"Robert Hazard" was born Walter Francis ("Frank") Scholes in Chicago on August 5, 1890. Married with three sons as a gentleman farmer in Virginia, he faked his own suicide during the First World War to escape the draft, and made his way to New York City. Claiming to have worked as a farm hand in California as a hobo and wanderer, he now became a cab driver. He soon met 37-year-old spinster librarian Marion Isabel Lord, who helped him get published in Scribner's magazine. Scholes married Marion and Hacking New York was published in April 1930. In the meantime, his first wife raised their three sons believing her husband to have been drowned. But when Scholes found himself dying from lung cancer, he confessed to his sons that he was still alive. The second death of Frank Scholes occurred on December 23, 1945.