How Scams Worked In The 1800s

How Scams/Fraud/Confidence Tricks Operated in the 1800s: A Glimpse into Historical Deceptions

Nothing Is Ever Really New

The history of fraud (scams) or confidence tricks in the 19th century reveals a striking truth: while the tools have changed, the core mechanics of a scam have remained consistent.

Con artists of the 1800s exploited the very same human vulnerabilities that scammers manipulate today—trust, hope, fear, greed, and empathy. In an age before digital communication, before databases and centralized law enforcement, deception thrived in the spaces between slow-moving information and deeply ingrained social customs. Scammers were not perceived merely as criminals but often as clever opportunists who operated in plain sight, taking full advantage of fragmented news cycles and localized reputations.

These individuals employed tactics that relied heavily on performance and psychology. They knew how to enter a town with the right story, the right appearance, and just enough social proof to convince others they were who they claimed to be. Often, they impersonated clergymen, government officials, doctors, or businessmen. They walked into rooms with forged papers, rented expensive rooms on credit, and disappeared just before their stories unraveled. The success of their schemes depended not just on their deceit but on the assumptions of the people they targeted.

In some instances, as in the case of A.V. Lamartine’s theatrical suicide ruse, the scammer preyed on the moral and religious instincts of bystanders. Communities were quick to offer comfort, money, or assistance when they believed someone was suffering or in danger. Scam victims were not foolish—they were compassionate. Lamartine’s exploitation of public sympathy underscores how even the best of human impulses could be manipulated for profit. The performance was tailored to provoke urgency, pity, and action, and it worked repeatedly because few people questioned the authenticity of such visible suffering.

The era also gave rise to frauds that mirrored modern phishing tactics. Impersonators such as the fake priest “Father McCarthy” used charm, official-looking credentials, and cultural authority to disarm suspicion. Once welcomed into the confidence of their targets, these individuals seized opportunities to make off with valuable goods or money. In the absence of fast communication or background checks, impersonation became one of the most effective tools in the con artist’s arsenal.

Retail frauds and confidence tricks were also widespread. The disappearing act of well-dressed women who scammed shops out of high-value goods reflects a long-standing tradition of exploiting commercial trust. By instructing store clerks to send merchandise for inspection or fitting, and then vanishing with it, these con artists took advantage of a system that depended on verbal agreements and face-to-face courtesy. Their behavior foreshadowed modern e-commerce scams, where trust is similarly placed in unverified transactions and assumed goodwill.

Other scams were based on calculated manipulation of greed. Horse trading schemes, where fraudsters played off each other to inflate the perceived value of a horse, relied on staged urgency and the illusion of a better deal just out of reach. This method, involving fake buyers and artificial bidding, has clear parallels in today’s bait-and-switch tactics and fake investment opportunities. The emotional setup is the same: create pressure, suggest limited availability, and make the victim feel as though they are on the brink of a valuable opportunity—if only they act now.

What allowed these scams to flourish was not just the ingenuity of the criminals but the structure of 19th-century society itself. Towns were often isolated, newspapers were delayed, and the circulation of wanted posters or criminal descriptions lagged behind the movements of the con men. A swindler could carry out the same act in half a dozen towns before anyone began to notice a pattern. Without standardized identification, it was difficult to verify a stranger’s identity, especially when that stranger wore a collar, presented forged letters, or spoke with refined manners.

Author and historian Amy Reading emphasizes that fraud succeeded then for the same reason it does now—because human beings are wired to trust. Our senses and our expectations about how the world works can be turned against us. Stage magic, she notes, gained immense popularity in the late 1800s for this very reason: people were fascinated by illusion, even when they knew it was not real. That same susceptibility was mirrored in the social world, where clever fraudsters manipulated perceptions just long enough to walk away richer and unscathed.

Reading also highlights that while human nature remains stable, societal rules around trust and social interaction evolve. The 19th century was a period of transformation, marked by shifts from local to national commerce, rural to urban migration, and traditional to modern values. These transitional moments created gaps in social expectations—gray areas where scammers could thrive. People no longer fully trusted old institutions but had not yet built new ones. The public was unsure about who to believe, and in that uncertainty, the con man found his opening.

