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.