Chicago was so plagued with coal smoke at the Turn of the 20th Century that some called it the Smokey, rather than Windy, City. Coal fed devices heated and powered just about everything, and the soot-laden gloom was already so thick by 1881 that the city became the first in the U. S. to impose penalties on heavy smoke emissions. These had only marginally improved the situation until an enforcement arm, Chicago Department of Smoke Inspection, came along in 1907. The city so sorely longed for a "smokeless device" design that one mayor of the time resolved to pass an ordinance requiring conversion, should an effective device come along. What nobody understood at the time was that "smokeless" was a pie in the sky in those times. The state of science and technology was still many decades short of being adequate to the task.

What was well understood, on the other hand, was that there was potentially big money in smokeless. Francis Joseph Doyle was of this mind, so much so that he devoted himself to the study of combustion. A dozen patents and what he labeled The Doylair Smokeless Locomotive were the end results. Where and how he achieved his expertise, we do not know, because his life was a near historical blank until he was past 30 years old. He was born in Maynooth, in the back woods of Ontario, Canada in 1868 - give or take - as the second eldest son of his Irish immigrant parents, Patrick and Charlotte. Two more brothers and a sister arrived by 1877, about the time that the family emigrated to Wea, an even tinier burg south of Kansas City. Excepting his father's death there in 1886, the story remains blank until 1899, when he turned up in a Denver city directory.
His older brother Christopher became a naturalized citizen at Denver in the same year. Francis remained Canadian, although he falsely claimed being naturalized in 1877. Christopher later partnered with with two other (relationship unknown) family members in founding the Doyle Consolidated Mines Company, whose business was later described thus by a mining journal: "The stock selling campaign appears to have been more successful than the mining and milling operations." That characterization would come to fit Francis's first enterprise.

Francis submitted his first patent application from Denver in 1899 for a universal "Heating Device" designed to improve combustion that could be adapted to solid, liquid or gas fuel, which could be used as either a stove or furnace. He later claimed that it would consume 35-75% less fuel than standard heater designs. The Patent Office initially rejected it, but after resubmission, his patent finally gained approval on January 1, 1901. By then, he was living in Chicago, where he remained for the rest of his life. What better place to profit off his esoteric expertise?

Despite the temporary Patent Office setback, Doyle remained so convinced in the superiority of his heater design - and more importantly, its potential to make him wealthy. - that he had jumped the approval gun the previous August by incorporating the Doyle Air Burner Company in New Jersey, with a capital of $2,000,000.

Doyle advertisements initially were confined to the want ads. This was his first known display ad, printed in the 10-20-1902 Chicago Tribune. - Newspapers.com

 His two partners were solid Chicago citizens. Thomas B. Bryan had lived in the city since its near beginning, while A. G. Thompson was a well known physician. Thompson would remain involved in Doyle's ventures for another decade. In November, the company gained a license to operate in Illinois with a capital of $100,000.

Early in 1901, they opened a showroom on Canal Street, which may have doubled as a modest manufacturing facility. Air Burner advertisements, consisting of small insertions in local newspaper want ads insertions, began in May. Their first full-fledged display ad, for "The Doyle New Principle Gas Heater" appeared in the Chicago Tribune in October, but advertisements ceased in early 1902. All along, small brokers were advertising Air Burner stock at a heavy discount. One broker's ad in early 1902 offered shares of the $10.00 par stock at a fire sale price of $1.50; another at $1.75.

Cash was tight, but that did not prevent Doyle from shopping around in March, 1902 for a location to construct a full-fledged manufacturing plant. Indianapolis, Indiana, Joliet, Illinois and LaCrosse, Illinois all expressed interest, but failed to read behind Doyle's words correctly when he professed that his company was not soliciting direct civic support. They proffered none. Consequently on July 14, Aurora, Illinois Mayor George W. Alschuler turned over the first shovelful of dirt for a new plant located on a 28 acre tract next to the CB&Q Railroad donated by the city. Doyle promoters intimated that the plant was "destined" to become one of the largest industries in the country.

Although there still was little substance to the company, the ground breaking did generate a bit of notoriety, but notoriety can be a double edged sword, attracting the notice of good and bad people alike.

While Doyle immersed himself in establishing his company, three young St. Paul, Minnesota brothers were doing the same with an enterprise of their own, Edwards, Wood & Company, which mostly brokered agricultural commodities. They entered business through the purchase of a small brokerage run by Robert Edwards, who stayed on as a partner. The oldest of the Wood brothers - and mastermind of the organization - was Lewin, aka "Bert", who was about Doyle's age. Brothers Forest and George were slightly younger. A fourth brother was not yet in the picture. We know even less about their earlier lives than Doyle's, but it is quite evident that they already were well versed in this line of business, and that they were veritable boy wonders at growing it. By the time that Air Burner broke ground, the Wood brothers had managed to create a behemoth operation with more than 100 agencies scattered all over the Old Northwest, with large central offices located in Duluth, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Winnipeg and Chicago. In two years time, they had managed to create one of the most preeminent and respected brokerage house in the Midwest. It was easy for them, because they were equally talented as criminals.
How Oil Burner became the target of the Woods brothers is open for speculation. The most reasonable explanation seems to be that they took notice of the Aurora plant dedication, and realized what a powerful tool it would be in talking up prospective investors. In any event, they pounced at Air Burner's annual September shareholders' meeting in New Jersey, and through ways unknown managed to insert themselves in key management positions. Lewin Wood was now president, while his brother George and Doyle became vice presidents. Staunch Doyle ally A. G. Thompson now shared treasurer duties with Woods' parter Robert Edwards, while George Goodwin made room for new co-secretary George Phillips. Like Lewin, Phillips had lately been tossed out of the Chicago Board of Trade, but for keeping "muddled books", an event that precipitated his his company's collapse. Until his fall from grace, he had been nationally renowned as "The Corn King". Otherwise, board members remained the same, and the managerial changes could not have happened without the combined approval of them and the largest shareholder, Doyle. About all that Lewin needed to do to hook and reel in the audience was to remind them of his company's meteoric rise to business stardom and make assurances that he could do the same thing for Air Burner. Whether Doyle fully understood it or not, Air Burner's's fate was now in the hands of Lewin Wood.

