Confronting the “Seeker of Newspaper Notoriety”: Pathological Lying, the Public, and the Press, 1890–1920

Abstract

Between 1890 and 1920, the diagnosis of pathological lying, usually defined as purposeless lying, was widely recognized by American legal experts, social workers, journalists, and the general public. This article explores the origins of the diagnosis and its cultural importance as an explanation for the perceived prevalence of false reporting, unverifiable accusation, and manufactured “news fakes” in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, intensifying competition for scoops and an increase in libel suits prompted experts and the public to search for the origins of a perceived “epidemic of exaggeration.” The emblem of this epidemic became the pathological liar, a deviant publicity-seeker whose pointless deceptions exposed the vulnerability of the press to manipulation. The discovery of pathological lying helped recast the press in public discourse as the target, rather than the agent, of deception.

Notes

1 Henry James, “The Liar,” Century, May 1888, 132.

2 G. Stanley Hall, “Children's Lies,” American Journal of Psychology 3 (1890): 59–70; Anton Wolfgang Adalbert Delbrück, Die Pathologische Lüge und die Psychisch Abnormen Schwindler (Stuttgart, DE: F. Enke, 1891). Some of the American medical literature on pathological lying published between 1890 and 1920 includes John Duncan Quackenbos, “Kleptomania and Habitual Falsehood,” in Hypnotism in Moral and Mental Culture (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1901), 131–145; Bernard Glueck, “A Contribution to the Study of Psychogenesis in the Psychoses,” American Journal of Psychiatry 68 (1912): 371–429; G. L. Duprat, “Le Mensonge: Etude de Psycholosociologie,” The Principles of Judicial Proof, ed. J. H. Wigmore (Boston: Little, Brown, 1913); W. S. Dunn, “‘Pseudologia Phantastica,’ or Pathological Lying, in a Case of Hysteria with Moral Defect,” Journal of Mental Science 62 (1916): 595–599; Bernard Glueck, Studies in Forensic Psychiatry (Boston: Little, Brown, 1916); William and Mary Healy, Pathological Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic Psychology (Boston: Little, Brown, 1915); S. C. Read, “A Case of Pseudologia Phantastica,” Review of Neurology & Psychiatry 16 (1918): 236.

3 Work on deception in nineteenth-century America includes Stuart Blumin, “Explaining the New Metropolis: Perception, Deception, and Analysis in Mid-Nineteenth Century New York City,” Journal of Urban History 11, no. 1 (1984): 9–38; Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-century New York (New York: Vintage, 1998); Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); and James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

4 The definition and statistic come from Healy, Pathological Lying, Accusation and Swindling, 1.

5 For the press as an object and force of cultural transformation in this Gilded Age and Progressive Era, see Ted Curtis Smythe, The Gilded Age Press, 1865–1900 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003); Glen Wallach, “‘A Depraved Taste for Publicity’: The Press and Private Life in the Gilded Age,” American Studies 39, no. 1 (1998): 31–57; Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978); Richard L. Kaplan, Politics and the American Press: The Rise of Objectivity, 1865–1920 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Hazel Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-century America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989); David Mindich, Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define American Journalism (New York: NYU Press, 2000); and Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Press Gang: Newspapers and Politics, 1865–1878 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). For “terrible honesty,” see Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996).

6 For the importance of honesty and sincerity in conduct manuals, see Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). For phrenology as an index of character, see Charles Colbert, A Measure of Perfection: Phrenology and the Fine Arts in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998). For the replacement of “character” by “personality,” see Warren Susman, “‘Personality’ and the Making of Twentieth-century Culture,” in Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984).

7 Francis Wayland, The Elements of Moral Science (New York: Cooke, 1835), 299.

8 Benjamin Rush, Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind (Philadelphia: Kimber & Richardson, 1812), 264–265. For some failed attempts at construing lying as a discrete illness, see Isaac Ray, A Treatise on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity (Boston: C. Little and J. Brown, 1838), 410; Francis Wharton and Moreton Stillé, Treatise on Medical Jurisprudence (Philadelphia: Kay & Brother, 1860), 208.

9 The usefulness of kleptomania as a legal defense is discussed in Elaine S. Abelson, When Ladies Go A-Thieving: Middle-class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

10 Trial of Charles B. Huntington for Forgery: Principal Defense: Insanity (New York: John S. Voorhies, 1857), ix.

11 John Appleton, The Rules of Evidence (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1860), 272.

12 These include James M. Davis, Universalism Unmasked, or The Spurious Gospel Exposed (Philadelphia: I. Ashmead, 1837); P. W. Grayson, Vice Unmasked: An Essay (New York: George H. Evans, 1830); and Secundus Runneymede, The Prison-house Unmasked (London: J. Hatchard & Son, 1837).

13 The “true confessions” genre is discussed in David Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); and in Ann Fabian, The Unvarnished Truth: Personal Narratives in Nineteenth-century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). For moral suasion on stage, see John W. Frick, Theatre, Culture, and Temperance Reform in Nineteenth-century America (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

14 For discussions of these plays, see Michael R. Booth, Theatre in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 157, 164.

