The Great Aberdeen Watch Swindle
A traveling con artist successfully bilks residents out of hundreds of dollars, leaving them with worthless brass trinkets.
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.
Those who bought watches from the street fakir should not have expected them to work. The works are like the flowers that bloom in the spring—they have nothing to do with the case. One 'shrewd' investor who invested fifteen dollars and received an empty brass case says he will have to run his watch with the water works. The watch fakir has been advertised throughout the newspapers for the past ten days, yet one of them came into Aberdeen; and notwithstanding the fact that money is said to be tight, carried away four hundred dollars with more ease than you could raise five dollars for the establishment of a manufacturing plant.
“One 'shrewd' investor who invested fifteen dollars and received an empty brass case says he will have to run his watch with the water works.”
Scams targeting local residents by traveling grifters were a common hazard in boomtowns like Aberdeen. The editor's frustration highlights the tension between the town's need for legitimate industrial capital and the reality of predatory petty crime.
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