Martin Fone's Blog, page 253
August 8, 2018
Book Corner – August 2018 (1)
Tortilla Flat – John Steinbeck
I’m going through a bit of a phase of trying to plug some obvious gaps in my literary knowledge. After all, I don’t want to be sitting on a cloud and being asked, during a break in harp practice, whether I have read much Steinbeck. Fortunately, Penguin Modern Classics came to my aid a while back by offering Kindle versions of his novels for £0.99 a go and so this is the first of two that I selected.
In many ways it is appropriate that I chose Tortilla Flat which, although it was his fifth novel, published in May 1935, it was the one that made his name. The reviews were favourable, it began to sell well and Steinbeck was able to sell the film rights. It is easy to see why. It is a humorous collection of essentially shaggy dog stories, written with a light touch and imbued with an easy sense of whimsical humour. The characterisation is strong and the style is no-nonsense.
The book focuses on a group of ne’er do well Mexican-Indian-Spanish Americans, known as paisanos, who eke out an existence in Tortilla Flat near Monterey in California. They are work-shy, have voracious appetites for wine, argue and fight with each other but somehow, perhaps because they have no other option, rub along together in a communal house. Think of hippies without the drugs.
The glue which holds the book and the community together is Danny, who, upon his return from the Great War, finds that he has inherited a couple of houses from his dead grandfather. This good fortune raises Danny’s stock in the eyes of his fellow paisanos and he soon collects a motley collection of picaresque characters who vow their allegiance to him but at the same time see him as a bit of a gravy train. The book relays the tales of their life together.
It is easy to see some obvious Arthurian parallels in the story. King Arthur was a commoner, elevated to royalty by his ability to remove a sword from a stone. Like Arthur Danny initially has trouble getting his followers to meet their obligations but eventually wins them round, winning their undying pledges of loyalty. Danny’s house is a round table manqué and the Catholic symbolism which imbues Mallory’s tale is found in spades in Steinbeck’s novel.
There are many moments when the reader will find a smile cross their face as they race through the pages and there are pieces of superb comedy. I particularly liked the story of the Pirate who had pledged a gold cross to St Francis upon the miraculous recovery of his dog from some illness, the task of collecting the thousand dollars necessary becoming a life’s work. The dog, however, was run over a few weeks later. And the story of the woman who was given a vacuum cleaner, without a motor (natch), which she dutifully pushes around her house. If you have a status symbol, you have to flaunt it.
But, rather like Henry IV, uneasy lies the crown on Danny’s head. He is a man to whom responsibility is anathema and the book, on another level, portrays his descent into despair and culminates in a deeply tragic and moving finale. Again, all of this is done with an incredibly light touch.
There are some troubling aspects with the book. Was Steinbeck racist in his portrayal of the paisanos? Even the author had doubts when he saw how his characters were viewed as nothing more than good-for-nothing bums. Women are portrayed either as objects of lust or little more than domestic skivvies. And there is an undercurrent of anti-Semitism. But, as I have often said, we impose our values on literature at our peril.
If you want an introduction to Steinbeck, this is probably as good a book as you could find to dip your toe in the water.
August 7, 2018
A La Mode – Part Seven
The hobble skirt
In one sense, fashion is all about causing a stir and the hobble skirt, which was all the rage from around 1908 to the outbreak of the First World War, certainly did that.
For the uninitiated it was a long skirt, tied or narrowed from the knee down or, as a New Jersey judge described them in 1910, they were like “a pair of trousers with one leg.” On the plus side, the hobble skirt allowed the wearer to dispense with the enormous petticoats that women often wore. On the down side, they were extremely difficult to walk in, requiring the wearer to take small steps and mince along. As the popular name of the skirt suggested, the women who adopted this fashion were hobbled.
The man, and it would be a man, who is popularly credited with coming up with the design was the French couturier, Paul Poiret, but apocryphally he may have been influenced by an American woman, Mrs Hart O Berg. In 1908 the flighty woman was invited to join Wilbur Wright on a trip in his new-fangled flying machine and in order to prevent her voluminous skirts from billowing up, tied them up with some rope. Having survived the trip, she was able to walk rather elegantly away and may have sparked a new fashion.
Once Poiret’s design was mass-produced, the skirts flew off the shelves. But they caused an adverse reaction amongst men. Cartoonists were soon poking fun at women’s difficulties in crossing the streets or getting into vehicles – some trains and buses even lowered their platforms to facilitate them in their struggles.
