The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man

by David W. Maurer, Lucy Sante (Foreword by)

The classic 1940 study of con men and con games that Luc Sante in Salon called “a bonanza of wild but credible stories, told concisely with deadpan humor, as sly and rich in atmosphere as anything this side of Mark Twain.”

“Of all the grifters, the confidence man is the aristocrat,” wrote David Maurer, a proposition he definitely proved in The Big Con, one of the most colorful, well-researched, and entertaining works of criminology ever written. A professor of linguistics who specialized in underworld argot, Maurer won the trust of hundreds of swindlers, who let him in on not simply their language but their folkways and the astonishingly complex and elaborate schemes whereby unsuspecting marks, hooked by their own greed and dishonesty, were “taken off” – i.e. cheated—of thousands upon thousands of dollars.

The Big Con is a treasure trove of American lingo (the write, the rag, the payoff, ropers, shills, the cold poke, the convincer, to put on the send) and indelible characters (Yellow Kid Weil, Barney the Patch, the Seldom Seen Kid, Limehouse Chappie, Larry the Lug). It served as the source for the Oscar-winning film The Sting.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Crime, True Crime, Psychology, Research, Biography

315 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

David Warren Maurer was a professor of linguistics at the University of Louisville from 1937 to 1972, and an author of numerous studies of the language of the American underworld.

Maurer received a doctorate from the Ohio State University in Comparative Literature in 1935. He spent much of his academic career studying the language of criminals, drug addicts, and other marginal subcultures. He died on his farm outside Louisville from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

"The Big Con" is Maurer's most popular and perhaps most important book. It was originally published in 1940 by Bobbs-Merrill. The source material for it came from Maurer corresponding, interviewing, and informally chatting with hundreds of underworld denizens during the 1930s. Among the interviewed criminals were such figures as Joseph "The Yellow Kid" Weil, Charles Gondorff and Limehouse Chappie. Maurer won the trust of hundreds of grifters, who let him in on their language and their methods. The book served as a source for the film "The Sting".

Maurer wrote three other books, "Narcotics and Narcotic Addiction", "Whiz Mob: A Correlation of the Technical Argot of Pickpockets with Their Behavior Pattern", and "Kentucky Moonshine". In all these books, Maurer described the language — mostly the lexicon — of the people living in these "subcultures." For example, in the last book he focused on the craft of the moonshiners, discussed their infiltration of "dry" counties and reported their terminology. "Language of the Underworld" is a collection of several of his previous published articles collected by two of his students. It includes an introduction that describes the methods he used to collect criminal argot.

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

Very interesting overview of con-men in the US. It was used as the basis for The Sting, which is pretty obvious (as in, if you haven't seen The Sting for some reason, watch it first before reading this or it will give away all the twists.)

Written in 1940 and it shows in the casual asides re race and gender, so heads up.

Oddly amoral too. The author clearly admires the con-men and takes the view that you can't con an honest man, therefore all the conned people must be dishonest, therefore it's basically all right. I think that stance could use a tad more ethical analysis, myself.

[AC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, though a bit repetitive. This was the book that inspired the movie “The Sting” and, several years before that, Lawrence Block’s great Girl with the Long Green Heart”. Saul Bellow met “Yellow Kid” Weil and has a piece on him in his collection of essays *There is Simply too Much to Think About”. Moreover, I can see that Mauer’s study of the grift also inspired Dr. Tamkin in Seize the Day. A useful read for many reasons.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating linguistic and anthropological study of a bygone criminal era... details an amazing variety of crooks and parasites evolved to fit any niche they could find. The catalog of these specialties is oddly romantic; Pullman train-car bunko specialists, trick Faro dealers, and "golden wire" or "big store" experts have all gone the way of hurdy-gurdy repairmen and buggy-whip manufacturers, into the trash bin of history. Their descendants are still out there, spamming Nigerian scam e-mails and phishing for credit card information, but this book explores what you might call the low-tech, hand-crafted era of confidence trickery. How much of it is bullshit, given that it was gathered by a "straight" directly from the mouths of admitted professional liars? Probably quite a bit... but then, this is meant to be a cultural record, not a collection of biographies.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting look into the big con games of the early 20th century, when the modern equivalent of millions or hundreds of thousands of dollars could vanish into thin air. Several aspects of the big-con lifestyle are covered, including the various flavors of scams, the opinions and philosophies espoused by con men, their vices, dirty political aspects, and the elaborate vocabulary ("argot") of the in-crowd. Since the book was published in 1940, the "big con" has obviously evolved in the sophistication and subtlety of its methods but it's undoubtedly still around, even though you're unlikely ever to hear about it due to the embarrassing nature of being roped for a small fortune. Still, as a product of its time, this is a good introduction to the art of the modern large-scale grifter.

