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The First ‘Confidence Man’ And Other Historic Cheats

Khalid Elhassan November 18, 2019 28 min

Orson Welles - H. G. Wells — Orson Welles defending himself to journalists after the War of the Worlds panic. Corbis

17. Lord Gordon-Gordon’s Con Almost Triggered a War Between the US and Canada

For months after jumping bail, the fake Lord Gordon-Gordon’s whereabouts were unknown. Jay Gould offered a $25,000 reward for the arrest of His Lordship, and eventually, word arrived that the conman was living in Manitoba, Canada. Gould tried to get him extradited to the US, but Gordon-Gordon convinced the Canadian authorities that the charges against him were false. The fact that His Lordship had offered to buy large tracts of Manitoba – an investment that promised to bring great prosperity to Canada – might have played a role in the Canadian authorities’ reluctance to extradite him.

An understandably incensed Gould then financed a Minnesota posse that crossed the border into Canada, and kidnapped Gordon-Gordon off his front porch in Manitoba. The plot failed however when the kidnappers were stopped at the border, arrested, and thrown into a Canadian jail. An international incident then ensued, and American newspapers urged an invasion of Canada to free the Minnesota kidnappers. Eventually, things simmered down, and the Americans were released through diplomacy. Lord Gordon-Gordon settled down to enjoy his loot, but then in 1874, he was finally identified as the “Lord Glencairn” who had fleeced the London jewelers in 1868 for £25,000. As the Canadian authorities moved to deport him to Britain, Lord Gordon-Gordon, realized that the jig was finally up. Not wishing to spend the rest of his life behind bars, he hosted a farewell party in his hotel room, then shot himself on August 1^st, 1874.

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.