Today's entry is about the guy who calls elderly folks and promises in honeyed tones that they've won a sweepstakes, if they would only forward him some money to pay the cost of sending them their winnings. It's about the street vendor claiming that his tonic water changes sweat into a perfume irresistible to the opposite sex.*
We're talking mountebanks, racketeers and snake-oil salesmen -- better known as "con artists." But do you know where the "con" part comes from?
If you think it's related to the con part in "ex-con," guess again -- the latter is a shortened form of "ex-convict." (Though if given enough time one might become the other.)
"Con man" is an abbreviation of "confidence man," named for the way such a crook swindles people not only out of their money, but also their trust. The term originated with the serial watch-thief William Thompson who, after chatting with his intended victim, would ask him or her, "Have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?" The victim, called a "mark," would hand Thompson his or her watch, and the thief whom the New York Herald dubbed the "Confidence Man" walked off with a shiny bit of clockwork to sell. Thompson was arrested in 1849, but his nickname stuck, and soon came to describe all sorts of thieves and the confidence games (American English) or confidence tricks (British English) they plied in 19th-century New York.
Though people have been bilking each other for probably as long as currency has existed, 19th-century America was a particularly fertile seedbed for confidence games and words coined about them:
- According to dictionary.reference.com, the terms "con man", "confidence game" and the verb "con" all entered American English in the mid-19th century.
- The Spanish Prisoner game has hornswoggled people since at least the 1860s, according to the New York Times. The swindle originally entailed the con artist claiming to be in contact with a wealthy political prisoner incarcerated in Spain. The con artist offered to let the mark provide some of the funds required to secure the prisoner's release in exchange for a larger reward later from the wealthy prisoner. Of course, the mark never received this reward. This con survives in the modern day as advance-fee fraud.
- The term "goldbrick," all one word, also emerged from the mid-1800s to describe a bar of heavy, base metal, usually lead, gilded to resemble solid gold and sold as such. The word has since gained new life as a verb, meaning to shirk responsibility, perform something halfheartedly, or to loaf (dictionary.reference.com).
- The shell game has existed since Ancient Greeks first used it to swipe each other's cold, hard drachma,** but the term first appeared as an Americanism in the 1880s, referring to the nutshells and pea used instead of the typical three cups and ball (pictured in Hieronymus Bosch's "The Conjurer"; note the con artist's accomplice swiping the player's coinpurse on the left-hand side).***
While conning involves a fair bit of prop use and often sleight-of-hand, the crux of a confidence game is always emotional manipulation. That's why stories about cons are as commonplace as a penny on the sidewalk. As much as we'd like to believe ourselves skeptical and perceptive enough to spot a crooked deal, we're only human. We want to believe the armchair we bought at the garage sale is worth the millions the "appraiser" says it is, so we pay her an advance fee to ensure the chair fetches a good price at auction. Never mind that we've never heard of Whitcombe-Whipple's Disease -- we fork over a few bills to the sharp-dressed man collecting money for it because we want to believe we're good people. And why advertise that there's $100 in one of these soap bar packages unless there is one there? Surely not to just sell soap! Why, that would be...a very effective way to sell soap.
Oh.
Therein lies the problem. Con artists, they're a two-cans-of-hair-gel kind of smooth. They trick us into believing that they're just like us by working on what makes us human -- our faith in each other -- and worst of all, they look good doing it.
I mean, check out
"Soapy" Smith at left, the 19th-century con man who gained national
notoriety for selling soap just as I've described above. What a hunk,
right? He's probably really clean, too....OK, maybe ol' Soap isn't the best example.
Seriously though, just think of the number of movies and books featuring conning as a motif, if not the core, of the work. Neil Gaiman's American Gods; Frank Oz's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels; Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, based off the real-life cons of Frank Abagnale, Jr.; Eric Garcia's Matchstick Men and Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom all spring to mind. Let's not forget the number of movies featuring Paul Newman and Robert Redford as the dashing outlaws or swindlers you can't help but love. Moreover, we're following the story from the con men's perspective more often than not. It's almost as if we're...glorifying them.
Steal our hearts too, whydontcha.
'Til next time, logophiles.
Information purloined from dictionary.reference.com, Britannica Academic Edition, British Bankers' Association, The New York Times and The Lost Museum at CUNY; image purloined from Wikimedia Commons
* : Chanel's new fragrance, Eau du Locker Room -- At Least You Don't Smell Like Feet™
(Also, check out a previous entry I have on quack remedies, called nostrums)
** : Note I am not singling out the Greeks. There are gullible people ripe for swindling in every land and culture. But if I were singling out the Greeks, hey, they don't call him Jason "The Golden Fleece" d'Argos for nothing
*** : "Dude, 50 denarii! We be rollin' in mutton, yo"
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