The Circus Day Swindle
A pair of local men fall prey to traveling confidence men operating under the cover of the circus.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Among those bunkoed by sure thing men on circus day were an old man named Bryant and Jim Kincaid. The former lost $10, which the sheriff secured the return of before the circus left town. Kincaid lost $65 and was in an awful stew. Sheriff Canutt and Deputy Carter took him to Garfield and secured the return of his money. No others made complaint.
“Kincaid lost $65 and was in an awful stew.”
Public spectacles like circuses have always provided cover for grifters, a reality that persists in modern digital 'event-based' scams. While Sheriff Canutt successfully recovered the money in 1900, modern victims of such confidence games rarely find the same outcome.
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