[Eric Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books and I recommend it to everyone, especially if you have an interest in acting, sales, marketing, business development, confidence games, or organized crime. The book was written by a linguist and he has a deep interest in the lingo used by criminals, in this case con-men, and he uses that knowledge when writing the book. The style of his writing is clipped and hip in a kind of Humphrey Bogart kind of way, which perfectly suits the subject matter: the men who ran the ""Big Cons"" of the 1910's, 20's, and 30's. That's not to say the writing is fake or hokey, it's not, it just has the propulsion of a Raymond Chandler novel. The content is nothing short of amazing and he retells the stories of men organized into crews that would systematically create ""big stores"" to rope the wealthy business man, far from home, into believing he was going to win a fortune by working with the con man to swindle the "store." Think "The Sting," the movie was based upon this book. Highly recommended.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three hundred pages of this, a fine book to draw out over the summer:

"O.K.," says John. "We'll give him the hides. What kind of an egg is he?"
"Well, he's no lop-eared mark," says Jimmy. "He knows what it is all about. And he may be hard to handle. He is a hefty baby with plenty of moxie. I'd guess he'l be hard to cool out."
"If he gets fractious, he'll get the cackle-bladder. That cools out those tough babies. Do you want to find the poke for him?"
"We might as well. He's right there in the hotel with me and it would be a better tie-up than the point-out. And no more trouble."

[Philip Hollenback · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started out with a lot of very interesting stories and descriptions of elaborate con games. However, it kind of went nowhere after that. It felt like the author didn't actually have a cohesive story to tell.

So, I recommend you read maybe the first third of this book and ignore the rest.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating look at a vanished (I assume?) period of history. This memoir is a summary of all of Maurer’s exhaustive research into the language of con men, and the glimpses he got into the lives of the “aristocrats of crime.” Their heyday was the late 1800’s to the mid 1900’s apparently, and Maurer gives an overview of their most popular con games, from the familiar three-card-monte to the elaborate big store games of the wire, the rag, and the payoff. The stories he includes are varied, full of hilarious color, and of course a wealth of 1940’s slang that will have you talking like a small-time hustler for a "month. In the process, he describes the type of people most likely to be a “mark,” or who will have their money fleeced from them, and who is likely to run a con game as a roper, a shill, or an insideman. In addition to the fascinating psychological insights into what makes someone fall for a con or take to a life of crime, Maurer also details the organization of a mob of con men, how much money they could expect to make, what their risks were, what their overhead costs were, and the step-by-step process that they used to evade the law. Even though this time period is long gone and, according to Maurer, the time of the big-store con men has passed, it is still an intriguing world to explore, and the inescapable follow-up thought that such clever men probably had their successors in later generations, men who updated their methods with technology, leads readers to speculate on the current form of the con-game. I highly recommend this book to everyone, but especially to those interested in history or criminology. Or if you are afraid that you yourself may be a susceptible “mark.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The con is sooooo on

[Ben Premack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Print out the definitions

This book is outstanding, but it was written by a linguist and relies heavily on jargon to the detriment of informing the reader. The second to last chapter is a glossary. Print it out to reference when you’re reading the rest of the book.