The Woods' had no experience nor interest in manufacturing. Their aim simply was to sell stock, expand the sales network, and nothing more. Stock sales were handled in either Edwards, Wood or Airburner offices, rather than through recognized exchanges (with their government mandated paper trails). This allowed the Woods free reign to doctor sales data to suit their needs.
They landed their first big fish before September was done, when Congressman Charles A. Towne of New York, a former Minnesota Senator and a dodgy character himself, set up a franchise in Pierre, South Dakota, capitalized it at $10,000,000 and proceeded big chunk of stock on friendly terms.
Stock and commodities exchanges are essentially places where traders buy and sell stocks among each other, a good example being the New York Stock Exchange. Exchanges exist to facilitate and regulate trades, and do not buy and sell stocks themselves.

On their floors, traders engage in what is essentially big money gambling, but this is OK because exchanges do not buy and sell stocks themselves and do not have slot machines.

Vegas casinos have slot machines that fundamentally pit customers against the "house" (casino), and overall, the house always wins. This is fine because the Nevada Gaming Commission caps the amount that slot machines can fleece out of customers, and of course, big losers always are compensated with free drinks.

Unlike slot machines and stock markets, "Bucket Shops", were bad not only because they were more grudging in the serving of free drinks. "Bucketeers" (customers) bet not among themselves, but against the house, the bucket shop. Betting was based upon upon the rise and fall of market prices and did not involve ownership or trading of stocks themselves. Essentially, bucket shops depended upon customers being too blinded by greed to see that they were playing against a house that held all the cards through criminal manipulation of exchange quotes to their own enormous profits. Since bucketeering was unregulated and left no paper trail, tax men got stiffed along with customers. This certainly would not do.

Newspapers puritanically screamed self-righteous holy hell over these dens of iniquity, but the tax 		men probably would have been less adverse had they been cut in on the action.

Bucket shops got away with this behavior for two main reasons: 1) As with the case of Edwards, Wood & Co., they operated within the offices of supposedly respectable trading houses, and 2) They made sure to distribute a small amount of their proceeds to local constabulary and government officials.

These arrangements with local entities, along with a lack of restrictive legislation, insured that bucket shops thrived throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1922 they were done, however, because as we well know, the tax man always wins.


"Peering down the jaws of a deep pit he sees the souls of the bucket shop gamblers." - Through Hell with Hiprah Hunt, a 1901 retelling of Dante's Inferno by Art Young.

The full court press: Doyle had already lost control of his enterprise to Edwards, Wood & Company, a.k.a. the Wood brothers, when this impressive advertisement appeared in the St. Paul Globe-Register in late November, 1902. Air Burner broke ground on the plant during the previous summer, but after this turning of a few spadefuls of earth, further progress was limited to this drawing created by an undergraduate student in civil engineering. - Newspapers.com

In late November and early December, Air Burner took out splashy half page display ads in Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul newspapers that featured an impressive illustration of the envisioned Aurora Plant drawn by, as it turned out, a young civil engineering undergraduate student at the University of Illinois. (see above image) It would be "the largest factory in the world devoted to a similar purpose". The ad offered prospective investors the prospect of "A Ten-Fold Profit Winner for Investment" while at the same time assuring them that they would be investing in a "safe, conservative and profitable business", also noting that "It is a Sufficient Guaranty of the value and security of this enterprise to know that Mr. L. A. Wood and Mr. R. H. Edwards, of the well known brokers, Edwards, Wood & Co., are prime movers in it." The stock itself was offered at $5.00/share, but this still was well above those cut-rate prices offered at some brokerage houses. The ad also disclosed that, should a fellow have $5-10K laying around idle, he could buy himself a position with the company.
The full court press continued into the new year. To generate timely action from fence-sitting investors, Air Burner placed a cut-off date for $5.00 shares at January 15, 1903. After that, they said, stock would be priced at its full par value of $10.00. January 15th came and went, but the stock remained at $5.00. This clearly was not working, so the Woods shifted tactics. In may, a large ad placed by a Air Burner agent in Washington D.C.'s Evening Star laid out the essentials.. Instead of using a sundown clause for cheap stock, the company now used an overabundance of orders as the come on: "No Orders For Doyle Goods of Any Kind Can Be Taken at Present Except for Delivery AFTER Completion of the New Plant". The ad further purported that it would take three years to fill orders already at hand." This may have not been far off the mark, as the company offered no sign of any actual manufacturing taking place beyond demonstration models.

Shrewd readers would have been compelled to wonder why a company would place a substantial advertisement for products that it could not deliver. Those possessing sufficiently fortitudinous curiosity to wade through a multitude of column inches - revealing the wonders of Doyle's device, and how it had demonstration plants in Chicago, D. C. and Pittsburg and how Francis Doyle wanted to share the wealth with good common folk, rather than dastardly capitals, and on and on - were finally rewarded with a pitch to buy stock.

