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Quirky Founding Fathers and Other Bonkers Bits of American History

Khalid Elhassan May 2, 2020 36 min

Thomas Jefferson - United States — Jefferson was determined to demonstrate the majestic size of American animals. PBS

Herman Melville’s ‘The Confidence Man’. Iber Libro

12. “The Confidence Man”

Conman William Thompson was finally arrested in July of 1849. One day that month a victim named Thomas McDonald, whom Thompson had conned months earlier out of a gold watch worth $110 – a pretty penny back then – spotted him on the street. McDonald alerted a policeman, who arrested Thompson despite his protestations and attempts to fight and flee.

Newspapers, recalling Thompson’s appeals to the victims’ “confidence” labeled him “The Confidence Man”. Thus was born the term that came to be applied to those who gain a mark’s trust as a prelude to a swindle. The term was given a further boost in 1857 when Herman Melville, inspired by William Thompson, released a novel titled The Confidence Man.

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.