NAME: 'Doctor' Jemmet Jones

AGE: 35

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:



Jemmet is a handsome man of approximately 5'11" and 160 lbs.  He is lean but shows the signs of eating and living well rather than a hard life out on the plains.

He has remarkably well groomed, short brown hair with clear blue eyes.  His features are well defined, yet one would not call them 'rugged'.  He has been remarkably lucky in retaining his teeth and youthful looks despite the rigours of the age.

He is generally clean shaven (paying for the finest barber's in town when he can) and typically dresses very well indeed (for a simple travelling Doctor).

His most distinctive feature is his Scottish accent.  Although he has been in America for over ten years now he still maintains, and cultivates his accent.  He wishes to appear warm, yet distinctive.  He wants the farmers and homesteaders to hear distinction in his voice.  Validation that surely this man couldn't lie...

Currently dressed in a sharp black suit and waistcoat, with an immaculately pressed white shirt he cuts a debonair figure in the saloons of the growing towns of the Great Plains.

Once a sore loser once thought he caught a glimpse of the corners of a couple of Aces up each sleeve...

OCCUPATION: "Why I am just a simple Doctor Ma'am, making a lil' living sharing the wonders I have learned"

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"Don't you believe a word of it Miss, that Doc Jones is nothing but a low down dirty charlatan and gambler...."

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'TOOLS OF THE TRADE':

"You're looking a bit peaky Sir!  Come!  Why not try Mama Jones's Healing Elixir.  Concocted from the secrets of the Muscogee, she lived with 'em for near twenty years.  Ails coughs, colds and the donkey droop.
 Guaranteed!  Sixty per cent of the time it works every time!"

"That rash sure looks unpleasant Miss, on such a purty face too!  You want to try my patented snakeoil linament.  Extracted from the poison glands of the Rattlesnake, then distilled to get the badness out. This oil will cure all physical impediments!  My sister is forty-three you know, and she just won 'prettiest maid of Goldriver', beating out Miss Betsy Mae, just nineteen and the Mayor's daughter!"

At any given point in time Doctor Jones may have various vials of coloured powder of dubious provenance, medical and scientific instruments (stolen), various elixirs, coin dies (for when one finds a friendly Blacksmith), bottles of leeches, loaded coins and dice....

However, his most useful possessions (often on hand to validate his respectability) are a number of (fake) degrees and letters of commendation of various schools and university of science and medicine across Europe.

He also served with distinction in the Civil War (for both sides) and carries with him medals for his valour.  He proudly wears the Medal of Honor for his heroism at the Battle of Donelson in 1862 and also (surprising, since they had never been minted) has in his case a medal given to him by his good friend Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest of the Confederacy.

It's not all 'work, work, work'....Doctor Jones always has his own deck of cards, "just a friendly game sir?" and just happens to acquire at the right moments silk handkerchiefs and the finest lace, "...for you, my love..."

He's sometimes been known to carry with him various pamphlets about social issues (property rights, abolition of slavery and the wildest ideas from Europe related to redistribution of wealth).  Likewise, never far away, are speeches for when the need suits (running for mayor, or rabble rousing to raise an 'get-out-of-town-quick' insurrection).

PERSONALITY:

Doctor Jones' most prized possession is of course his mind.  Doctor Jones is intelligent, with a sharp mind and a sharper wit.  He is always on the lookout for an opportunity to earn a dollar or two or seize an opportunity for something a little bit more.

Doctor Jones projects as kindly, charming and exceptionally confident.  His smile flashes across his face whether he is shaking hands with the mayor or kissing the delicate hand of a lady.  Equally at ease with the men of the plains he can sometimes be seen with his jacket off and sleeves rolled up to round up the cattle or sip on the whisky after a long day ('and maybe a game of chance fellas?').

An exceptional public speaker and raconteur of stories, his most important subject of course is himself.  He suffers from narcissism and being terribly charismatic he works hard to cultivate his reputation where ever he visits.  The main issue being that he doesn't stay long in any place in order to maintain that 'reputation'.

Doctor Jones is a born liar, a selfish man and a cheat.  It's not that he is 'evil', more that he has to 'win', and he likes winning.  His general rule is that life is hard and one has to keep moving to stay one step ahead.  If told about the misery of a particular successful swindle he would simply smile and quote Latin, 'caveat emptor my friend...'