The ad's particulars indicated that the $5 million in "non treasury" stock was available, and purchasers would have their shares pooled with others and held in the hands of trustee Chicago Title and Trust, until its distribution on January 1, 1908. Treasury stock also amounted to $5 million, but it would be distributed earlier, on January 1, 1905. Unbeknownst to anyone except insiders, the treasury stock details were a ruse - it actually amounted to $9.9 of the $10 million offering and had already been divided among the company's nine directors, who publicly admitted to owning only one share apiece. In addition, treasury stock was not held by Chicago Title, but instead in a secret trust administered by Doyle. This arrangement served both to obfuscate the Woods overselling of stock and to give the directors a three year window in which to manipulate stocks to cover their tracks. The scheme was based on their assumption that factory would be in operation before 1905, thus inflating their stock's value. Why they never went to any substantive efforts to construct the factory is hard to fathom.

Beyond ads in newspapers, Air Burner sent canvassers throughout the Old Northwest to enlist new agent-retailers to heighten its profile, while also demonstrated Doylair heaters at about any business that would host them. With little actual merchandise at hand, the demos only served to encourage investment. They may have achieved their goals, since Air Burner bothered so little with advertising product. Edwards, Wood, on the other hand, maintained a constant presence in area newspapers, including large display ads and daily "letters" (columns) in the major organs analyzing commodities and stock prices.

Amid this, the Internal Revenue Service raided Wood's Sioux Falls office on April Fools Day, 1904 for non-payment of taxes. These were later paid, but out in New Jersey, Air Burner's 1902 corporate taxes were not being covered, nor would would those of future years. Over in Aurora, the city had become so fed up with lack of progress on the plant, that it cancelled the contract. This forced the Woods to go shopping for a new site, this time in Indiana. Frankfort and Lafayette expressed interest, but nothing came of it. Newspapers covering the explorations made no mention of Doyle accompanying them.

Even criminals have their lighter moments. The Call (Indianapolis), 11/20/1903 - Newspapers.com


The first public airing of the tradename "Doylair" seems to have been in this December 11, 1904 Chicago Tribune ad. It would become the namesake of his locomotive and company. - Newspapers.com



In December, 1904 the inevitable occurred. The bottom irretrievably began to drop out of the Woods' fortunes when Lewin, Frank, and partner Robert Edwards found themselves arraigned on fraud charges at Duluth for shorting commodities sellers of proceeds from sales. The trial for six counts commenced on January 5, 1905, and the jury found them guilty three days later, after only one and one-half hours of deliberation. The case went to appeal. Beyond that, the state railroad and warehouse commission was in the process of investigating another 70 complaints and pursuing 10 cases, two of which were already scheduled for February trial. The surrounding notoriety and especially the revelation of the two St. Paul suits, caused some older troubles to resurface. In 1903, the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce attempted to expel the company for various underhanded dealings, but a restraining order thwarted its implementation. Now, the Minneapolis Daily Times was demanding that Wood, Edwards should be thrown out as a first step in a general house cleaning in the chamber.

Meanwhile, on January 1st, New Jersey had revoked Air Burner's Charter for the 1902 non-payment of taxes. At mid month, news of a whole series of scandals began to surface over the Woods' business dealings, along with those of Congressman Towne, who was accused of pocketing the proceeds of unreported Air Burner stock sales. Towne turned the tables on them. He responded with a suit alleging that Lewin Wood had egregiously overstated Air Burner sales and plant progress., and commenced a lawsuit against Air Burner that spent three years in adjudication. The ruckus led government investigators to discover the secret treasury stock trust accounts, and arrange for an injunction preventing their distribution.

Other than Towne's ongoing suit, Air Burner's tribulations went unrecorded in the press into 1906. The Woods' travails were always news, but Air Burner was much too small of potatoes for anyone other than the stiffed stockholders to care about.


Judging by following events, Air Burner entered bankrupcy sometime in 1905, at which time the presiding court appaointed a trustee. In January, 1906, the trustee received a court order to liquidate company's Oakley Avenue plant assets. The auction took place on the 16th at the Oakley Avenue plant, two days after notices appeared in Chicago newspapers (see right). Doyle's facilities turned out to be more robust than outsiders might have expected. For starters, an enormous amount of product and supplies were on hand, including 5,000 Doyle burners. This supports a theory that, contrary to Wood brothers' assertions that Oakley Avenue was overwhelmed with orders, the reality of it all was that product sales had not kept up with production. That the office held only a half dozen desks and a single Remington typewriter may speak to this.

This was not the end of Air Burner. The company still maintained two tiny "manufacturing" facilities in Chicago - one employing two men and the other three men and a woman.. This indicated that Air Burner was forced to reorganize, not close, and liquidate most of its assets in the process. The same nine 1901-appointed directors remained, but the Woods contingent was gone. This suggests that the courts considered the latter to be the culprits in the company's misdeeds. Given that company officers came in pairs, the Woods men handled stock sales, while the Doyle men oversaw manufacturing. Regardless, nobody was prosecuted for wrongdoing. The Wood brothers' overall business affairs were much too extensive for Air Burner's bankruptcy to cause significant harm. Their further adventures can be seen in the righthand column, below.

In Doyle's case, his reputation was tarnished and his finances surely were a bit strapped, but mostly he was forgotten. The piddly remains of Air Burner could not have consumed much of his day, but this was fine. He had his inventions. Even before the collapse, he had enough spare time to go on an inventing binge. In March 1903, he sent four inventions off to the Patent Office - for for a Furnace, a Steam Boiler & Furnace and a Gas Stove. All of them were granted patents by early November.

Shortly afterwards he married an Illinois woman, Minerva, with whom he had a child who died at a young age. This is about all that we know about his adult personal life.

