Frederick Norton Goddard (1861-1905)

Frederick Norton Goddard (1861, New York City – 28 May 1905, Litchfield, Connecticut) was a Republican Party politician from New York City.

Biography
A descendent of the first wagon master general of the Army under the command of George Washington (John Goddard of Brookline, Massachusetts) and the son of one of the wealthiest merchants in New York City, J.W. Goddard, F. Norton Goddard dedicated his adult life to fighting vice and corruption. Though he and his brother Warren Goddard continued to operate J.W. Goddard & Sons (a leading purveyor of tailors' trimmings), Goddard's most notable accomplishment was rooting out the policy racket (an early form of the numbers game) in New York City. Near the time of his early death, Goddard had succeeded in shaming the Western Union company out of its active cooperation with wire houses that allowed illegal off-track betting. Today's OTB parlors are the legalized progeny of the former wire houses, immortalized in the movie "The Sting."