Synopses & Reviews
It began quietly enough one morning in February 1880, with a mutton-chopped Acme Safe Company salesman knocking on the door of Reverend Morgan Dix, the starchiest clergyman in Manhattan's most respectable church. The salesman was surely misdirected, Reverend Dix explainedhe had no need for a safe, and he had not made an appointment. But soon after, used clothes dealers arrived, followed by heavy machinery salesmen, and soon the street filled riotously with wave after wave of solicitor-tormentorshundreds of funeral directors, horse traders, wigmakers, fellow clergymen, doctorsall insisting they'd been summoned by the bewildered Reverend Dix. And for weeks, it continued in this manner. Reporters from every newspaper in New York camped out to watch the fun, and as the story gained national attention, police and postal officers raced to capture the gleeful prankster-cum-performance artist who was making a mockery of the esteemed Trinity Church.
A fascinating tale of detection and revenge, The Rector and the Rogue uncovers for the first time the trail of celebrated Victorian trickster "Gentleman Joe"the mysterious con-man whose innumerable identities, wild fabrications, baffling motives, and international trail of chaos would lead to one of the most bizarre criminal cases of the 19th century.
Synopsis
In 1880 the Reverend Dr. Morgan Dix was rector of wealthy Trinity Parish in New York City. A High Churchman, Dix was an able and admirable man, with little humor. His troubles began on the morning of February 18 when a representative of the Acme Safe Company arrived, summoned, he said, by Dr. Dix. He was quickly followed by a teacher in a girls' school and a man leasing two horses for sale, both with letters from Dixwhich of course were forgeries. In the following weeks, wigmakers arrived, as did dancing teachers, dealers in used clothing, eminent clergymen and their wives dressed for lunch outingsall of them fraudulently invited.
Meanwhile, the perpetrator began communicating with Dix, signing himself "Gentleman Joe." The New York Police and post-office officials were called in, and it was soon discovered that an Irish saloonkeeper was suffering the same harassment as Dix. Day by day the persecution became more ingenious and more harrowing, until they finally caught Gentleman Joe, who turned out to be a remarkable little man with a startling motive.
The story of it all is told by W.A. Swanberg, a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Awardwinning (and yet near-forgotten) biographer, and raconteur of the highest order.