After Air Burner declared bankruptcy, its manufacturing assets were sold at auction on January 16, 1906. Note the large amount of stock on hand, which suggests that rather than being inundated with orders, Air Burner had failed to move the merchandise. - Newspapers.com


While the Woods' many shenanigans were still winding their way through the courts, Doyle founded a new company that on the surface appeared to adhere to his former partners' model. In August, 1907 a notification appeared in the Detroit Free Press stating that Doyle had filed articles of association in Michigan for the "Doylair Syndicate" to "engage in a commission business, dealing in stocks, patents, etc." Of the $10,000 in capital stock at an unknown par price per share, Doyle held 47 shares, while his brother James, John Wirth and Adolph Schmidt held one each. Half of the stock was already subscribed to, against which $1,000 had been paid in cash.

What do we make of this? The syndicate was not a full-fledged brokerage that would have been required to follow standard reporting requirements of the stock exchanges in which it traded. Doyle's shop proposed to facilitate trades in-house, sans reporting requirements. These types of arrangements were so prone to fraudulent trading and tax evasion that Michigan later passed its 1913 Michigan Blue Sky Laws which forbade them. Creation of a bucket shop also may have been on the agenda. Was Doyle employing techniques that he learned from the Woods? Something funny was going on here, but there is no record of the syndicate doing actual business.

We next encounter Doyle in 1908 as manager of the Crilly [office] Building on Chicago's Dearborn Street, a block from the head office of his brothers' mining company. His obsession with his inventions continued, causing yet another furnace design to make its way to the Patent Office in August, the same month that an illustrated notice of the new Doylair Water Heater appeared in the trade journal Engineering Review. (see below)

Lewin and brothers Forrest and George were true business crime savants who managed to build a sizable empire in no time. They well knew that power and money are wondrous insulators from justice, so it should be no surprise that their high-end lawyers - not them - who performed damage control over ever mounting counts of malfeasance, leaving the Woods free to continue their nefarious antics.

For instance, in February, 1905, an appeals court upheld the three partners's 1904 conviction for shorting 70 sellers (typically farmers) in commodities commission sales by reporting a sales price lower than the actual amount. No report of sentencing appeared in the newspapers, which leads one to believe that the lawyers had done their job in minimizing public fallout.

The Woods Brother empire's collapsed on June 8, 1908, after 3 1/2 years of litigation that resulted in a paltry $2500 fines each. The Woods were victorious in escaping prison, but the real winners were their attorneys, who undoubtedly lived a better lifestyle on their clients' dime. -Newspapers.com

Doylair Inc Inc. arose from the ashes of Doyle Air Burner Co. like a Phoenix in 1908 with a novel water heater, as seen here in its first advertisement. Note that its actual manufacturer is Northern Syndicate. - Google Books

The newly revived Doyle Air Burner used Doylair as the trade name for the new product line. The company did not manufacture its new line of products, however. That was left to an assortment of foundries located around Chicago. Doyle's principle allies were manufacturer Northern Syndicate, and wholesaler Globe Heat--Power. The three had a close relationship, given that the latter two shared the same address on Chicago's Randolph Avenue, and Northern Syndicate also maintained either an office at Doylair's 173 N. LaSalle St. building, or perhaps only a desk within Doylair's office.

With his partner companies performing most of the heavy lifting, Doyle had plenty of time to create new and improved devices. He forwarded four applications to the Patent Office in 1909 - for a gas burner in May, a furnace in July, with a stove and yet another furnace following in October.


At mid year Forest (and hence his company) was ejected from the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce for exactly the same offenses precipitated Lewin's awkward exit from the Chicago Board of Trade: maintaining bucket shops. It took a year of legal wrangling for the Chamber to prevail.

The company now could not legally trade on either city exchange, but nevertheless continued supplying newspapers in the region with columns quoting both, and from the New York Stock Exchange (of which it was not a member) as well. Legal kerfuffles over this were ongoing, as were the company's columns. The Woods remained the darlings of St. Paul society.

And they immediately came up with a simple workaround to their ejections. They joining the Duluth Chamber of Commerce, and started giving quotes at the Duluth exchange for commodities delivered in Minneapolis and Chicago. Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce tried to suppress this in court, but lost their case in March, 1906.

The brothers then largely faded beyond historical notice for the next two decades. The 1910 and 1920 Censes enumerated them as continuing residents of St. Paul, and tellingly, a 1910 news article reported him as secretary /treasurer of the St. Paul Auto Club. Whatever stash of money they had must have been giving out by the late 1929, when Lewin had managed to run afoul of postal inspectors and get himself arrested for selling $100 worth stock in his Oxide Battery Company. The rub was that the sales occurred while the later denied application was pending. This drew him a $250 fine.

The 1930 Census showed George as now living in Los Angeles. Lewin joined him in California shortly thereafter, and in 1931 they became hoteliers in Oakland.

By mid-1931, Hotel Oakland a, deluxe, block-long affair abutting 14th Street that cost $2 million to erect in 1912, had fallen on hard times due to the Depression. Conjecturally, this is what happened:

A man calling himelf "Will" C. Wood, -who may have the men's younger brother Lucien had earlier sniffed out a juicy opportunity for his brothers to swoop in and take control of the hotel, which was on the verge of closure after the hotel company fell into arrears on taxes, bond interest and mortgage payments. Lewin who represented himself as the owner of several Southern California hotel and apartments (who knows?), managed to hammer out a favorable lease over the course of a month, aided by "Will", who had managed to get himself appointed to the opposite side's negotiating committee. The hotel's bondholders were not pleased with the terms, but were unable to do anything about it for six months due to terms in the deed of trust securing the mortgage.