Some critics adopted a more censorious attitude. The New York Times wrote; “if women want to run for Governor, they ought to be able to run for a car.” The same paper then went on to lament the impact of dispensing with petticoats on the general economy; “think of 10,000 people turned away from their possible means of livelihood, 10,000 families, perhaps, starving, just because women persist in following an ungraceful and immodest freak of fashion!” A Chicago minister predicted that the Lord would smite any woman wearing the skirt and even the pope got in on the act by condemning the skirt as “scandalous and corrupting.” The states of Illinois and Texas considered banning them.
Naturally, any mishap attributable to wearing the hobble skirt made the headlines. In 1912 poor Ethel Lindley tried to mount a stile whilst wearing this fashionable garment. Alas, she slipped, breaking her ankle so badly that the bone protruded through the skin. She died shortly afterwards from septic poisoning and shock.
More amusingly, in 1910 a Connecticut judge, on seeing his daughter in one, commented that “a woman in a hobble is like a giraffe in a barrel.” He was so delighted with his witticism that he couldn’t stop laughing. This, in turn, brought on a bout of hiccups lasting for 10 days that were so threatening that his life was in danger until “specialists…succeeded in reducing them to infrequent periods.”
What did for the hobble was the outbreak of the First World War which meant that fabric was in short supply. The rather frivolous nature of the skirt didn’t seem to chime with the zeitgeist.
The hobble skirt duly disappeared but it took with it the petticoat, now no longer an essential piece of female attire.
August 6, 2018
The Streets Of London – Part Seventy Six
Long Acre, WC2
In mediaeval times the forty acre patch of land we now know as Covent Garden formed the gardens of Westminster Abbey and Convent. Following the dissolution of the monasteries, in 1552 Edward VI gave this piece of prime London estate to John Russell, the then first Earl of Bedford, the family keeping title to the land until 1918. According to John Timbs in Curiosities of London, published in 1855, reported that the northern part of the area was known as the Elms and later Seven Acres. However, by the early 17th century Long Acre was used to describe the path running along the very northern perimeter of the estate. Today it still marks the northern perimeter of modern Covent Garden, linking Drury Lane in the east with St Martin’s Lane in the west.
Being the beneficiary of royal largesse didn’t come without its obligations. Charles I was offended by the state of the road and the houses along it and demanded that the Russells do something about it. They responded that they were stymied by the Proclamation concerning Buildings issued in 1625 which put restrictions on building in and around London. The king, always on the look-out for a few bob, granted Russell a licence for £2,000, empowering them to build as many new houses as he “shall thinke fit and convenient.”
And so he did.
The rather impressive Italianate style building that occupies 30-31 Long Acre gives a clue to the principal industry of the area. The top of the building bears the legend “Carriage – Manufactory”. This particular building was not erected until 1878 but from the middle of the 18th century, if not before, the street was known for its carriage building. One of the principal coach makers was John Hatchett, whose family business operated from 1750 to 1850, from premises at No 121 – the strange numbering system of Long Acre with numbers 1 to 77 running along the south side and 78 to 144 on the north meant that his premises were directly opposite number 30.
According to the Carriage Journal, the Hatchetts employed several hundred workers and they were known for high standards of workmanship and innovative designs, often copied by their rivals. By 1906 there were some 41 businesses on the street associated with transport. Competition was fierce and standards often slipped. An article in the Morning Post of February 1871 reported that many carriage accidents had occurred “in extremely dangerous transport made from hickory wood and steel tyres.” Carriage builders took pains in adverts to stress their experience and to warn the unwary against cheaper copies.
The death-knell for the carriage trade was the development of the motor car but Long Acre took this change in mode of transport in its stride. Austin Motors had a car showroom at No 134 from at least 1910 and they were soon joined by Mercedes (No 127-30), Daimler, and Fiat. Continuing the transport theme, a plaque on No 69 – 75, Acre House, alerts the passer-by to the fact that this was the site of the workshop of Denis Johnson who was trading therein 1819. His claim to fame was that he was the first to sell the hobby horse bicycle in the United Kingdom.