[Sally Britton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect research on the subject of con artists.

[Jon Frankel · Rating 5 out of 5]

David W. Maurer was a linguist, and language, professional argot, is his entree to the world of conmen, but don't let that fool you. He loves his subjects. This kind of book has a long history. Robert Greene started it all with his Coney Catching pamphlets, about con artists in Elizabethan London. Greene was a drunk, a playwright and a gambler. He knew his business too, and it lay in the fertile fields of slang. Maurer anatomizes the con games, the conmen and their argot. The book was first published in 1940, so the language (there is a glossary that must be read through), is ripe and old, a meal of well aged cheese and port. Two of my favorite words are Earwigger (one tries to overhear conversations) and cackle-bladder (a chicken bladder filled with fake blood and hidden in the mouth). This will be familiar to fans of The Sting (another word in the lexicon, pun intended), when to 'chill' the 'mark' they stage a murder. This book of course is the font from which not just The Sting, but shows like Leverage and the wonderful BBC show Hustle heavily drink. It has an introduction by Low Life maestro Luc Sante. If you love reading about crime, read this.

[Ryan Holiday · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stories about con men and criminals are good to use as anecdotes and metaphors. The Big Con does this well and if that was all it did it would be worth having. What I didn't realize is that Maurer's book is the definitive academic piece on early 20th-century crime. As in, he also wrote an entire book on the linguistics of the underworld (which is interesting to think about considering how commonly we use their phrases - grift, rag, con, the fix, blowing him off) and wrote the Britannica article for "slang." You would probably be well served to explore a few of the biographies of the characters in the book, although the 48 Laws of Power does a good job with some of the highlights.

The one thing to take away: con men exploited the desire of wealthy people to get something for nothing and their willingness to break the rules to do so. Avoid that weakness, even if we don't have to worry about roving bands of con men as much anymore.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic of popular sociology and underworld linguistics, Maurer takes us inside the world of the big con. In its heydey in the 1920s, mobs of organized grifters would set up elaborate fake betting shops, poker dens, and stock exchanges, where traveling marks identified by "ropers" would be sent in to turn over the life savings to the machinations of the "insideman", the chief grifter of a city. Cons works on any man with larceny in his heart, a desire to win some money on a sure thing.

By training, Maurer was a linguists, and there's poetry in the thieves cant. "Never boast about your rags, but brag about your long crush. That will lead him along to brag about his long hack, and then you're getting somewhere, brother. If he is a hard-shelled Babbitt, why you're one too." Even the names, The Yellow Kid Weil, Limehouse Chappie, The High Ass Kid, convey a romanticism of the lost past, and of the grift mobs who stole with deception rather than force. For the grift is an art, an alternate reality where more money is just around the corner. It's rather fascinating to compare the Big Shops to the online deceptions of modern scammers like Derek Alldred and the romance of this book against the sordid lies of reality.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm…mixed feelings on this “book” that is more of a word vomit aggregation of con games, names and lingo from times gone by. There are plenty of interesting situations within about grifters taking a mark’s moolah in the short or long con, but little narrative depth to make any of them really pop for the reader.

Maybe an exception being the story presented that served as the inspiration for “The Sting” which despite wide praise in the film world - it won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1974 - has a plot line that I still find somewhat confusing.

While many of the ruses described are quite dated for today’s world, the psychology behind these confidence games will always stand the test of time. In short, greed often imperils good judgment and may very well lead an otherwise upstanding person down a path to personal and financial destruction.

Meanwhile, the civic corruption on the part of elected officials, law enforcers, and court systems described in the book will always exist as well. Perhaps not in every town, but surely in a lot of them and even on up to the highest public offices in the land.

Overall, I give this one three stars for the sociological portrait of earlier times that still holds an important lesson for today: there’s never a road to quick and easy money unless it’s laid as a trap by skilled criminals who will always beat an unsuspecting naïf. Always!