The Woods immediately set into remodeling the hotels interior public spaces, including dining areas. At the same time they lowered prices to be in better accord with the ailing economy. All was well in October, when Lewin, George and their wives exercised their new status by hosting a hotel reception for dignitaries honoring a Mills College trustee.

When the six months was up, the bondholders wated no time in demanding that the Woods vacate the lease. The latter's alleged transgressions were a bit unclear, but the two large local banks that held the bonds successfully leaned on a court to appoint a receiver.

When the receiver and his entourage appeared at the hotel doorstep to take possession, they found the hotel closed and the entrances barred from entry by Lewin's guards. Some of the guests had not yet left. The help had been discharged. Upturned furniture littered the hallways, blocking doors and elevators. Various tradesmen, deliverymen and other people with business inside the hotel engaged in stormy altercations with the guards. Food services were closed, but the remaining guests inside were granted mercy via permission to attend the bar. After the confusion died down, the Lewin relented and announced that they would vacate without making any trouble.

Hotel Oakland eclipsed even the Key Route Inn as Oakland's grandest hostelry until the Depression and the Woods hit town.

None of them popped up again until mid-1934, when Lewin, now the National Chairman of the Scottish Clans, gave the headliner speech at the San Diego Technocrats Fraternal Hall, a pretty good feat for an Irishman, eh? Six years later he was still living in San Diego when he passed away. We know nothing about the fate of his brothers.

The Doylair Smokeless Locomotive strutting her stuff: Although undated, a photographer likely recorded this shot on the demonstration of February 16, 1910, when the loco pulled a reported "five cars" back and forth through the switching district. On other outings, the loco either ran light, or pulled four gondolas and a passenger car. Note the odd device situated on the running boards above the lead driver. This apparently was a steam powered motor that drove that used a system of pulleys to power a fan that created a forced draft over the firebox into the combustion chamber. Conventional locos used an exhaust draft that sucked air from the combustion chamber through boiler tubes and smokestack. - Wx4 Collection

More significantly, October likewise was the month that he began fitting out what he would dub The Doylair Smokeless Locomotive [#1], a 4-4-0 type teapot of uncertain antiquity that he purchased from Ryan Car Works in Hegewith, Illinois. He hired a retired engineer, J. J. Burke, to run it the 18 miles from Hegewich to the Union Stock Yards, where the engine came under the care of Chicago Junction Railway's master mechanic. Burke later maintained that he could get no more than 60 pounds of steam out of her during the trip. He remained as the engineer for the coming tests.

Beyond a water heater, the new Doylair line also included a variety of stoves, furnaces and heaters. Although Doyle ads assured a savings of 50-75% in fuel, his line had as yet not made a dent in public awareness. Following #1's first public test on December 23rd, the Joliet Herald News commented that he had dropped so far out of sight after Air-Burner's semi-demise that, "Many thought that the inventor was dead…"

If his Smokeless System proved effective, Doyle might be set for life, but he faced an uphill struggle in convincing people that his was a unique and superior device in what in reality was a crowded field. His was classed as a force draft furnace that employed a separate fire pit and combustion chamber instead of a conventional single chamber firebox directly heating the boiler. The fire pit was charged with coal over which a turbine-powered draft of air flowed, forcing the volatile gases produced by the burning coal into the combustion chamber, where it ignited. The flues, through which the exhaust from the firebox normally flowed to the stack, were blocked at the front end of the boiler save tiny holes to allow spent gases to be propelled forward at a leisurely rate through the stack, instead of being sucked out by the exhaust in a conventional arrangement. This could make for an extremely efficient boiler under the right conditions, but forced draft had been used on various ships and boats for 90 years, so Doyle's main task was to prove that his arrangement was truly smokeless and moreover, practical.

The Herald News, the only newspaper known to cover the December event near the stock yards, supplied few details other than disclosing that the Doylair device was installed in an "old scrap heap locomotive". Most likely, the locomotive saunterd back and forth by itself for a few times in front of the assemblage. The Herald News reporter concluded that the test was "Partly Successful" which must have been somewhat of a blow to Doyle's ego. In all, his invention "did not totally eliminate the smoke, but it certainly reduced the volume to a minimum." On the following January 19th, Doylair's distributor, Globe Heat-Power Company, gave a Chicago Alderman, a smoke inspector and his assistant an hour long back and forth cab ride on No. 1 on the same stretch of track in Chicago Junction's Chicago yard. They reported smoke as minimal, but the locomotive was running light, without cars. The smoke inspector concluded that this was no fair test of the loco's capabilities, and remained skeptical.

Following adjustments and purported service on the Chicago Junction for another month, Doyle gave a demonstration on February 16, 1910, this time pulling five cars back and forth through the switching district. Who and how many dignitaries attended is unknown. One news report observed that it put out no smoke beyond a grayish vapor, which Doyle attributed to the advanced age of his loco. He assured onlookers that a new "large" loco then under construction would eliminate this. That loco undoubtedlywas based on the locomotive design that he submitted to the Patent Office that month. It represented a more holistic approach, with his furnace installed below the combustion chamber, rather than added inside limited firebox space. Several accessory appliances and loco modifications accompanied the improved Doylair furnace, including a goofy looking arrangement of pulleys and belts driving the cab roof mounted "air fan" (blower) that must have occasioned a few chuckles among railroad men. Next, he sent industrial vertical water tube boiler following Doylair principles to the Patent Office in May. Both of these designs languished there for several years.

Doyle's February, 1910 patent application showed a different blower arrangement than what was installed on loco #1. Instead of belts feeding a blower somewhere to the direct rear of the steam powered motor on #1's running boards, the patent design instead ran the belts upward to an "air fan" mounted to the cab ceiling behind the fireman's head. Apparently Doyle felt no concern over jeapordizing the fireman's earlobes.

