John J. Ryan (1862-1930) was an American gambler.
Early life
Jack Ryan was born on August 9, 1862, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His parents, Michael Ryan and Helen Considine, were born in Ireland and came to the United States, probably through New York, in the 1840s. Michael was employed for most of his life in Cincinnati as a carpenter, making coffins, and as the keeper of the city morgue. He died in March 1903. Jack had three brothers: Edward, Michael, and Richard; and six sisters: Catharine, Anna, Elizabeth ("Honey"), Bessie, Mary, and Loretta. Except for Jack, whose remains were cremated, and Ed and Richard whose remains are buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, the remains of the parents and the most of the rest of their children are buried in St. Joseph's Cemetery, in Cincinnati.
Ryan and his siblings grew up in Cincinnati. It appears the girls worked in factories. What the boys did is unclear but Ryan claimed to have worked as a clerk at the Reeds Hotel.
Politics and business
Ryan began to be mentioned in newspaper articles in St. Louis in the early 1900s, when he and "Cuddy Mack" McGilcutty, attempted to take control of the City's Fourth Ward after the city's political boss, Ed Butler, had lost power after being convicted of bribery. Thomas "Snake" Kinney, later to become the longest serving Missouri state senator, resented Ryan's effort to muscle in on the graft-connected political scene. Kinney, whose gang operated with the Egan's Rats, sent Red Houlihan to Ryan's saloon to kill him, but Ryan gunned him down. Kinney tried to kill Ryan a second time, sending a gang of thugs to attack him in the street. They came upon Ryan at Twelfth and Grand, across from the Four Courts, and began shooting. Struck in the abdomen by a slug, Ryan returned fire before falling to the pavement. Recovering from his wound, Ryan left St. Louis.
Less than two years later, in the fall of 1902, Ryan reappeared in St. Louis as the operator of the John J. Ryan Turf Investment Company. Ryan became connected with George and John Considine of New York through his horse racing activities. In the early 1890s, George F. Considine had managed Jim Corbett in several of his heavyweight fights, and acted as stakeholder; he was also the owner of several hotels. The Considines were connected to Big Tim Sullivan who, as a Tammany Hall politician, controlled the territory of Manhattan below 14th Street. It is not known if the Considines (and Sullivan) were silent partners with Ryan in the turf investment scheme. After leaving St. Louis in 1901, Ryan got control of a piece of land in the suburbs of Covington, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, which had been used as a racetrack in the past. He reopened the track as the Newport Race Track; acting as track manager he brought together a group of horsemen and began organizing races. At the same time, he opened a poolroom in Tuxedo Gardens, an unincorporated area a mile north of the track. He also operated a horse farm at Elkton, Maryland, where he claimed that he owned and bred a racing stable.
With this setup, Ryan returned to St. Louis, and opened an office for the John J. Ryan Turf Investment Company, and began offering shares of stock to the public at $5.00 per share. The shares came with five, $1.00 coupons attached, entitling the shareholder to cash in one coupon one week at a time. Investors were told that the company's capital was to be used to bet on the outcome of horse races at the Newport track selected by Ryan. Because of the lack of public transport there was no substantial public attendance at the races. It appears reasonably clear that Ryan, through his control of the track operations, controlled the outcome of the races. Whether or not the company took paper profits or losses on betting the horses, Ryan's game was a pyramid scheme. By paying large sums for newspaper advertisements, and mailing promotional literature, he attracted capital and used part of it to pay for the redemption of the coupons from shares sold earlier, skimming, in the process, huge sums for himself.
Between November 1902 and February 1903, Ryan's company gained 60,000 subscribers and accumulated capital of over $1 million. In February 1903, other "get rich quick" scams going on in the city collapsed when the public panicked; the panic spread to Ryan's operation, causing him to seek bankruptcy protection. At the end of the process, the company's creditors: paper manufacturers, printers, and newspapers, received a penny on the dollar.