Scams of the 1800s demonstrate that the core mechanics of fraud are resilient. They adapt to new technologies, new platforms, and new social contexts, but the psychological foundation is unchanged. The best scams are not random; they are designed to appeal to the emotions, values, and assumptions of their targets. Whether by telegram or by text message, by printed letter or phishing email, the goal remains the same: to gain trust quickly, extract value quietly, and disappear before accountability arrives.

Looking at 19th-century scams does more than provide historical curiosity. It reveals the continuity of deception across time. It shows how trust, once weaponized, becomes a tool for exploitation, and how fraud is never just a reflection of the criminal’s cunning, but also of the social climate in which it takes place. Today’s scams may arrive through digital means, but they are built on the same scripts that Lamartine and others followed over 150 years ago. Understanding those origins is not just useful—it is necessary. Fraud has always evolved, but the playbook remains familiar. The names and tools may change, but the con itself is never truly new.

Example: The Theatrical Suicide Scam of A.V. Lamartine

In the spring of 1859, a man named A.V. Lamartine drifted from town to town in the Midwest, orchestrating a dramatic scam that preyed on the kindness of strangers. Newspaper accounts from places like Salem, Oregon, to Richmond, Virginia, documented his method. Lamartine would enter a hotel, appearing visibly depressed as he requested a room. Once settled, he would ring a bell for assistance, and when a staff member arrived, he would point to an empty bottle on the table labeled “2 ounces of laudanum,” a potent opium derivative, while calling for a clergyman. A suicide note would be found by his bedside, prompting Good Samaritans to summon a doctor and administer emetics to save him.

Lamartine’s calculated performance relied on the empathy of those around him. As a Brooklyn reporter noted, sympathetic people would nurse him back to health, raise a purse for his recovery, and provide him with a free railroad pass to leave town. Using this method, Lamartine raised $25 in Dayton, Ohio, and $40 in Sandusky, Ohio, before moving on to his next target. His scam exploited the 19th-century values of community support and charity, turning kindness into a source of profit as he continued his fraudulent journey across the Midwest.

Example: The Golden Age of Confidence Tricks

The 1800s marked a peak for scams, often referred to as the Golden Age of schemes, where the term “confidence man” or “con man” likely emerged. Historical records from the New York Times indicate that by the 1880s and 1890s, the Brooklyn Bridge was sold multiple times to unsuspecting buyers, a notorious scam that became emblematic of the era’s audacity. Con artists, known as chiselers, four-flushers, and grifters, developed distinct methods that capitalized on the era’s unique social dynamics.

Amy Reading, an author who has extensively researched 19th-century scams, explained that the world was both smaller and larger during this period. Modes of communication were slow, allowing itinerant swindlers to move from town to town without immediate detection. At the same time, fewer degrees of separation existed between people, even in urban areas. Reading discovered instances where one person described a swindler to a friend, and another person later recognized the same swindler based on that description. Con men leveraged these interpersonal networks to move from victim to victim, relying on word-of-mouth trust to gain credibility.

Example: The Disappearing Act – A Shopping Spree Scam

A clever scam reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer on July 9, 1881, involved two women, often assisted by a man, who executed a disappearing act to steal valuable goods. The trio would arrive in a town, and the man would rent rooms for the women at a boarding house. The women would then visit a local store, embarking on a lavish shopping spree. They selected high-value, lightweight items like laces, which were easy to dispose of, and instructed the merchant to deliver the goods to their boarding house for a fitting.

When the store representative arrived, one of the women would be waiting in the parlor, claiming she needed to show the merchandise to her sister and husband. She would take the goods and disappear from the house, leaving the messenger waiting for payment that never came. This scam exploited the trust merchants placed in customers, as well as the lack of immediate communication to verify identities, allowing the swindlers to escape with their loot and move on to the next town.

Example: Impersonation of a Man of the Cloth

In May 1888, the New Castle, Pennsylvania, Daily City News reported a scam involving a man who introduced himself as Father McCarthy of Montreal. He arrived at St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Washington, D.C., presenting seemingly legitimate documentation to the head priest, E.A. McGurk Jr. Father McGurk welcomed the visitor, offering the hospitality of the parochial residence. On a Monday, McCarthy visited a jewelry store on Pennsylvania Avenue, claiming he needed a gift for a cardinal. He selected valuable diamonds and requested they be delivered to McGurk’s residence for inspection.