On March 29th, No. 1 - not the "large" locomotive - finally stretched its legs on the mainline ahead of four empty gondola cars and Chicago Junction's private car on a run from the Chicago Stock Yards to Argo (soon absorbed by the city of Summit) and return, a distance of 28 miles. This reportedly was accomplished with only a single filling of the firebox. A selection of railroad officials and representatives from Chicago, Detroit, and Janesville "smoke committees" attended the private car, presumably availing themselves of copious libations supplied by Doyle. One Chicago alderman commented upon the lack of smoke, but the railroad officials were more reticent with their views. They did let slip that they would like to see what the loco could do under a heavy load. Doyle was hoping that his demonstration would also drum up interest in his similar device intended for stationary boilers. He (truthfully) told the gathering that one of them was already in operation inside a boiler located at a small college near his old Oakey Avenue factory location. That it "was "doing more on three tons of coal a week than formerly was done on 18," may have been hyperbole. In addition, a device was in the works for testing on "one of the big industrial stacks in Chicago". One newspaper later editorialized that it would be "a great triumph for civilization" should the Doylair device prove successful. In June, Doyle would give it one more try.

Had it not come out in April that one of Doyle's main backers had managed to embezzle himself into something of a pickle, the next - and final - demonstration might have occurred with greater dispatch. So far, Doylair pre test festivities had all convened at Stockyards Bank, a small institution located at the entrance to Chicago's stockyards. The bank's vice president, Thomas J. Fitzgerald acted as the host. But now a scandal arose over $22,000 in missing account money which Fitzgerald had surreptitiously appropriated and loaned out to friends with little or no collateral. Fitzgerald was rumored to have put a large amount of money into Doyle's business, but when asked, Doyle responded with the likely half truth that Fitzgerald only held one share of stock. This did not address the elephant in the room, whether he was the recipient of an under-the-table loan. Fitzgerald must have been a personable enough guy, because his friends subsequently passed the hat and raised enough to repay the bank - but not enough for Fitzgerald to regain his job. Fortunately for Doyle, nobody seems to have brought up his past association with the Wood brothers.
On June 10, 1910, The Doylair Smokeless Locomotive made its swansong appearance. The demonstration was an exclusive affair at the behest of a Chicago Council local transportation sub committee. Wanting an independent expert take on things, Chicago's Board of Supervising Engineers, sent Fred A. Krehbiel of his namesake company to monitor the Doylair's performance. Newspapermen did not cover the run. Kriehbiel's was one of only two or three Doylair reviews that did not hint of being produced with one foot squarely planted upon a barstool.

As before, the exercise took place behind Old #1, not the promised "large" locomotive. It pulled the usual four empty gondola cars, but this time around a coach stood in for the private car. His failure to provide a real world load behind his loco, as railroad men had earlier suggested, was a pretty good indication that Doyle suspected that his design was flawed, as it emphatically proved to be.

It took an hour for the train to accomplish the 14 miles to Argo. In the process, it lost eleven minutes stopping for water and consumed another three minutes stopping for unknown reasons. During the run, Krehbiel observed, the smoke stack was "practically clear of smoke" for 40 minutes; emitted "light brown smoke" for 16 minutes; and " a dark brown smoke, which would be considered as objectionable by the Smoke Inspection Department, for four and one-half minutes."

Is that Francis J. Doyle sporting a bowler hat and commodious mustache posing with hands clasped behind his back? If so, this is his only known likeness. It dates from a mainline outing either on March 29th or June 10th, 1910. - Wx4 Collection
It took an hour for the train to accomplish the 14 miles to Argo. In the process, it lost eleven minutes stopping for water and consumed another three minutes stopping for unknown reasons. During the run, Krehbiel observed, the smoke stack was "practically clear of smoke" for 40 minutes; emitted "light brown smoke" for 16 minutes; and " a dark brown smoke, which would be considered as objectionable by the Smoke Inspection Department, for four and one-half minutes." The journey home proved to be the total undoing of Doyle's remaining hopes. "On the return trip from Argo the steam pressure fell from 90 pounds to 35 pounds while climbing the hill to Summit [maybe two miles distant] on the Indiana Southern Railway. This necessitated a stop of ten or fifteen minutes to regain the steam pressure. Another similar stop, presumably for the purpose of bringing up steam pressure, was made between Summit and the city." Chicago's other representatives completely missed any of this, which prompts a legitimate conclusion that the whiskey flowing back in the coach had a powerful kick to it.

Ninety pounds was somewhat low as a normal operating pressure, but conversely, it was much better than the 60 pounds that Burke claimed to have experienced while delivering #1 to Doyle the previous year. Chicago Junction's master mechanic may have specified this limit because of concerns over No. 1's advanced age, but the Doylair device itself may just as well have been the culprit. Krehbiel attributed the massive loss of pressure on the hill to the Doylair furnace's taking up so much room in the firebox that "the capacity of the locomotive was materially decreased". Overall, he assessed that "the Doylair system goes a long way towards elimination of smoke [but] the problem has not been thoroughly worked out". The locomotive had been under the direct control of Doyle, yet "objectionable smoke was frequently produced for short intervals of time and that the fan producing the forced draft and the steam blower were being constantly manipulated by Mr. Doyle". He concluded, "that we believe the Doylair system during the test received far better supervision than would be practicable in everyday operation on a steam road."

