Wikipedia.  Several of the images shown here are courtesy of Ferdinand Myers V who has devoted two posts on his “Peachridge” website to Roback’s bitters bottles.