15 The Illustrated Manners Book: A Manual of Good Behavior and Polite Accomplishments (New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1855), 202.

16 Andrew J. King, “The Law of Slander in Early Antebellum America,” American Journal of Legal History 35, no. 1 (1991): 1–43.

17 Steward Rapalje, A Treatise on Contempt: Including Civil and Criminal Contempts (New York: L.K. Strouse, 1884), 28. The case in question was U.S. v. Emerson, 4 Cranch (U.S.) C.C. 188.

18 “Mr. Greeley as a Gentleman,” Round Table, April 18, 1868, 244. The Tribune, World, and Times are quoted in Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the United States, 1690–1872 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), 636–637.

19 Norman L. Rosenberg, Protecting the Best Men: An Interpretive History of the Law of Libel (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).

20 See, for instance, Samuel Merrill, Newspaper Libel: A Handbook for the Press (Boston: Ticknor & Company, 1888) and The Law of Libel: What Every Tribune Employee Is Expected to Know about It. How to Guard against Libel Suits, and How to Be Prepared to Defend Them When Brought (New York: Tribune Association, 1885).

21 “Lying as a Science,” Every Saturday: A Journal of Choice Reading, October 2, 1869, 436. “On the Origin of Liars,” Appleton's Journal of Literature, Science, and Art, October 23, 1869, 311–312.

22 Henry Ward Beecher, “On Truth-telling,” in The Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher (New York: J.B. Ford, 1874), 412, 415.

23 Walter A. McDougall, Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829–1877 (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 551.

24 See Wallach, “‘A Depraved Taste for Publicity’: The Press and Private Life in the Gilded Age,” and Richard Wightman Fox, Trials of Intimacy: Love and Loss in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

25 Roger Foster, “Trial by Newspaper,” North American Review, May 1887, 524.

26 “A Law unto Himself,” Christian Life, July 23, 1881, 362.

27 E. L. Godkin, “The Week,” Nation, July 8, 1875, 17. For the transformation of newspapers into active gatherers of news, see Schudson, Discovering the News.

28 Analyzing the case, a literary critic argues: “Trial process as a whole, however, can never enact the one-dimensional morality of sentimental fiction or melodrama.” Laura Hanft Korobkin, Criminal Conversations: Sentimental Conversations and Nineteenth-century Legal Stories of Adultery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 89.

29 Merrill, Newspaper Libel: A Handbook for the Press, 238–239.

30 William Randolph Hearst, “Pacific Coast Journalism,” Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine 11, no. 64 (1888): 404. For the longer history of truth and sensationalism, see Andie Tucher, Froth and Scum: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Ax Murderer in America's First Mass Medium (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Mitchell Stephens, A History of News, 3rd. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 100–104; Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-century America; and Lawson, Truth in Publishing; Stevens, Sensationalism and the New York Press (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 91–100.

31 “The Epidemic of Exaggeration,” New York Tribune, December 16, 1894; “Newspaper Fiction,” Current Literature, December 1898, 482–483.

32 Edwin L. Shuman, Steps into Journalism (Evanston, IL: Correspondence School of Journalism, 1894), 66 (emphasis added). Quoted in Schudson, 155.

33 William A. Purrington, “An Examination of the Doctrine of Malice as an Essential Element of Responsibility for Defamation Uttered on a Privileged Occasion,” Albany Law Journal, February 26, 1898, 136.

34 See, for instance, Smith v. Matthews et al., 152 N.Y. 152, 154 (N.Y. 1897).

35 “Psychological Literature,” Psychological Review, July 1903, 675.

36 C. Hanford Henderson, The Children of Good Fortune (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1905), 208.

37 The two studies identified essentially the same phenomenon, and yet despite Hall's prominence, it was Delbrück's term, pseudologia phantastica, not Hall's pseudomania, that would become more commonly used, perhaps because Delbrück described the condition at greater length and, unlike Hall, considered non-juvenile cases.

38 Hall, “Children's Lies,” 70. Johann P. is discussed in Healy, Pathological Lying, Accusation, and Swindling, 31. Baron X. is discussed in Köppen, “Ueber die Pathologische Lügner,” 690.

39 Kenneth De Ville and R. B. Freeman, Medical Malpractice in Nineteenth-century America (New York: NYU Press, 1992), 3.

40 “Editorial,” Medical Standard, October 1892, 113; “Editorial,” Medical Standard, May 1892, 148.

41 Theodore Schaefer, “The Sociological Status of Medical Practice,” American Therapist, December 15, 1894, 154.

42 “Liars,” Shoe and Leather Journal (June 1897): 210.

43 A Pure Souled Liar (Chicago: C.H. Kerr, 1888). For an analysis of Judah, see Anthony Jenkins, The Making of Victorian Drama (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 143–145.