As a boy Long Acre first entered my consciousness as the postal address of Odhams Press in whose stable were such organs as the Daily Herald, Woman’s Own, Debretts, the Sporting Life, and for a time Britain’s most popular magazine, John Bull. Prior to Odhams occupation of the site between 1890 and 1970, it was the home of the iron-domed St Martin’s Hall, a music hall, from 1847 until it was burnt down by a fire in 1860 which had started in a nearby coach manufacturers. A splendid theatre, the Queen’s, was then built on the site with a seating capacity of 4,000 which made it the second largest in London. Actors treading the boards in its short life between 1867 and 1878 included Charles Wyndham, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry.
And we should not forget No 132 which was the venue from which in 1929 John Logie Baird made the first British television broadcast. Today it is a busy, fairly non-descript thoroughfare full of shops and cafes. It is fascinating to think that if you had strolled down there 150 years ago, you would have heard the sound of sawing and hammering of nails.
How times change.
August 5, 2018
Zoo Of The Week (2)
What is the point of a zoo?
Surely, we have evolved sufficiently enough not to take delight in gawping at mangy creatures incarcerated against their will? Of course, zoos do good work in protecting and preserving endangered species but surely this is better done in the creatures’ natural environment.
I was pondering these questions after reading a story this week about Mahmoud Sarhan’s visit to Cairo’s International Garden municipal park. His interest was piqued by a couple of zebras on display. Something didn’t quite look right. Zebras have rounded ears but these two had long floppy ears. Instead of clean stripes these animals had smudgy stripes and unusual smudges on their faces.
As is the way these days, Mahmoud posted a picture on social meejah and an almighty stushie has broken out with accusations that the zoo had painted a couple of donkeys to look like, at least from a distance, like zebras, an accusation the director of the benighted establishment, Mohamed Sultan, vigorously denied.
It wouldn’t be the first time this sort of sleight of hand has been deployed by a zoo. In 2009 a zoo in Gaza tried the same trick while in 2012 another zoo in Gaza put stuffed animals on display because there was a shortage of the real things. Meanwhile in China a zoo in Henan province tried to pass off a Tibetan mastiff dog as a lion and another in Guangxi province was reduced to displaying blow-up plastic penguins.
Best to give them all a miss.
August 4, 2018
Feat Of The Week (2)
I was gratified to read this week that Bulgarian, Yane Petkov, has regained his Guinness World Record, swimming 3,380 metres in the Macedonian Lake Ohrid.
While for someone like me to whom any form of exercise is anathema, this seems a prodigious distance but in the natatorial world this is no great shakes. What made it special was that Yane’s hands and feet were bound and, to boot, he was enclosed in a sack.
It took him three hours, face-up and feet first, to complete the distance, although he had aimed to complete 3.5 kilometres.
Yane had held the record before, swimming 2,030 metres in 2013. But the record was only his for three months, the crown being snatched from him by Indian Gopal Kharvi, who completed 3.07 with his hands and feet bound. Kharvi swam head down and forward and didn’t get into a sack.
Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
August 3, 2018
What Is The Origin Of (191)?…
Skulduggery
On the moral compass of malefaction, skulduggery, one of my favourite words, has a whiff of amorality. It is used to describe an underhand act or a piece of unscrupulous behaviour, usually involving some form of trickery or a devious device. Often it is preceded by an adjective such as political or commercial, perhaps reflecting that these so-called professions rely on being somewhat economical with the actualite to achieve their rather dubious goals.
Etymologically, its origins are far from certain but many seem to think that its antecedent was the Scottish word, sculduddery. This appeared in the 18th century and was used to describe various forms of sexual impropriety such as fornication and adultery. In the 19th century its meaning seems to have broadened to include verbal obscenity and indecency.
Where the Scots got this word from is unclear, some suggesting that given the proximity of Scotland with Scandinavia, the Swedish word, skuld, may have something to do with it. It meant debt and you could imagine that it was used to describe some form of unscrupulous behaviour designed to avoid meeting your obligations, a theory made more attractive by the word Duggar meaning to sprinkle or garnish in Swedish. But this may just be fanciful speculation as there is no concrete evidence to support the theory.
Skulduggery made its first appearance across the pond, possibly imported there by Scots migrating from their homeland in search of a better future. By the time it had reached the mid-West the word had undergone some minor changes, the c being replaced by a k and the double ds being replaced by gs. Quite why, no one knows. Perhaps the influence of migrating Scandinavians also had a part to play.
