In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, minimal government oversight and vast communicational gaps allowed just about anyone to move about the country freely and, it turns out, fraudulently. Dr. J.O. Mote—doctor by self-profession though many doubted, once he absconded from their cities, his actual training—knew this. From at least 1884 in Illinois until 1917 in Springfield and Sterling Idaho, he hung his shingle out as a medical practitioner.
Mote advertised himself as a graduate of New York's American Medical and Surgical Institute in New York when he showed up for an October traveling gig in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1884. By December he'd gained notoriety, exposed by the janitor at the college he did attend in Keokuk, Iowa, who wondered how a student could so quickly gain his profession."A young man of erect carriage, a high forehead, black moustache and short side whiskers", he wore a pepper and salt coat, his demeanor convincing enough to cheat the local newspaper in Council Bluffs of their fees before he left town in a hurry.
Mote was in Fort Scott, Kansas by that clipping's appearance, where he advertised permanent cures for cancers, piles, fistulas, and tumors without using the knife or caustics. In just a few days he left town, again shorting the local newspaper of their advertising fees, He left without paying his landlord or his bootblack. The newspaper editor noted that he also took his overcoat.
He appears in Illinois in 1886, claiming he graduated from both Keokuk and Rush Medical Colleges. He worked his way into Joplin, Missouri where he was arraigned for practicing medicine without a license. He plead guilty and was fined $50.
Nebraska was his next stop, and he reached Utah by 1891. He was assaulted in 1907 in Reno, presumably for good reason given his past. He moved to Gentile Valley and was charged in 1915 with bad check writing for his actions there. He made it to Bingham County shorty after, was suffering from tuberculosis of the bone at that time. He underwent surgery.
In May of 1916 he was hanging his shingle in Sterling, Idaho and was practicing in Springfield from the Lakeside Hotel, as well. He succumbed to tuberculosis in 1919 and is buried at the Springfield cemetery.
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