The Smooth Swindler of Springbrook
A serial con artist attempts to swindle hotel keepers and produce merchants with worthless paper.
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.
Thomas L. Kempster, a swindler from Orillia, has been engaged in a series of deceptive transactions in Seattle. He attempted to purchase the Brunswick Hotel, offering bad checks and borrowing money from staff while posing as a man of means. Simultaneously, he entered a deal with commission merchant John B. Agen for 150 tons of potatoes, failing to pay for them and attempting to resell them for a profit. Kempster also left an envelope at the Commercial National Bank containing only blank paper, which he described as 'securities.' A piano he acquired from G. A. Heininger and failed to pay for was recently seized by the sheriff. Local businesses are now reporting his fraudulent notes.
“With as bold a face as ever I saw on a man he asserted that he had left securities at the bank that very morning.”
This reflects the 'confidence man' era of early Seattle, where rapid economic expansion and loose banking oversight made it easy for impostors to exploit local commerce.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.