The splendidly named Burlington Daily Hawk-Eye, a newspaper established in Iowa, reported in its edition of 28th August 1858; “if the above be true, and we are that ‘tis so, we see nothing else in the new move but a bit of political skulduggery for the benefit of black republicanism, but it will not redound to their credit…” It is clear that what is being described is a bit of underhand politicking, the classic example of skulduggery.
What is also evident is that even fifteen or so years later, the word wasn’t readily understood. For those of us who despair at the quality of political dialogue these days, the cockles of our hearts will be warmed by this encounter reported in the Official Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Third Constitutional Convention of Ohio, 1873-4, between a Mr West, who was clearly familiar with the vernacular of the streets and a Mr Hoadly who exhibited the worldliness fo a High Court judge. “It is urged upon the assumption that there has been what some gentlemen here have characterised as smouzling/ What is that?/ Skulduggery/ Well, what does that mean?/ I do not know what it means, but that is what I heard talked about here.”
Despite its uncertain beginnings, skulduggery finally got established, being more common in its usage in the United States than in Britain. I will refrain from commenting on why that may be the case. Instead I shall revel in the wonders of this fascinating word.
August 2, 2018
Gin O’Clock – Part Forty Two
If you want to know what gin heaven might look like, you could do no worse than visit the Constantine Stores, near Falmouth, the front for the worldwide spirits distribution operation that is drinkfinder.co.uk. My picture shows just a subset of the many and varied gins that are available. I exercised a degree of self-control on my recent visit, buying just half a dozen bottles.
It pays to do a bit of research before entering this Aladdin’s cave as you can easily be overwhelmed by the sheer range of bottles available. During my stay at the splendid Trengilly Wartha, it was barmaid, Emily’s birthday, and on the recommendation of the owner of drinkfinder she was presented with a bottle of Hernö Gin. I was allowed to smell it – it had a big hit of juniper with some spicy elements coming through – and I was hooked. I had to get a bottle.
Herno is from Sweden, distilled from around 2012 in the village of Dala, near Härnösand, in a 250 litre copper pot named Kierstin. The base spirit is wheat based and the botanicals used are mainly of Swedish origin. At first glance, the core components of the gin – juniper, coriander, cassia, black pepper and lemon peel – come straight of the classic recipe for a London Dry Gin. What gives Hernö its particular twist is the addition of meadowsweet, lingon berries and vanilla.
Meadowsweet is a herbal flower with a sweet smell and taste to it. You might find it giving a bit of a kick to your pot of pot-pourri and medicinally it is used to cure headaches – a gin with its own in-built hangover cure, I like that. It also flavours a range of foodstuffs but a word of warning. It is banned by the Americans and so if the gin is to make it Stateside, it will need to be replaced by something like yarrow, as Hendrick’s had to do. Lingon berries grow in the wild in Sweden and whilst they are sour to the taste they contain a high percentage of sugar, adding a mellow sweetness to the hooch.
The bottle is dumpy, almost bell-shaped with an artificial cork stopper which makes a satisfying pop when it is opened. The label and the band around the neck of the bottle are a darkish blue in colour with the coat of arms of Härnösand below the name of the gin in a rather contemporary-looking script. It is rather subdued as labels go, very Swedish and one that would not stand out on a crowded shelf. Its ABV is 40.5% and bottles are 500ml, rather than the normal 70ml, making it quite an expensive buy. The label at rear tells me that my bottle is number 1280 from batch 267.
As might be expected from the initial smell, this gin is heavily juniper led, no bad thing in my book, with a floral note coming through, almost certainly from the meadowsweet. As I rolled the gin in my mouth I began to detect the citrus and then at the end and certainly in the aftertaste, there was a gorgeous peppery, spicy finish. Perhaps it is my tastebuds but the vanilla didn’t come through as I thought it would do.
My conclusion was that it is a very subtle, well balanced, refreshing and moreish gin and one well worth seeking out and digging deep into the wallet for. Styled as Sweden’s first artisanal gin it was certainly a welcome addition to my collection as I continue to surf the ginaissance.
August 1, 2018
You’re Having A Laugh – Part Fourteen
The giant potato hoax, 1894
We are used these days to photoshopping where an image is altered digitally either to enhance the appearance of the subject or to create an amusing or disturbing effect. Perhaps the first ever recorded instance of the manipulation of a photographic image to cause an international sensation involved a potato back in 1894.
There are three main protagonists in our story; a potato grower named Joseph Swan, the editor of the Loveland Reporter, one W L Thorndyke, and Adam Talbot, a photographer.