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I come back to this book, the rating and review may change, but for now I'm done. I enjoyed the first half, and now The Sting makes a lot more sense than it did when I saw it in my teens. Henry Gondorff was a real person! Who knew? I certainly didn't. I laughed the other day when I saw a sidebar ad just like the ones he mentions that con men put in the newspapers back in the 1920s, offering incredibly good "investments" (ie Ponzi schemes).

Unfortunately, about half way through the book bogged down and became repetitive. Maurer needed a better editor than he had, and needed to prune his text. I began not to want to continue reading it, so back it goes. If I pick it up again, we'll see, but for now this is it.

[Edward Champion · Rating 5 out of 5]

This incredibly useful book, written in 1940, is a must-read for anybody interested in the vernacular and technique of con artists during the early 20th century. It outlines the procedure, the language, and the terminology (there's a helpful glossary at the end) behind big-time and small-time swindlers. And because Maurer was a linguistics professor, he is especially shrewd in mapping the lingo and the mannerisms. While some of the old manipulative games have fallen into desuetude, the dregs of this deceitful behavior remain in practice all around us.

[DeAnna Knippling · Rating 5 out of 5]

<3

Written in 1940, it's got The Sting all over it.

[Sarah D Bunting · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review at bestevidence.fyi!

[Sarede Switzer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book.

[Tomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I somehow keep finding myself reading books that are more in the nature of academic texts than I was expecting. Each section of The Big Con is pretty interesting in isolation, but it's a tough book to get through since there's no narrative through-line, and even though there are technically recurring characters (the Yellow Kid, and so forth), we don't actually spend any time getting to know them - they're basically just colorful names in a list. I think this would have been a more entertaining read if it were built around a handful of these characters as an illustration of the concepts. As it stands, the best chapters are the ones describing the Long Cons (up front) and the Short Cons (toward the end), since these sections had fun stories to engage with.

[Andrew Diamond · Rating 4 out of 5]

David W. Maurer’s The Big Con provides a fascinating look into the carefully orchestrated scams pulled off by early 20th century con men. The “big cons” were truly elaborate, involving a large cast of con men, carefully scripted stories, props, role-playing and more.

A typical big con started with a roper identifying a mark. The roper was a smooth-talking, respectable looking traveler who kept up with the news and could converse fluently on any number of topics. The mark was the intended victim, usually traveling by train or ship.

The roper’s job was to identify the mark and “rope him in” to the scheme. A good roper would assess his fellow travelers to identify the person who met two criteria. First, they had to have a fairly substantial amount of money. Second, they had to be corruptible, the type of person willing to enter into a get-rich-quick scheme that they knew was dishonest.

One of the earliest schemes was called “the wire.” In this one, the roper convinces the mark that he knows a disgruntled employee at the Western Union telegraph office. Before radio, horse-racing results were reported by telegraph to betting offices around the country. The roper convinced the mark that his friend in the telegraph office could delay the reports of race results by a few minutes, just long enough for someone to place a bet on the known winner before the bookies closed up betting.

If the mark was interested, the roper introduced him to his “friend” who supposedly worked for Western Union. The “friend” was known as the inside man. The friend told the roper and mark to wait together at a pay phone across the street from the betting office. He would call the pay phone, tell the mark that Horse X won the race, and that he could delay the telegraph report for five minutes.

The mark would cross the street, enter the betting office, put a hundred dollars on Horse X and win five hundred a few minutes later.

What the mark didn’t know was that the whole betting office had been set up by the roper’s accomplices. The betting window, the furniture and results board were all carefully crafted props. The office manager, the gamblers, and the man posting race results were all actors. The betting office also had what appeared to be huge rolls of cash changing hands. These bankrolls looked like the banded stacks of cash you see at an actual bank, but typically had a hundred dollar bill on the top and the bottom with a stack of ones in between.

