Short Stuff: Selling the Brooklyn Bridge

You really bailed on that one, didn't you. Uh. This is about selling the Brooklyn Bridge, which I I think I had heard that this was a thing in history at some point, but big thanks to the New York Times, How Stuff Works dot com and n y C Walks dot com to bring it's the story of George C. Parker, a man who sold the brook the Brooklyn Bledge many times over, as well as some other notable New York places you know yet see would be okay with mo Man,

oh man, He's gonna become a regular part of the show, I think so. Yeah. George C. Parker was like a con man extraordinaire, like this guy. Supposedly he at least he claimed to have sold the Brooklyn Bridge multiple times a week, every week for years. That's how good he was, which is probably no, that is almost certainly not true. But it is documented that he did sell successfully sell the Brooklyn Bridge to a number of suckers over the years.

Like it wasn't just a one time thing just once would have made a legion, but the fact that this guy did it over and over again is really something. Yeah, and apparently this used to be a thing, and not just the Brooklyn Bridge. But you were in a situation in the you know, sort of latest eighteen hundreds in New York City where you had millions of immigrants coming

through uh Ellis Island who were hopeful. Many of them were poor, but not all of them because you have to have some money to buy the Brooklyn Bridge, although sometimes they sold these things for like not very much money, which is even sadder. Uh. So they were they were targets. They were sort of greenhorn targets. And some of them did have money though, and they would use I think

like um, I guess scouts or something. What would you call that, someone to kind of like informant informants at Ellis Island that could maybe be paid off to pass along information like, Hey, this immigrant came in. They think America is the land of opportunity. They're really excited and

they got a little cash in their pocket. Right. So the whole jam was with Parker's Brooklyn Bridge scam was he would find one of these people a well, healed immigrant who just thought of America as the land of opportunity, and um, I thought that this was a golden opportunity.

He would find them and show them, you know, some sort of deed that said that he owned the Brooklyn Bridge and he wanted to unload it, so he would sell it to somebody and and just basically tell them like, it's not just sown in the Brooklyn Bridge, which is amazing enough. You can charge a toll and you could make your money back in like a month and then just get rich from air. And that was how apparently

he actually attracted people. Yeah, and all this stuff is so it's very easy in two to say, well, why didn't they say, well, why aren't you doing this? Weren't you making this money? Why aren't there tolls and things like that? And who knows the answer. I think it was just a different time period. Um. As far as tolls on the bridge, uh, they did used to charge

when it first opened. It cost a penny to cross by to to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge by foot, uh and nicol if you had a horse uh and a rider ten cents for a horse and wagon and then uh extra money for farm animals if you were, you know, toting your farm animals, which is very funny to think about now, Uh, across across the brick, it's pretty funny. So there was there was at least a history where an immigrant may have heard that this was

the case. Uh, they stopped doing this in and I think even the roadway tolls went away in nineteen eleven, so you know, they didn't stop it until eighteen ninety one. So if it's EWO or three, then you could sort of forgive someone for believing it. Yeah. Plus they were still charging those roadway tolls for for decades longer. So yeah, I think the very presence of tolls on the Brooklyn Bridge made people think like, Okay, yeah, this is the thing. This guy owns this bridge. I'm going to take over

this enterprise from it. Yeah. And another thing you have to think about is the Brooklyn Bridge is very large, and it would be very easy to walk someone up there and maybe even show them a toll booth without arousing suspicion, without getting caught, without uh you know, them necessarily thinking they needed to go over and verify anything with the toll bridge. Yeah. Imagine also if you had an inn with one of the toll booth operators you

can introduce as your employee. You know, I'm bringing in money. Hand about fist here right. The other thing about the Brooklyn Bridge too, And and like you said, people sold other stuff, monuments, plots of land and parks in New York City, basically anything you can imagine that they didn't own. But the Brooklyn Bridge in particular was like the scam because it was such a monument in America at the

time of the turn of the twentieth century. Like there was the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge, and that was like the two big symbols of America. So people wanted to own it as well. The idea of owning this huge symbol of America. I just got off the boat from Croatia and now I'm I own one of two symbols of America. Um, you could imagine how somebody would jump at that opportunity if they if they