Swan was very proud of his spuds, claiming to have grown 26,000 pounds of the tuberous crop in one year on a single acre of land on his farm just outside the Colorado town of Loveland. The Loveland street fair was on the horizon and Thorndyke suggested that the farmer should indulge in a spot of advertising to boost the sale of his crops. His idea was to create a photograph featuring Swan proudly bearing a massive potato. The resulting image could be used as a flyer to promote Swan’s wares.
Thorndyke enlisted the services of Talbot who, considering he had neither a computer nor any clever software, showed considerable ingenuity in creating the required photo. He took a picture of a spud, blew it up as large as the limits of the then technology allowed him, stuck the image on to a board which he had cut out and then got the smiling Swan to pose with the giant potato on his shoulder.
The image seemed to do the trick, causing mirth and merriment amongst the locals, many of whom requested copies. All was well until in 1895 a picture got into the hands of New Yorker, Dumont Clarke, who impressed by the inscription on the back stating that the potato was 28 inches in length by 14 inches wide and had been exhibited in the offices of the Loveland Reporter, passed it on to the Scientific American magazine.
Editorial standards must not have been very robust at the time as the Scientific American published it as a news item with an impressive engraving of said spud on 18th September 1895. They soon realised that the photo was a fake and printed an angry retraction; “the photo…proves to be a gross fraud, being a contrivance of the photographer who imposed upon us as well as others. An artist who lends himself to such methods of deception may be ranked as a thoroughbred knave, to be shunned by everybody.
But the genie was out of the bottle. The original story spread like wildfire nationally and internationally and Swan was inundated with requests to see the spud or to have some seeds from the plant so that they could grow their own mammoth potato. Swan grew tired of explaining that it was a hoax which had got out of hand, resorting in the end to saying that it had been stolen.
The story did the rounds again, when it was featured, with the original photograph, in the London magazine, the Strand Magazine. They too printed a retraction but rather like Mencken’s bath tub, it makes a reappearance every now and again to this day.
Whether Talbot’s photograph was the first example of a doctored image is difficult to tell. With the cost of photography tumbling there was a fashion amongst photographers to create images, reproduced as postcards of impossibly large farm and dairy products. They proved immensely popular.
Whether Talbot was tapping into this trend or was the forerunner is unclear. What is clear is that it was the first to gain international traction. A remarkable feat, however you look at it.
And the largest potato ever grown? The record stands at 8lb 7oz, a potato grown by Peter Glazebrook from Northamptonshire in 2010.
July 31, 2018
An Eye For An Eye Will Only Make The Whole World Blind – Part Seven
The Nicaragua Postage Stamp War, 1937
Philately will get you everywhere, they say, and as a boy I used to circumnavigate the world frequently as I perused and added to my collection of stamps. I suppose the rather boring hobby taught me something about geography and different currencies. I remember how dull and tedious the British stamps were at the time – an air-brushed silhouette of the monarch against a monochromatic background – in comparison with many of the foreign jobbies.
I don’t have the albums now but I’m fairly certain that I didn’t have a copy of the Air Mail stamps issued by the Nicaraguan Postal Service in August 1937. And even if I did, I doubt I would have realised that the stamp featuring a map of the country along with part of its neighbour, Honduras, in a tasteful shade of green nearly caused a war.
Borders are tricky to establish at the best of times. The Spanish conquest of Nicaragua and Honduras in the 1520s resulted in large numbers of the indigenous populations being wiped out by disease and starvation. Administratively, the territories were nominally two separate areas within the greater Central American province, known, rather grandiloquently, as the Captaincy General of Guatemala. But the precise boundary between the two areas was not really an issue whilst they were absorbed within the Hispanic empire and, in any event, rather primitive cartographical techniques, thick, often impenetrable jungle, and a thinly populated area, probably persuaded the Spaniards that it was more trouble than it was worth.
Nicaragua and Honduras gained their independence, after the dissolution of the Captaincy General in 1821, the overthrow of the First Mexican empire, into which they were then absorbed, in 1823 and the collapse of the Federal Republic of Central America in the second half of 1838.
Of course, precise borders now mattered.
Probably because they had more important matters to consider, the two countries kicked the thorny subject into the long grass or, more accurately, the deep jungle and relied on the international convention of uti possidetis juris which, to the layman, meant that newly formed sovereign states should have the same borders that their preceding dependent area had. But if you couldn’t determine precisely where the border ran, it was not a great deal of help.