H. H. Evans of the Chicago Department of Smoke Inspection echoed Kriebel's assessment on July 8th, after coming aboard a decrepit old Chicago River tugboat named the J. H. Hackley at the invitation of Globe Heat-Power Company to observe the performance of the Doylair device installed in its boiler. As we have already noted, Chicago was long in ernest over its quest to reduce smoke pollution and had created Evans' department three years earlier. His report displayed an astute practical knowledge of the everyday requirements for firing steam boilers and laid much of the general problem of heavy smoke at the feet of firemen. "Almost any form of boiler can be fired smokelessly if given sufficient care and attention…The nearer a device can be made to be independent of the fireman the nearer successful as a smoke device it will be. Firemen are human, their principle care is to hold steam, and they are naturally prone to keep steam up in the easiest way…and that is usually with a certain amount of smoke production."

Evans nevertheless gave the Doylair tug a favorable review, especially considering that he regarded the tug as "over-engined", meaning that its 22 horsepower single cylinder engine was too much for the Hackley's diminutive boiler. This did not make up for his fundamental observation that the Doylair was nothing new. Its forced draft concept had been employed on steamboats for nearly 90 years. "I believe that the many devices [that] I have found trace of similar in principle to the Doylair installation should give equally good results provided that they are properly proportioned."

The so-equipped Hackley continued puttering around Chicago for another month, and Doyle's invention seems to have instilled long-missing vigor into the old barge, if one accepts the words of its master, who appears to have been employed either by Doyle or Globe. He claimed that after being useless for the last five years, the tug was now doing "the work required of her" sans smoke and fines.

Hype aside, the Doylair device actually did a fair job at remediating heavy smoke, but its performance was hardly earth shaking enough to make it stand out among the crowded field. Most worrisome to Doyle, however, was the knockout punch that the Smokeless Locomotive suffered on Summit hill.

Given that No. 1 had previously accomplished a round trip without major incident, the latest dismal result was quixotic in the least, but probably not to Smoke Inspector Paul P. Bird. All the way back in January, he was one of the witnesses to No. 1's back and forths at Chicago Junction yard. In his report , he frankly wrote that the Doylair had little potential for railway work for three reasons. First, he estimated that the Doylair burned coal so slowly that he did not believe "that this system can burn enough coal within the limits of the space allowable on the modern railway locomotive to furnish sufficient power for pulling trains." Second, the Doylair 'magazine' took up so much space within the firebox that sufficient room was not available for workmen to make ordinary repairs on the boiler, such as repairing staybolts and tightening leaky flues. Third, the front ends of the boiler tubes were plugged, save small holes for the gases to go through. The flues carried no draft to the stack and otherwise, gas circulation was so slow that it would be prone to buildups of cinders and soot.. Bird figured that "after some hours of service the tubes would be so filled…that the capacity of the boiler would be very much reduced." On standard locomotives, firemen cleaned flues enroute by placing a scoop of sand in front of the firedoor for the draft to suck the abrading sand, soot and cinders through the flues and out the exhaust. In the absence of a draft, such duties would have to be performed inside a cold firebox, where the smokeless device partially blocked access to the flues.

Did Doyle reject Bird's assessment out of hand, or alternately consider the issue so minimal that it would not justify the arduous task of removing the Doylair from the firebox in order to ream out the flues? Maybe the stalls had nothing to do with the flues, but how else might the rather sudden inability to maintain steam be explained?

Doyle never put #1 on display again. A rare few future advertisements noted that he had "demonstrated a Smokeless Locomotive" sans any claim that it worked. All was not lost. Doylair consumer "furnace-stoves" and water heaters were selling well enough, and Doyle also managed to peddle an industrial boiler furnace from time to time.

Globe Heat-Power Company continued on as his principle agent, and possibly as a manufacturer of some types of Doyle devices. In April, 1910 the company had decided to expand its stove manufacturing business by acquiring the Gibson Iron Works (sadly, Gibson guitars and refrigerators also have no connection to the author) in Gibson City, Illinois. They managed to secure a 90 day option to purchase the plant with personal IOU's; no money up front. When the option expired, Globe renewed it for another 90 days, but kicked in very little money. In the meantime they had taken possession of the company, installed some new machinery and engaged in a bit of manufacturing. After the option again expired, Gibson directors terminated the agreement.
As a local newspaper put it, "The action didn't phase the Globe company, apparently." It turned around and ordered 3000 (Doylair?) furnaces, which would have required about five years to complete, given Gibson's limited manufacturing capability. Gibson agreed and set to producing furnaces, but when Globe's up-front money ran out, production stopped. After learning of this, Globe "put up a cry of distress" and sued Gibson for $50,000 for alleged non performance. They maintained that they had never taken over Gibson's operations, and "that if such a thing was done it was by people in their employ and without their knowledge and authority." Gibson's response was that Globe "was putting itself in the position of suing itself for not taking care of its own business." This surely must have amused the jurors, who found in favor of Gibson in March, 1911. Globe's fortunes withered after that and by April its stock was offered at six cents a share. In early November, Globe placed a six line want ad for Doylair products in the Chicago Inter-Ocean, then disappeared. Air Burner's top manufacturing partner, Northern Syndicate, faded away five months later.

Doyle responded to the troubles by replacing Air Burner with a new company, Doylair Incorporated. Nothing is known regarding its finances, nor has evidence surfaced anywhere in the U.S. indicating where it filed articles of association. No mention of stock offerings ever appeared in newspapers. As with Air Burner, Doylair employed several foundries around town to manufacture its products and at some point began manufacturing consumer items itself at a South Beloit factory of its own. Doylair confined advertising to trade magazines, and some of the ads were quite impressive, connoting a substantiality that did not exist. The new arrangement worked well enough for his business to remain in operation over the course of the next year and one-half, but in November, 1911 it began to appear that all was not rosy.

