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The Dumbest Get-Rich-Quick Schemes in History

Khalid Elhassan October 30, 2022 33 min

An Awful Marriage

Dumb Moments - Timothy Dexter's house in the early 1800s — Timothy Dexter’s house in the early 1800s. All That is Interesting

Despite the seemingly dumb investments, Dexter’s business career prospered. Not so his marriage. His wife, Elizabeth Dexter, came from a prominent New Hampshire family that included a governor, and they looked down on him. If his frequent womanizing was not enough to wreck his marriage – on one occasion a cuckolded lawyer beat the daylights out of Dexter on the street – his pretending that his wife was dead would have done it. Late in life, Dexter began to refer to Elizabeth as a ghost, and refused to acknowledge that she was alive.

Except for that one time when he faked his death to see how many people would show up for his funeral. The turnout was good, and about 3000 people attended the mock wake. Odds are it was not because of love and respect for the deceased, but because the funeral featured plenty of free food and booze. However, Elizabeth Dexter did not seem sufficiently sad to suit her hubby. So he fell upon her with his cane, until funeral attendees came to the rescue and saved her.

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.