Confidence men, bunko artists, grifters and the like seemed to be everywhere a century ago, waiting to prey on the unsuspecting. Con men gained your confidence and then took your money. They were particularly active in rural hubs such as Bangor, where large groups of itinerant workers, farm folk and naive immigrants gathered looking for jobs and entertainment.
Today, we have plenty of scamming going on by telephone and the Internet involving people in faraway places. Back then, flimflammers had to be more talented. They had to look you in the eye and convince you they were going to make you rich, before they robbed you.
Here’s a few examples of the confidence rackets in Maine from the Bangor newspapers a century or so ago.
Joseph Barkovsky, a Polish immigrant who worked in the Lincoln pulp mill, was approached by two strangers. They showed him the marvelous money making machine they kept in an old brown suitcase along with bottles of different colored chemicals.
The men reassured Barkovsky that they also were immigrants, a Russian and a Lithuanian. They were not like the shrewd, brusque Yankees he had already encountered. One of them, oddly enough, spoke excellent English.
So how does a money manufacturing machine work? The swindlers put a dollar bill in one end of the device and after “a good deal of buzzing noise” out came two one-dollar bills, recounted the Bangor Daily News on Nov. 4, 1914.
Barkovsky was so impressed he recruited his friend William Shefel, another Polish pulp maker. The two men pooled their resources — $700 in cash, which was quite a treasure trove back then for hard working mill workers.
Their money was run into the machine and the buzzing commenced. Out came “a bundle of what appeared to be money.” One of the “sharpers” immediately took this bundle and wrapped it up in newspaper, informing the two laborers that if it was exposed to light inside of 24 hours, it would be “spoilt.”
One of the scammers promised to stick around until the next day to make sure the process had worked properly. The two Poles would double their money.
After waiting the time limit, not surprisingly, their new friend did not re-appear. Barkovsky and Shefel, too excited to wait any longer, opened the package and found a bundle of newspaper clippings, each the size of a dollar bill with an actual two dollar bill on top. They realized they had been the victims of an elaborate hoax.
Soon they were off to Bangor where they told their sad, but all too common, story to Police Chief Thomas O’Donahue. Used to hearing tales of woe from foreigners who had been victimized by pickpockets and the like, O’Donahue decided to spread the news of the latest scam to hit the Queen City area.
The newspapers regularly printed stories of such events.
Here is another confidence scheme that is too good to pass by even though it happened in Portland. It probably happened in Bangor as well, which also had trolley cars and street vendors.
Alfred Cinquinni ran a peanut stand at the corner of Middle and Exchange streets in Portland. He also sold fruit and candy and “all manner of lollipops,” related the Bangor Daily News on Oct. 1, 1909, based on a story in the Portland Advertiser.
Two young men bought 5 cents worth of candy one day. They argued for awhile over whether to buy 6 cents, confusing matters from the start.
One of them produced a $5 bill, spreading it out on the counter for all to see, but his companion said, “Don’t break it, William. I have the right change.”
After “William” put the $5 back in his pocket, however, his companion fished around in his pockets looking for the change, finally exclaiming, “By jove, I haven’t got it!”
By now a line was probably forming, and Cinquinni may have been getting impatient. “William” reached back into his pocket and pulled out a bill, but it was a carefully folded $1 bill, instead of the original $5 bill that he had spread before the peanut vendor before. Assuming it was the same $5, Cinquinni counted out $4.95 in change, and the young men hurriedly departed, having made a few easy bucks. A dollar was worth about $20 back then in today’s money.
Cinquinni went to the police when he realized what had happened. He found out that the same trick had been played on some street car conductors recently. Various change scams were common as far east as Bangor.
The stuck-jack knife hustle was a popular trick as well in the Queen City of the East, especially around the train station.
Early on May 7, 1907, a naive fellow boarded a westbound train from Bangor, said the Bangor Daily News the next day. The story was headlined “Like Robbing a Small Child.”
As he sat in his seat waiting for the trip to begin, two well-dressed strangers strolled down the aisle, taking seats next to him and directly across from him.
“Say,” said the man next to him to the man across from him, “lend me your knife, will you.”
“I would, but it’s no good,” said the second man. “I can’t open it. It sticks.”
“Nonsense,” said the first fellow. “Anybody can open a knife with a little patience. It’s easy.”
A lively discussion ensued. The man who had been sitting there became interested when bets were made about whether the knife would be opened. The three men — the two swindlers and their mark — put up $25 apiece, which seems today to have been quite a bundle for such a silly question.
One of the sharp dressers was assigned to hold onto the money. As soon as he was handed the roll of bills, however, he bolted down the aisle and out the door. The train was still not moving.
The home-bound fellow was so startled, he watched the fellow go without making any effort to stop him.
The other fellow exclaimed, “That’s a rotten trick. Do as I say, and we’ll catch him. You go to one door and I’ll go to the other, and between us, we ought to get the money back.”
Naturally, he disappeared as well. The victim jumped off the train and went to the police. A tour of some of the seedier boarding houses in the Devils Half Acre with Capt. Perkins and Patrolman Golden failed to produce the crooks, which is where the story ended.
“Sucker traps” abounded around fairs and circuses, usually held near the Bangor Auditorium. In one game, called “the pinch,” a spindle revolved around a cloth with numbers.
A naive individual — known as a “come-on” — was encouraged to play after seeing “cappers” — decoys — appear to be consistently winning money.
One of the cappers, a man “of ample corporosity” who bent over the playing board a good deal, controlled the spindle with “a belly pinch,” manipulating things as the spindle rotated, directing where it stopped. This is according to the Bangor Daily News on July 9, 1907. The police kept an eye out for these sorts of games and broke them up.
For a time that same summer, a well-dressed, smooth talking swindler was working the Boston boats to Portland or Bangor, reported the Bangor Daily News on July 11, 1907. Claiming at various times to be the son of prominent hotel owners in Portland and Bangor, he convinced several “well-known business and professional men” to loan him money, saying he had spent all his cash and didn’t dare tell his father.
In return, he would often provide as collateral a cheap ring. In some cases, this multitalented individual also turned out to be a pickpocket and a check forger. He even carried an engraved card purported to be that of a University of Maine student.
The Bangor Daily News summed up a host of other confidence schemes that had been spotted in the Bangor area in an editorial on Oct. 3, 1908. In the Newport and Dexter area, a man who was “an ingratiating talker” had been selling glasses that would “enable the blind to see a house fly at the top of a church steeple 150 feet in the air.” After talking customers into making a deposit, the glasses never arrived in the mail.
A polished young couple had been traveling around eastern Maine in a wagon telling people they were victims of the San Francisco earthquake. They were selling subscriptions to the Ladies Home Journal, which, of course, never arrived.
Then there was the fellow who had been selling fruit trees that he claimed produced “coreless apples” and “freestone peaches.”
The editorial writer advised people to “trade with nobody that you do not know personally, and pay over no money until the goods are delivered.”
Isn’t it surprising how little we’ve learned along those lines in the past 100 years of material progress?
Wayne E. Reilly’s column on Bangor a century ago appears in the newspaper every other Monday. His latest book, “Hidden History of Bangor: From Lumbering Days to the Progressive Era,” is available where books are sold. Comments can be sent to him at wreilly.bdn@gmail.com