really thought that this guy was legit. Sure, and I think a lot of times he would just do it to make a few hundred bucks at a time to some real greenhorn. But apparently it's legend, has it he got up to fifty tho dollars, which I did not fail to do the calculation. Did you happen to do that? Shamefully? Now, I don't know why we didn't do that. Let's let's just say it's ten million dollar. Yeah, it's a lot

of money today. Yeah, I'll bet I'm right. Should we take a break, Yes, let's take a break and figure out how much they are? If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just Chuck Shore. So we're back, Chuck, And I was essentially right, Oh well, how much was it? Uh? So I said ten million? Right, you said ten million. Uh, it turns out it's um, it looks like it's about fifty million. Now no, no, I'm sorry. Let's see one, two three, it's five million zero five million. That's a jeez.

He really took somebody then. Yeah, imagine Lucy five million dollars buying the Brooklyn Bridge. Because again, like you're an immigrant, you're not really kind of hip to how things work here. Yet imagine going to the cops and then being like you're you're joking, like you just gave somebody five million dollars to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. Like that had to hurt.

Like to add insult to injury. Yeah, and you know there was some wife in that decision that was going, you idiot, that's every penny we have, and some husband going it'll be worth it, right. I also just bought some magic beans. Right. Uh. Here's one thing that's pretty interesting is this became so common because it wasn't just George Parker doing this. Um. There's one story that we couldn't quite get to the bottom of that there was someone named William mcclownde a k a I O U

O'Brien who did this. But then other people have said no, that was actually an alias Parker. But there were definitely people. This was a not the most common thing, but it was a grift that other people did to the extent that eventually on Ellis Island they had signage up and pamphlets that said, like, these things are not for sale. Welcome to America, do not try and buy the Statue of Liberty. Yeah. The thing I've seen bandied about is you can't buy public buildings or streets. And I was like,

is it is that true? And I looked it up and I don't know if it's true. Chuck, Well, what do you mean? But which one. Public buildings are streets that they handed out pamphlets Llis Island. Don't you think that somebody would have saved that pamphlet and there'd be an image of it on the internet somewhere. I don't know. That's your reasoning, that's part of it. It also appears

in one book in one New York Times article. In the New York Times article prints it from a quote from somebody else who also wrote a book about But did the Paper of Record? Yeah, but I mean New York Times. It's also Friday at five the New York Times. Sometimes. Okay, all right, well, who knows it makes for a good story, though it is a good story. But aren't those the most fun? To just be sure? I know that it

did get harder to sell these public buildings. I think they were trying to do that up through like the nineteen twenties. But um, you know, people became a little more wise to this thing over the years. Even though Parker I believe, in his day sold uh the Statue of Liberty, Madison Square, Garden, Grant's tomb Uh in the met not bad amazing. No, imagine buying the met too. You get all the art inside too, you're not going

to move the art no arts included. Oh no. What I would have said is no, you know, you don't own the art, but you can you get a lot of money for charging for the art to be there. Right, that's true. What happened to him though he got caught right, Yeah, he finally didn't. Apparently there was a four strikes in your out law in New York at the time called the Bomb's Law, and um, they said that if you were convicted of a fourth felony, that judge had no

choice but to give you life in prison. And that's what happened to uh to mr Parker. He passed a hundred and fifty dollar check that bounced supposedly, the only in Evening Times said that it bounced back with startling elasticity, which is hilarious. Um, and he served the rest of his life in Sing Sing Sings prison as a result. After all of those griffs and scams, he got life in jail for a hundred and fifty dollar bounced check. You know, there are four strikes in baseball at the time,

so that all makes sense. Okay, now it makes sense. I'm just kidding. Wait a minute, is that true? Wouldn't that be funny if that's how the judicial system worked? Like, Wow, what's baseball doing? Right? What's baseball I have to say about? Is the three strikes or four? That's what we'll do. Yeah, you can steal first I guess. Oh wait, you couldn't steal figures. I think this one ended, uh in just the best way possible. I think it ended about thirty

seconds too late. Uh as short stuff is out, everybody. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H