When the jeweler arrived, McCarthy, dressed as a priest, greeted him at the door, took the diamonds into another room to supposedly show them to other clergy, and slipped out a back entrance, never to be seen again. This scam exploited the trust placed in religious figures during the 19th century, as well as the assumption that a priest would act with integrity, allowing McCarthy to abscond with the jewels while leaving McGurk and the jeweler in shock.

Examples: The Horse Trading Swindle

A scam targeting farmers, reported by the Parsons Daily Sun in Kansas on July 15, 1889, showcased the ingenuity of 19th-century swindlers. A well-dressed man would approach a farmer, offering to buy a good horse for a set price. He paid a $10 deposit, promising to return in a week with the remaining balance. The next day, a second well-dressed man would arrive, expressing keen interest in the same horse, offering $10 to $25 more than the first man’s price. The farmer, bound by the first deal, would decline, but the second man promised to return in a week, offering the higher price if the horse was still available.

When the first man returned, the farmer, eager to profit from the higher offer, would buy out the original deal by returning the $10 deposit and adding an extra $10 for the man’s troubles. The first man would take the money, leaving the farmer with the horse but out $10. The two men, working together, would split the profit, having never intended to buy the horse. This scheme preyed on the farmer’s greed and the lack of immediate verification, a common vulnerability in rural communities of the time.

Example: The Gold Brick Scam

Another prevalent scam in the late 1800s involved the sale of fake gold bricks, as documented in the Chicago Tribune on August 12, 1896. Swindlers would approach wealthy individuals or prospectors, claiming to have discovered a gold brick worth thousands of dollars. They often presented a heavy brick painted with gold leaf or coated in a thin layer of real gold to pass initial inspection. The scammer would offer to sell the brick at a steep discount, citing a need for quick cash due to a fabricated emergency, such as a family illness or a debt to be paid.

Victims, believing they were getting a bargain, would hand over hundreds or even thousands of dollars, only to later discover the brick was made of lead or another cheap metal. This scam exploited the gold fever that gripped the United States during the late 19th century, particularly after the California Gold Rush, when many dreamed of striking it rich. The lack of standardized testing methods for gold at the time made it easier for con artists to deceive their marks, who often lacked the expertise to verify the authenticity of the metal.

Example: The Fake Heir Scheme

A more elaborate scam, reported by the New York Herald on March 3, 1875, involved swindlers posing as representatives of a deceased wealthy individual. The con artist would approach a target, often a middle-class family, claiming that a distant relative had died and left a substantial inheritance. The scammer presented forged documents, such as wills or letters, to support the claim, asserting that the family was entitled to a fortune, often in the range of tens of thousands of dollars.

To claim the inheritance, the family was told they needed to pay legal fees, taxes, or bribes to expedite the process, typically amounting to several hundred dollars. The swindler would collect the payment and disappear, leaving the family with nothing but false hope. This scam preyed on the era’s limited record-keeping and the difficulty of verifying distant relatives, especially in a time when families were often scattered across the country due to westward expansion and migration.

Societal Context and Lessons on Gullibility

This is according to NPR and is highly victim blaming:

The American capacity for gullibility, observes Amy Reading, “is unchanging over time because it is a function of how we are programmed, by biology and culture, to take in the external world. Any of our tools of empiricism, which generally hold us in pretty good stead, can also be used against us.”

A prime example, she says, “is stage magic — our susceptibility to it has certainly not decreased over the centuries. … Our senses, and our assumptions about how the world operates, are exactly what can be manipulated against us — even when we know that and are primed for it.”

Not coincidentally, she says, “stage magic exploded in popularity in the second half of the 19th century, only to die back to present levels with the introduction of cinema.”

What do change over time “are the particular rituals and customs and expectations and rules pertaining to trust in society,” she adds. “As those norms are shifting, as they did quite massively in the 19th century, you have the perfect conditions for exploiting the gaps between new and old. That shift to modernity was often the very script of the con.”

Gullibility Is Not the Cause—Control Is

The SCARS Institute Position

The assertion that human gullibility is a fixed trait that makes people universally susceptible to scams oversimplifies the psychological mechanics of fraud and shifts responsibility onto the victim. While it is historically accurate that scams have always existed and often succeed by exploiting trust, describing the public as gullible, even when presented as a universal human condition, leans into a harmful narrative. It excuses the criminal behavior of the perpetrator and ignores the intentional grooming, manipulation, and psychological coercion used to engineer a victim’s compliance.

