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How Timothy Dexter Turned Ridiculous Ventures Into Riches

Khalid Elhassan November 22, 2024 13 min

Dexter - Timothy Dexter — Timothy Dexter. New England Legends

9. Exporting Bed-Warming Pans to the Tropics

A Georgian era bed-warming pan. All Things Georgian

A neighbor recommended that Dexter export bed-warming pans to the Caribbean – a hot tropical region that did not need bed warmers. Dexter bit, bought 42,000 pans, and shipped them to the Caribbean. The traders laughed themselves to tears at the idiot who’d shipped bed warmers to the tropics. Then their laughter turned to astonishment. Of course, nobody in the Caribbean was interested in the least in bed warmers. However, Dexter’s agent redesignated them as “ladles”, and suddenly sugar and molasses plantation owners could not get enough of them. It would not be the last time that dumb luck allowed Dexter to prosper despite terrible advice.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.