Inside the betting office, the mark witnessed what looked like tens of thousands of dollars changing hands on every bet. This was all part of the illusion to whip up the mark’s greed. While he may have won $500 dollars on his first bet, he watched others walk away with thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

When the mark’s greed was in full control of his reason, the roper and the insideman convinced him to empty his bank account and sell off all his stock and other liquid assets for one final “sure” bet.

Often, the mark had be sent back to his home town to collect this money. The con men called this part of the operation “the send.” It could take days or weeks for the mark to return with the cash.

The mark invariably returned and bet his life savings on a sure-fire ten-to-one bet. And he always lost when some pre-arranged “miscommunication” between the insideman and the roper caused him to put his money on the wrong horse. The roper and the insideman would argue violently about who was responsible for the loss, and often the insideman would shoot several rounds of blanks into the roper’s chest, apparently murdering him in front of the mark and a crowd of gamblers. The con men even used chicken blood as part of the act.

At this point, the mark, who was now an accomplice to murder, was too terrified to worry about losing his life savings. He was more concerned with avoiding a murder wrap and saving his own skin. The insideman would hustle him back onto a train or ship and send him off to hide.

The con men regularly paid out a part of their earnings to the local police, who ignored their activities as long as they were paid. Part of the deal between cops and con men was that the cons could never run their scams on locals. Too many angry citizens would bring too much pressure on the department, hence the ropers' use of trains and ships to rope in marks who were traveling from distant towns.

When the telegraph went away, the big con changed with the times. The wire turned into “the pay-off,” in which the roper convinced the mark that his friend, the insideman, was part of a race-fixing ring. The con followed the same pattern, with the mark taken to a fake betting establishment where he was allowed to win a number of increasingly large bets until he was hooked and ready to put his life savings on the line.

The last of the big cons was “the rag,” which was just like the pay-off, except it targeted businessmen who liked to day-trade stocks. In this one, the con men set up whole fake stock-trading offices, convinced the mark that they were part of a stock manipulation ring, let him win big on a number of day trades, then fleeced him for all he had.

Many victims, deprived of their life savings, were too embarrassed to complain to the police. If they went to the local cops, it was to no avail, because the cons were bribing them for protection. Often, the local cops would ask the victims who did complain to take them to the betting establishment or stock trading office where they had been ripped off. When they arrived, the cops and victim found only an empty room because the cons had removed all of the actors and props as efficiently as a local theater cleaning up after the matinee.

Maurer also summarizes a number of “short cons,” which often amount to rigged bets and card games designed to rob suckers of whatever cash they may be carrying with them.

The big cons are more elaborate and interesting, but the ropers for both big and small cons all say they have an instinct to identify people who are willing to cheat for a quick buck, and that these people make the easiest marks. The ropers say that truly honest people who don’t want to take part of any operation that smells of larceny simply can’t be conned. The prerequisite for any mark is that his greed must exceed his ethics.

Interestingly, all con men fit this description, and all the ones Maurer interviews say that other con men make excellent marks and are easy to fleece. You just have to suss out their weakness–usually gambling–and rope them into a fixed game.

In the course of his research, Maurer interviewed a number of aging ropers and insidemen. His account of the con game includes a number of colorful characters and interesting anecdotes. For those alone, the book is worth the read.

Though the big cons have changed over the decades, the psychology of con man and victim has not, and the pattern remains the same. The con man gets the victim to trust him, gets the victim to put up some money for a “sure thing” (like releasing the Nigerian prince’s millions), gives him a taste of the rewards to come, then fleeces him for the big score.

As in the old days, the con man’s hold on the mark’s trust is often so secure that the mark refuses to believe he’s been ripped off, even when everyone else can clearly see it. The mark, perhaps to save his own pride, sincerely believes that the loss of his money was due to some corrupt third party (such as the Nigerian bureaucracy who had tied up the prince’s funds).

“Confidence men trade upon certain weaknesses in human nature,” Maurer concludes. “Hence until human nature changes perceptibly there is little possibility that there will be a shortage of marks for con games.”