Although he would quite happily con a corrupt sheriff of his life's savings or sell a fictitious bridge to a wicked plantation owner he isn't a modern day 'Robin Hood'.  He would just as easily sell his 'miracle cure' to a destitute family to cure their child, hoping deep down that belief could somehow make someone feel better...

Everything about his appearance and demeanour is carefully crafted to present himself in the manner he chooses.  He spins his tales so well, but he is also concerned about being caught out.  As a consequence he is keen not to let people get close to him.  The less people know about him, the less opportunity there is for people to see through his lies.

As a consequence there is a loneliness to him which he dares not accept.  The man who has makes friends and leaves enemies where ever he walks is truly alone.  Very few people see the real man in the mirror, the man Doctor Jones knows as Jemmet and the one who has to confront exactly what he has done each and every night.  There is a coldness behind his sparkling eyes, but someone has just got to know to look beyond what is presented to realise...

'WHAT'S YOUR PARTY TRICK DOCTOR JONES?'

"Why, if I wasn't a simple healer, I couldda been a magician!  A conjurer of parlour tricks!" he laughed as he pulled a silver dime from the back of a boy's ear.

Doctor Jones has a quick hand which is very useful for sleight of hand and palming tricks.  Very useful if you are entertaining at a party (or playing cards...)

"The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service."

'Talent' is perhaps the wrong word to say but Doctor Jones is a perceptive reader of people.  He knows their vanities, their motivations.  He can flatter the brusque man filled with self-importance.  He can convince the dreamers wanting a better life.  He can make hearts melt and bodies swoon with the most romantic of quotes.  Many a wife has opened her husband's wallet after her corset following a tête-à-tête with the good Doctor...

'WHAT'S YOUR WEAKNESS?  C'MON DOC, EVERYONE'S GOT ONE....'

Being a gambler, a chancer and a cheat only works if one ALWAYS stacks the cards in one's favour.  Jemmet doesn't always do this.  He is reckless, impulsive even.  A good gambler never throws good money after bad.  Jennet loves to 'win' too much.

Being compulsively dishonest means sooner or later his schemes are going to catch up with him.

He can hardly remember have the lines he has spun.

BACKGROUND:

Born Jemmet Cairnochan on the 10th January 1832 in the small village of Port Logan in the parish of Kirkmaiden, Wigtownshire, South West Scotland his early years were inauspicious.  Growing up in a small fishing village looking out to the Irish Sea, even as a boy he had a wanderlust, gazing for hours at the lands that lay beyond the grey waves lapping at the shore.

A life fishing in the sea was never going to be enough.  He longed to look West - to the exciting world of the United States and the opportunities it opened.  At age sixteen, with hardly a glance back to his parent and family and a life left behind he set sail to earn his fortune.

Sailing to first Belfast, then Liverpool he set sail on the 'Lady Mary' to Philadelphia. Arriving in 1851 he worked with other Scottish and Irish immigrants fleeing the Highland Clearances or the Great Famine and he settled to work in the textile industry.  Swapping a life of haddock for a life with cloth wasn't exactly what he was hoping for.  There was a silver lining however in the smile and emerald eyes of Aileen O'Rourke, a second generation Irish immigrant.  An indiscretion in a doorway, a swell of the stomach and the chime of wedding bells could have, and should have been the start of a wonderful life together.

Jemmet looked at the grey tenements and the rain falling in a cold winter's afternoon in Philadelphia.  The small room which should have been the start of something new seemed a terrible prison.  Sixty hours hard graft a week wasn't exactly what he thought would be his future when he looked out to the sea.  Surviving the coffin ships, cramped under deck.  Fingers working to the bone in cold factories.  No sleep with the squawk of a baby and having to smile to be the perfect husband.  Jemmet realised that this wasn't a life he was going to lead and before he had a chance to say good-bye leaped on the first train out of there, "...anywhere Mister...I'm headin' West!'

Conurbations and cities became towns and farmsteads.  The vast expanse of the land became wilder, more free. Penniless, Jemmet fell in with hoodlums and scammers, learning tricks and sleights everywhere he went.  A second wife in Fredericksburg, Virginia, jail in Tennessee, scrape after scrape followed Jemmet where he seemingly always survived by the skin of his teeth.