Times of trouble tend to prompt people's hidden selves to emerge, and such held true for Francis Doyle. In mid-October he returned to Wood era ways in an effort to establish an Indiana factory by dusting off the old demand exceeding capacity pitch line in front of Indianapolis businessmen. He should have ceased his speech there, but desperation propelled him into a wildly improbable tale of just why he was so needy.

According to Indianapolis News, "Doyle has designed a locomotive which in appearance and size is similar to a Pullman car. This locomotive has 12, 680 square feet of heating space, and the fire box holds 30 tons of coal. It is said that the locomotive will pull 20 Pullman cars at the rate of seventy miles an hour for 250 miles without any attention to the fire, and at the same time no smoke is produced. Doyle says four of these locomotives are to be delivered to the Chinese government for use on the Chinese-Manchurian railway."

Globe Heat-Power acted as the principle sales and advertising gent for Doylair products. Its fall nearly broke Air Burner. - Google Books
As absurd as this sounds to us now, his audience would have reacted with absolute, jaw-dropping disbelief. The idea of investing in the prospects of a Pullman-sized pipe dream by a failed locomotive inventor was off-putting enough in itself. Somebody must have voiced a question akin to, "How'd the Smokeless Locomotive turn out, Francis?" to the guffaws of his fellows.

What really would have knocked the audience over was Doyle's total ignorance of newspaper headlines covering China's predicament of the moment. A week before his presentation, China had progressed from local revolts into full-fledged and widespread revolution led by Sun Yat-sen and others against the reigning Qing dynasty (which fell the following January). The irony of it all was that the original uprising began in the city of Chengdu as a protest against nationalization of the railways. "Hey Doyle, how much armor plating is your monstrosity going to be sporting, anyway?"

This was Doylair's grandest advertisement, but it came too late in the game to to help Doyle's faltering company. His hopes were still riding on a new, well endowed plant site when he sent it off to the trade jourbal Town Development, but it appeared in the December issue, after backwoods Paw Paw's businessmen thumbed their collective nose at him.

Despite his embarrassment and diminishing prospects, Doyle persevered for awhile afterwards. He even made another attempt at selling the idea of a factory to businessmen in the small rural burg of Paw Paw, Michigan in June, 1912. It would be a modest facility, with an estimated cost of $4,000 (if newspaper's figures were correct), quite a price drop from the $1,000,000 that he had boasted to the Indianapolis men. By way of potential, Doyle claimed that his factory on the cheap stood a fair chance to out-rank any stove factory in the country since the goods manufactured were covered by his "more than 200 patents". (! This figure included purported foreign ones.) A few curiosity seekers showed up, but Paw Paw's businessman took a pass.

This dashed Doyle's hopes for a manufacturing empir with a certain finality. He certainly had cause to throw in the towel. About six months later, he licensed his trademark and sold the industrial boilers operation to a group of Chicago businessmen who formed Doylair Products Company. They made a worse go of it than Doyle. One of its few public references popped up in 1915, when the company reported to a trade magazine that it had found a "slight improvement in sales...as compared to last year." Delaware subsequently revoked Doylair's charter in January, 1918 for failure to pay its tax bills.

The final ad for a Doylair product appeared in the Agricltural Review. By then only the Furnace Stove was the sole Doylair item still in production. - Google Books


Doyle's South Beloit plant may have been ill equipped to handle large jobs, hence he licensed them to others, such as the William C. Pfeiffer Boiler Works. This installation likely took place on about the turn of 1912. - Heating & Ventillation Magazine, Feb., 1912 - Google Books

In July, 1914, Doyle's consumer line found a new owner, Charles. H. Burgess & Son, who for much of the previous year had served as a Doylair distributor and big advertiser in Chicago and Detroit. They set up shop at Doyle's former South Beloit plant to manufacture Doylair stoves, warm air furnaces and "instantaneous" gas water heaters. Burgess fared better in business than Doyle ever had. In 1919, they expanded into other product lines after reorganizing as the South Beloit Stove & Manufacturing Company. As such, they continued producing Doylair stoves until at least 1923: 425 pounds of stove for $50.00, delivered. The company lasted until the Depression.
Shed of his business, Doyle once more devoted himself to invention, this time for a novel internal (rather than external) combustion engine featuring moving pistons and cylinders. It went to the Patent Office for approval in October, 1917, but the latter dawdled a little too long. Approval did not come about until September, 1921. Doyle had passed away at 53 years old on the previous June 9th, four days before his burial at Mt. Olivet Cemetery. No obituary appeared in Chicago newspapers, but his death certificate listed him as a widower and incorrectly listed his birth year as "about 1866". Apparently nobody was close enough to him to get his age right.

About all that can be said with any certainty of Francis Doyle is that he proved to be a moderately talented, but not gifted, designer in his field. While his stoves and furnaces were not revolutionary, they did prove competitive in the marketplace for many years. Otherwise, his Smokeless Locomotive was a bust unsuited for railroad work. He did not see it that way, of course, for he had an inventor's deep psychological investment in his creation: The basic design just needed a bit more tweaking to prove the naysayers wrong. And if a measure of skulduggery was required to bring his work to manufacture and his lifestyle to riches, so be it. In the end, when his talents were provingto be unequal to the tasks, Doyle was overcome with desperation. How else might one explain his pie-in-the-sky Pullman/Chinese locomotive scheme? Ultimately, did he set forth with criminal intent or simply succumbed to it? We simply have too little evidence beyond circumstantial to accurately deduce which direction the gears and gizmos spun around in his head. Who Doyle actually was, we shall probably never know.
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