Background
Davis was born in Portland, Maine and lived in Bangor until he was fifteen.
Davis was born in Portland, Maine and lived in Bangor until he was fifteen.
Before the First World War, he also wrote racy sketches of New York high jinks and low life for the Police Gazette under the name of "Ike Swift". Many of these were set in the Tenderloin, Manhattan. Davis also wrote under several other pseudonyms, including "Martin Hurley", "Arthur J. Lamb", "Walter Lawrence", "John Oliver", and "Robert Wayne".