Scam victims are not simply tricked because they are credulous. They are targeted, profiled, and gradually conditioned to override their instincts. This process is not a matter of blind trust—it is the result of calculated, methodical manipulation. Modern fraudsters, just like their 19th-century counterparts, do not rely on chance. They identify vulnerabilities, establish rapport, isolate their targets, and create emotional or financial pressure that impairs judgment over time. The term for this process is grooming. It is the same pattern used by abusers, cult leaders, and coercive controllers across contexts. Fraud is not a one-time trick. It is a system of control.

Historical con men did not succeed because their marks were inherently gullible. They succeeded because they operated in environments with limited information, high interpersonal trust, and evolving social structures. These conditions created ambiguity—spaces where manipulation could take root. But even then, it was not blind faith that led victims into the trap. It was often emotional vulnerability, perceived authority, or the slow erosion of boundaries under sustained influence. These are not signs of foolishness. They are signs of normal psychological and social function being hijacked by criminal intent.

To cite the popularity of stage magic as proof of inherent gullibility is a false equivalence. Magic is entertainment, voluntarily entered into by people who know they are being deceived. Fraud, on the other hand, is non-consensual manipulation. Comparing the two minimizes the emotional, psychological, and often financial violence of scams. People do not fall for scams because they want to be amazed. They fall because someone with malicious intent carefully constructed a believable world around them and used psychological pressure to remove their agency piece by piece.

Framing the problem as gullibility ignores key criminological and psychological insights. Victims of scams are often intelligent, responsible, and experienced. What makes them vulnerable is not a deficit in reasoning but a moment of emotional strain, misplaced trust, or relational trauma that scammers expertly exploit. Scams do not persist because people are incapable of learning. They persist because perpetrators evolve their tactics faster than most people can track, and because shame and stigma keep victims silent.

Reinforcing the idea that gullibility is the root cause of fraud plays directly into the goals of the scammers themselves. It isolates victims, discourages reporting, and makes people believe they are at fault for being deceived. That belief is not only incorrect—it is dangerous. The true lesson from historical scams is not that people have always been gullible. It is that manipulation is a refined, deliberate craft, and the responsibility lies with the manipulator, not the manipulated.

Scam victims deserve support, not scrutiny. They need education, not moral judgment. They need systems that recognize fraud as a form of psychological assault, not a lapse in common sense. To truly learn from the past, we must stop mischaracterizing deception as a test of intelligence and start addressing it for what it is: a violation of trust, executed by professionals who rely on silence, shame, and false narratives to keep succeeding.

Conclusion

Scams in the 1800s were not simply stories of clever criminals exploiting foolish individuals—they were strategic manipulations that exploited the social, psychological, and cultural vulnerabilities of a transforming society. The techniques used by 19th-century con artists mirror those seen in modern online fraud, proving that deception evolves, but its psychological foundation remains constant. These historical scams were built not on victim gullibility but on calculated coercion, trust exploitation, and the deliberate engineering of belief.

What distinguishes this period is not the presence of gullibility, but the absence of protective infrastructure. Victims were not ignorant; they were systematically deceived through impersonation, social manipulation, and emotional grooming. Each scam—from theatrical suicide attempts to fraudulent inheritance schemes—relied on performance and control, not on the inherent weakness of the target. Even then, fraudsters studied behavior, built profiles, and adapted their strategies to match the values and expectations of their audience.

The enduring narrative that people are scammed because they are gullible deflects responsibility away from the perpetrator and reinforces stigma. It fails to acknowledge the role of psychological manipulation and the sophistication of scam operations, both then and now. The past teaches that fraud is not a symptom of human foolishness, but a reflection of how trust can be hijacked by those who intend harm. Learning from these historical patterns requires discarding the myth of gullibility and recognizing the con for what it truly is: a deliberate act of control over another person’s reality.

Understanding how these scams operated in earlier eras helps modern society build more informed, compassionate, and protective responses. Today’s victims, like those in the 1800s, deserve recognition not for being gullible, but for being human—and for surviving systems of deception designed to override even the most rational minds. The history of fraud is not a lesson in mockery. It is a call to vigilance, empathy, and systemic change.