His life took a decided change when he met Brewster McGullicutty (not his real name), an ageing crook engaged in selling stolen arms from the Union to the Confederacy as civil war broke out across the land.  Mr McGullicutty was a master forger and confidence trickster.  The General's couldn't believe their luck when a rogue waltzed into their fort like he owned the place with photographs and copies of manifests of shipments of guns.  He appealed to their vanity and greed, and understood their desire not only to get a 'good deal' but to strike a blow to the enemy.  How better to kill the Union soldiers but with their own guns!

Jemmet was hired by the Union to travel North to acquire said weapons with a number of other brigands, unidentified and unconnected to the military.

It was all a scam.  The weapons never existed.  It was a way of extracting gold quick from the easily swayed.  Jemmet saw through the scam almost immediately and rather report him to the Confederacy (for a tidy sum) took a gamble...

"...ah want in Mr. McGullicutty..."

Brewster was ambitious and reckless, but no fool.  The way Jemmet saw through his ruse was like a knife through warm butter.  Rather than be afraid, he realised he had an asset.  "Sure the boy will double cross me at some point, but I'm old..."

"That kid's quicker than a rattlesnake..."

Becoming a protégé for an older conman was the apprenticeship Jemmet never had and always needed.  He was a natural of course (why else would he have been identified), and McGullicutty taught the man almost everything he knew.  How the biggest way to extract cash is to understand what motivates people and exploit it fully.  How one must work hard to project themselves in the manner they choose to be seen, a retired War General, a foolish dilettante with to much money, a cripple cured of polio.

It indulged Jemmet to develop his vices of gambling and women, often as part of a scam for a new 'preacher' to roll into town and save the 'fallen' from the whorehouse.  Jemmet would give all he owned to the 'saviour' and support others in doing the same, before the preacher became a doctor and they left town again.

It was Brewster who developed the 'Doctor Jones' persona.  He could see something in the boy, that he had an easy way with the vulnerable and desperate.  That he could bring out the best and worst in people.  When his time was up he knew the boy would be alright.....

......of course, as the hands tick around the clock Brewster McGullicutty did meet his end.

It was at Rock Creek Station, Nebraska where he had set himself up in as a eminent alchemist who could turn stone into gold.  Prospectors returning south from Colorado penniless were eager to have something to show for their efforts.  Painting his hair and skin yellow he guaranteed results, largely based off the findings of the Dutch chemist Conrad Barchusen (Brewster would read often...).  Alas it was hard to be a competent chemist in the Frontier, especially with limited alchemical equipment or knowledge.

Most saw him as a fraud immediately but one didn't.  Carrying off a haul of shiny 'golden' ingots 'Bad Eyes' Nicky thought he had made it rich.  Until he tried to spend them that is.  Returning weeks later he put his Smith and Western between the eyes of the swindler McGullicutty.

The master and the apprentice had overreached their selves...

Fleeing Jemmet left with nothing except the knowledge of the old grifter and a purpose in life to just keep on moving

'WHAT BRINGS YOU TO DRY GULCH MISTER?'

"Welcome ladies and gentlemen to my little stall.  On this wagon you will see the latest elixir from Vienna.  The learned chemists have been keeping this a secret for so long.  The Crowned Heads of Europe now live to an average of a hundred and twenty.  They have the vip and vigour of a young buck of fifteen!  Yessir!  This is the fountain of youth!  Denied from exportation by the Commonwealth, the French and the Spaniard, they have patented this magical potion (did I say magical?).  For they do not want the American to have it!"

"Now, I studied under Ludwig Türck and Leopold von Auenbrugger at the First School of Medicine in Vienna.  They swore me to secrecy and paid me a high price for my silence"

"...Ah lied to 'em though.  By the Father above I confess my sins, and if hell be my resting place, it's what I deserve, but I couldn't hold my tongue.  This cure to youth is needed all over the world!"

"I knew I'd be persecuted in Austria, Belgium and France so under the cover of night I bought my passage to the bright new world of opportunity and gave the rest of my fee to the orphanage of Saint Catherine in Philadelphia.
 Now I travel the land, mixing my elixir and giving it away.  All I ask is a donation for my time and materials...."

"Who wants to learn more..."

The truth is Jemmet is on the run.  He keeps on heading West, hoping the railroad won't catch up with him.  Each town and homestead opens up a new door, but the world is beginning to seem smaller rather than larger....