[Lutger · Rating 5 out of 5]

While reading the book I rewatched The Sting as well as its wiki, and realized that most of what was depicted there was heavily inspired on Maurer's book. This made The Big Con and skills of the con men even more fascinating. Highly recommended.

[Chris "Stu" · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wildly entertaining book about con men of all types from 1940 (there are occasional references to the "European war" getting started), but with a special emphasis on the big cons--the distinction between big cons and small cons is largely "does the mark have to go somewhere to get more money, or do you just take what's in his pocket?" Various types of cons are discussed, and the setup and infrastructure of the cons, from the extras involved to the police and court system that supports them if they get caught. Maurer is a student of slang and that is ostensibly his focus here, but he covers all the aspects of the cons and certainly has a certain affection and respect for the conmen (less so for the marks). Really quite entertaining, though I must make a brief warning for how dated and racist some of the language could be--the con men think gypsies, Roman Catholics, Negros, Jews, and Italians, for instance, all have different mentalities and some of this language is horribly dated, so there will be an occasional passage that would cause the modern reader to wince. Or, at least, I did.

[B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Big Con by David W. Maurer was incredible. It's a long read, and a rather slow one, mainly due to unfamiliar terminology, but once you get into the flow of it, it picks up. It's a history of confidence games and con men, starting with the earliest cons and going through the 1940s, when it was originally written. This is from the second printing in the 1960s, so it's got a whole additional section with that perspective as well. It was fascinating, not just because of how easy it was to run the games, but because you can see the origins of today's scams in the old games. Today's phishing scams are the equivalent of the wire, as an example. Well worth the read. Lots of new vocabulary too - and not just con lingo, but other words as well. I, for example, did not know that "diddle" used to mean done, or gesamtkunstwerk meant a total work of art, or that Herman Melville wrote a book on confidence men, that it was considered his most unreadable work ever, and that he put various references to it throughout all of his other books. Very educational and super fun to read.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd actually give this book three and a half stars. David Maurer was a linguistics professor in Kentucky whose study of the lingo of con men led him to learn more about the con man lifestyle. At its best, this book describes some of the classic cons of its time (the book was first published in 1940) and I now want to rewatch some David Mamet movies to see how that correlate to the text.

While Maurer was an academic, he is clearly having fun writing about grifters and ropers and insidemen and so forth. However, his need to completely cover his subjects lead to some stretches that can be passed over, such as when he lists the best current (and, of course, now long dead) practitioners of certain cons. He also seems awfully confident in some of his assertions where it seems pretty clear his only source for the book was con artists, who might be prone to lying or exaggerating.

But on the balance this was an interesting read and a nice change of pace from what I usually check out.

[Bianca's Book Vibes · Rating 3 out of 5]

TW: Definitely "of its time", misogyny, overt racism, sexism all pretty over the top, making it a 3* read for me.

These conmen were bloodthirsty, money hungry monsters who kept me very entertained. I feel like this has been the basis of so many heist books and films I've seen over the years. The Italian Job meets The Godfather.

As well as the trigger warnings above, the author overly romanticises conmen, as if they're not criminals at all (they are). Nevertheless I would still reccomend if you like true crime, conmen and robberies.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This study of cons and con men of the early 20th century is a must-read for the lingo and monickers alone. I also enjoyed the detailed breakdowns of some of the cons. Never underestimate the power of greed to cloud men's minds. As Maurer says, "a confidence man only prospers because of the fundamental dishonesty of his victims." Variations of some of these scams are going on to this very day and idiots are still falling for them.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this tremendously, particularly how clear it becomes that the smarter a mark is, the more of a sucker he is. The 'big con' is a a play in which the main character has no idea that he's in a play, and long after realizes that he was the audience. great website on the book:
http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/amit/...

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever wonder how people come up with all the snappy dialog and crazy names conmen use on tv? The writers read this. Nonfiction account of conmen and long cons in the early 20th century focusing on language. Very dated (especially racially) but fascinating still.