Ben Lewis Reitman M.D. (1879–1943) was an American anarchist and physician to the poor ("the hobo doctor"). He is best remembered today as one of radical Emma Goldman's lovers. Reitman was a flamboyant, eccentric character. Emma Goldman conveys a sense of this when she describes first meeting Reitman in her autobiography, Living My Life: His eyes were brown, large, and dreamy. His lips, disclosing beautiful teeth when he smiled, were full and passionate. He looked a handsome brute. His hands, narrow and white, exerted a peculiar fascination. His finger-nails, like his hair, seemed to be on strike against soap and brush. I could not take my eyes off his hands. A strange charm seemed to emanate from them, caressing and stirring... Biography Reitman was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to poor Russian Jewish immigrants in 1879, and grew up in Chicago. At the age of ten, he became a hobo, but returned to Chicago and worked in the Polyclinic Laboratory as a "laboratory boy". In 1900, he entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago, completing his medical studies in 1904. During this time he was briefly married; he and his wife had a daughter together. His wife was Mae Schwartz, and their daughter was "Jan Gay" (Helen Reitman), the author, nudism advocate, and founder of the nudist Out-of-Door Club at Highland, New York. He worked as a physician in Chicago, choosing to offer services to hobos, prostitutes, the poor, and other outcasts. Notably, he performed abortions, which were illegal at the time. In 1907, Reitman became known as "King of the Hobos" when he opened a Chicago branch of the Hobo College, which became the largest of the International Brotherhood Welfare Association centers for migrant education, political organizing, and social services. Reitman met Emma Goldman in 1908, when he offered her use of the college's Hobo Hall for a speech, and the two began a love affair, which Goldman described as the "Great Grand Passion" of her life. The two traveled together for almost eight years, working for the causes of birth control, free speech, worker's rights, and anarchism. During this time, the couple became involved in the San Diego free speech fight in 1912–13. Reitman was kidnapped by a mob, severely beaten, tarred and feathered, branded with "I.W.W.," and his rectum and testicles were abused. Several years later, the couple were arrested in 1916 under the Comstock