Here is a list of 59 lawyers or attorneys in Skagway in the early days:
Acklen, Adams, Agner, Barnes, Bennett, Blackett, Bowman, Boyce, Burton, Carrier, Cassidy, Church, Corliss, Dautoff, Day, Dixon, Dillon, Elliot, Erwin, Goldschmidt, Grant, Gunnison, Hall, Hamilton, Hartman, Harding, Hartners, Helmcken, Hills, Jennings, Knapp, Lightfoot, Lilly, Lovell, Marquam, McEneny, Miller, O’Donnell, Ostrander, Paulsell, Perkins, Pratt, Price, Rasmuson, Sehlbrede, Shackelford, Shorthill, Shoup, Smith, Stevens, Taylor, Tupper, VanHorn, Webb, Weldon, Wilcoxen, Williams, Winn, Young.
Most had some other profession such as retail, lumber, teaching, hospitality, secretary, tax collection, judgeship, mining, hay & grain and engineering. Some worked for Soapy (Van Horn, Weldon, Dixon, and O’Donnell) and some worked for White Pass (Elliott, Harding, Cassidy, Hartman, and Helmcken).
Seen above is a likely set of characters.
In my book, Alias Soapy Smith: The Life and Death of a Scoundrel, I expound on the belief that attorney John Price also worked for Soapy. If Dixon is Syd Dixon, I am not convinced he is a real person. The only place I have found mention of him is in the early biographies on Soapy and there are several names and characters that are fiction.
Yes, the Dixon is Syd, I have that he was an opium addict, but here are my sources, are they the questionable ones?
Klondike Chest by Grainger; Mission Klondike, by Sinclair; historynet.com which quoted an article that was written by Jon Guttman and originally appeared in Wild West magazine – hmmm, sounds a little fictional
I found Klondike Chest on Google Books and read way to many quoted conversations with Soapy and Syd Dixon for it to be realistically considered non-fiction although the book is said to be a biography/autobiography. The back of the book lists names used in the book and sources for each but Soapy and Syd Dixon’s names do not appear.
Mission Klondike is a great book, however, you have to be able to distinguish Rev. John Sinclair’s words from those of his son, James. The only mention of Syd Dixon is without a doubt coming from the son and his bibliography lists The Reign of Soapy Smith as a source.
I contacted Jon Guttman after he published the article in Wild West magazine and unfortunately his article was just repeated history from early biographies, as are the first two books above.
As far as I can tell, “Syd Dixon,” along with “Ice Box” Murphy, and a few other fictional gang members, first appeared in The Reign of Soapy Smith by Collier and Westrate, 1937. In all my research I have found their names in no contemporary newspapers or sources.
The good news is that I am uncovering the real names of the Soap Gang and some of these men have real histories that are more fascinating than the made up ones!
Jeff Smith