In an attempt to resolve the matter once and for all, the two countries agreed in 1894 that a Commission should be established to fix the border between the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. When the Commission published its findings six year later, they came up with a nice line which ran along straight lines, river beds and mountain ranges but, unfortunately, it only got a third of the way to the Atlantic coast. In despair, they appealed to the Spanish king, Alphonso XIII, who awarded most of the disputed territory to Honduras.
The 1937 stamp reopened this festering sore. Whilst the map clearly showed the agreed border, the area north of the border was marked “territorio en litigio”, territory in dispute. When the first stamps reached the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, riots broke out and the police had their work cut out to prevent the Nicaraguan embassy from being stormed. Troops were sent by both countries to the disputed area and war was only averted thanks to some frantic diplomatic efforts on the part of America, Mexico and Costa Rica.
The status quo had been restored but the matter was unresolved. In 1957 a commission under the auspices of the International Court of Justice considered the matter and in 1960 reconfirmed Alphonso’s decision, awarding the disputed territory once more to Honduras. Another border commission set about fixing the precise border and did a better job than the first one, drawing a line across the 573 miles of border country.
And there matters stand to this day.
July 30, 2018
Double Your Money – Part Thirty Two
William Thompson
For an etymologist with a penchant for the ignoble art of scamming, William Thompson, who operated in the Big Apple during the 1840s, is manna from heaven.
Conmen were known at the time as diddlers, taking their name from James Kenney’s character, Jeremy Diddler, who appeared in his 1805 farce, Raising the Wind. The art of diddling fascinated Edgar Allan Poe and he wrote an essay, Diddling: Considered as One of the Exact Sciences, which was published in 1843. He considered that “the origin of the diddle is referrable to the infancy of the Human Race, ” and averred that “perhaps the first diddler was Adam.”
Be that as it may, Poe did go on to consider the attributes that made the consummate diddler. These, in his opinion, included audacity, focus on small crimes, self-interest, ingenuity, perseverance, impertinence, nonchalance, originality, and a grin. William Thompson was the epitome of Poe’s archetypal diddler.
His modus operandi was beguilingly simple. Immaculately dressed, well-spoken and doubtless with a grin on his face, he would sidle up – whatever happened to sidling? – to his intended victim. Often he would pretend to have a vague acquaintance with the mark and engaged him in conversation. Once he had gained the stranger’s confidence, Thompson would make an unusual request; “have you the confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?”
Surprisingly, many had and they were – that was the last they would see of their timepiece. It was like taking candy from a baby.
But one of the hallmarks that Poe didn’t suggest a successful diddler should have was a memory or at least the ability to recognise, and avoid, their marks. This singular failure on the part of Thompson led to his undoing, as the New York Herald reported in 1849. On 12th May 1848 a Mr Thomas McDonald who lived at no 276, Madison Street, met Thompson and during the course of a conversation was persuaded to entrust his gold lever watch, valued at $110, to the diddler. True to form, he never saw it again but what he did see again the following year as he was strolling along the inaptly named Liberty Street, at least as far as Thompson was concerned, was the diddler who had betrayed his trust.
Lucky enough, at least as far as McDonald was concerned, there was an officer of the law nearby, Officer Swayse of the Third Ward, who was told of Thompson’s deception. The Officer swiftly apprehended Thompson who put up somewhat of a fight. It was only when his hands were securely fastened that Swayse was able to march him down to the police station.
Up before Justice McGrath, it was soon revealed that Thompson was, as the New York Herald rather quaintly put it, “a graduate of the college at Sing Sing.” He was remanded in prison and the newspaper recommended that anyone else who had been relieved of their valuables by being foolish enough to trust a stranger should pay him a visit to see whether Thompson was their swindler. Alas, it is unrecorded how many, if any, took up the newspaper’s advice nor is it certain quite what happened to Thompson afterwards.
But etymologically speaking, what is of interest in this rather tawdry tale of petty larceny was that in reporting it, the New York Herald headlined it “Arrest of the Confidence Man.” This was the first printed instance of the use of the term which over time became abbreviated to con man. Herman Melville called his ninth novel, published in 1857, the Confidence Man, showing that the phrase was well understood, fairly rapidly after its first coinage.
The diddler as a term, like William Thompson, faded into ill-deserved obscurity.
