Carruthers was a scholar and friend to Henry Walton Jones, Senior.
In 1914 in San Francisco, he boasted about his acquisition of a “genuine 15th – century Inca funeral urn” from some antiquities dealer in Bolivia. However, Henry pointed out a tiny inscription on the piece that said "Made in Japan".
This event hurt Carruthers. In 1916, a scholarly conference was held in Philadelphia and Carruthers returned the favor, being among the scholars who scorned Jones about his research on the Holy Grail.