Sharper 891127 176132089 2007-12-06T11:44:26Z 16@r 839108 +wikt {{Wiktionary}} A '''sharper''' is an older term, common since the seventeenth-century, for thieves who use trickery to part an owner with his or her money possessions. Sharpers vary from what we now call [[Confidence trick|con-men]] by virtue of the simplicity of their cons, which often were impromptu, rather than carefully orchestrated, though those certainly happened as well. The 1737 Dictionary of Thieving Slang defines a sharper as "A Cheat, One who lives by his wits." In the nineteenth-century, and into today, the term is more closely associated with [[gambling]]. ==The Eighteenth-Century Sharper and Public Imagination== Sharpers were romantic figures in the eighteenth-century, valued as imaginative figures for their perceived social independence and ability to create new social networks of [[gangs]]. The appeal of an independent society, operating outside the law, has been imaginative evocative for centuries, but in eighteenth-century [[London]] philosophical thought, influenced by [[Thomas Hobbes]] and [[Rousseau]]'s new formulations of social contract, the romanticization of thievery reached new levels. [[John Gay]]'s [[The Beggar's Opera]] and [[Henry Fielding]]'s novel [[Jonathan Wild]] are only two examples of sharpers as heroes, in these cases, to provide satirical ammunition against the [[British Prime Minister]] [[Horace Walpole]]. ==Outside sources== *See Rick Norton's [http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/grub/sharpers.htm eighteenth-century newspaper reports] of sharpers. *[http://www.jobmonkey.com/casino/html/sharpers_and_cheaters.html Job Monkey] has a detailed article on nineteenth-century sharpers and contemporary legal reactions. {{job-stub}} [[Category:Criminals]]