[WANTED POSTERS] COLLECTION OF NINETEEN VINTAGE WANTED POSTERS AND ASSOCIATED EPHEMERA. American, 1890s – 1930s. Group of broadsheets, with two postcards and one telegram, all being wanted posters or notices regarding con men and women who have plied their illegal trades on a host of unwitting marks. Among the acts described are forgery, larceny (by a “psychologist and scientific adviser”), confidence games and swindling, getting money under false pretenses as a “clairvoyant, psychic, palmist and crystal gazer,” “the old metal box game,” the passing of worthless checks, produce swindling, impersonation, and other offenses. One poster includes a second page of descriptions of the “Italian Sneak Thiefs [sic]” it seeks, who are wanted for robbing jewelry stores using a complicated series of interactions with clerks. Many posters reproduce fingerprints or mugshots of the individuals advertised. The largest 11 × 8½". Scattered soiling, chipping, and wear, but generally good condition overall.
Among the collection is an FBI-issued wanted poster for Frederick Emerson Peters (1885–1959), profiled in Hustlers & Con Men by Jay Robert Nash (1976), as arguably the greatest swindler of his type. Under hundreds of assumed names he wrote thousands of bad checks in the course of a career that spanned some five decades (interrupted by frequent stints in prison). “The roles Peters played were so intense that he actually came to believe that he, indeed, was the individual he was portraying. … For fifty years the hustler entertained his victims with performances worthy of a Paul Muni or a Fredric March.” Peters played roles including Theodore Roosevelt II, university professors, Booth Tarkington, and even FDR.