Dorothy Rice Sims a mutual friend, George Biddle, and wrote in her 1938 autobiography, "Curiouser and Curiouser", "I inquired Waldo’s height—he was six feet two. This seemed a dignified height. I told George to produce Waldo, which he did. We got married in Madrid, in a German Methodist Church, with the American vice-consul, who was a Filipino, to make it legal.” A website using the name "Mile High Club" regards the "Club's" "founder" as pilot and design engineer Lawrence Sperry as the "Club's" "founder", along with "socialite Mrs. Waldo Peirce" (Dorothy Rice Sims) citing their flight in an autopilot-equipped Curtiss Flying Boat near
The Shame of the Cities which deliberateness, invention, and avarice has never been equaled". Ames and the complicit police force, in exchange for bribes, chose to ignore illegal gambling and prostitution. This arrangement attracted criminals to the city, many of whom arranged with the police to be left alone—according to Steffens, "the government of a city asked criminals to rob the people". The foreman of the city's grand jury, Hovey C. Clarke, was primarily responsible for breaking up the Ames machine. After being selected to the jury in April 1902, he and his colleagues paid several private detectives to investigate the machine. After the conviction