44 Hall, “Children's Lies,” 59–60. In the 1890s, several biographers rejected the century-old national myth that glorified George Washington's supposed childhood pseudophobia. Washington's compulsive confession of felling his father's favorite cherry tree was now declared a fabrication, the work of an early national “sensation-monger.” Marcus Cunliffe's “Introduction” to Mason Locke Weems, The Life of Washington (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), xx–xxii, xxxiv.

45 Hall, “Children's Lies,” 68.

46 Morally conservative commentators continued to insist otherwise. See H. Clay Trumbull, A Lie Never Justifiable: A Study in Ethics (Philadelphia: John D. Wattles, 1893).

47 Richard S. Tedlow, Keeping the Corporate Image: Public Relations and Business, 1900–1950 (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1979); Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic Books, 1994); Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1936). For the recognition of the right to own one's public image, see Roberson v. Rochester Folding Box, 171 N.Y. 538 (N.Y. 1902); and Robert Mensel, “‘Kodakers Lying in Wait’: Amateur Photography and the Right of Privacy in New York,” American Quarterly 43, no. 1 (1991): 24–45. The classic study of “positive thought” remains Donald Meyer, The Positive Thinkers: A Study of the American Question for Health, Wealth, and Personal Power from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale (New York: Doubleday, 1965).

48 For the Newspaper Publicity Act, see Linda Lawson, Truth in Publishing: Federal Regulation of the Press's Business Practices, 1880–1920 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993); for the FTC and deceptive advertising, see Elizabeth Kimball MacLean, “Joseph E. Davies: The Wisconsin Idea and the Origins of the Federal Trade Commission,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 7, no. 1 (2007): 248–284, and Ivan L. Preston, The Great American Blow-up: Puffery in Advertising and Selling (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975). On the first article on journalistic ethics, and the ASNE's 1922 code, see Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-century America.

49 Alfred Gordon, “Deception and Falsehood as Pathologic Phenomena,” American Medicine, January 13, 1906, 68.

50 Healy, Pathological Lying, Accusation, and Swindling, 266.

51 Glueck, Studies in Forensic Psychiatry; E. B Bruner, A Laboratory Study in Democracy (Oxford, UK: Doubleday Page, 1927); Tom A. Williams, “Malingering and Simulation of Disease in Warfare,” Military Surgeon (1921): 520–533; Elmer Ernest Southard, Mary Cromwell Jarrett, and Roscoe Pound, The Kingdom of Evils (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 563.

52 Healy, Pathological Lying, Accusation, and Swindling, 266.

53 John D. Quackenbos, Magnhild: A Tale of Psychic Love (Boston: Richard D. Badger, 1918), 295.

54 Southard, Jarrett, and Pound, Kingdom of Evils, 155.

55 Bernard Glueck, Studies in Forensic Psychiatry, 237.

56 “Homosexual Pseudologia Phantastica Errotica,” Urologic and Cutaneous Review, September 1920, 549.

57 Southard, Jarrett, and Pound, Kingdom of Evils, 158.

58 Healy, Pathological Lying, Accusation, and Swindling, 139, 237, 163, 173, 210, 205, 203.

59 Ibid., 150, 147, 161, 157.

60 See, for instance, Frances Fenton, The Influence of Newspaper Presentations upon the Growth of Crime and Other Anti-Social Activity (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1911); and Hugo Munsterberg, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (New York: D. Appleton, 1916). For children and the mental hygiene movement, see Alice Smuts, Science in the Service of Children, 1893–1935 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

61 Sherwood Anderson's story “Hands” offers a convenient illustration of this shift: the narrator-friend to whom the teacher entrusts the tale of his false accusation is a newspaperman.

62 Healy, Pathological Lying, Accusation, and Swindling, 164, 85.

63 Ibid., 223.

64 Jim McPherson, “Mergers, Chains, Monopoly, and Competition,” in American Journalism: History, Principles and Practices, ed. W. David Sloan and Lisa Mullikin Parcell (Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 2002).

65 On the World’s bureau, see “How a New York Newspaper Works for Accuracy and Fair Play,” American Printer and Lithographer 62 (January 1916): 55–56. Ralph Pulitzer, The Profession of Journalism: Accuracy in the News (New York: World, 1912), 11–15.

66 Charles Henry Olin, Journalism: Explaining the Workings of a Modern Newspaper Office (Philadelphia: Penn Publishing Company, 1910), 106–107; Harry Franklin Harrington and Theodore Thomas Frankenberg, Essentials in Journalism: A Manual in Newspaper Making for College Classes (Boston: Ginn, 1912), 123; Willard Grovesnor Bleyer, Newspaper Writing and Editing (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 52; and Pulitzer, The Profession of Journalism, 16. For the reward for the identification of the impostor editor, see “Faked Murder Story Excites All Georgia,” Editor and Publisher 50, no. 7 (1917): 6.

67 Robert Golden, “The Lalla Khan Hoax,” World Wide Magazine 19, no. 113 (1907): 495; Charles E. Van Loan, “An Assisted Frankenstein,” Saturday Evening Post 188, no. 51 (1916): 14.

68 “War Fakes,” Saturday Evening Post 190, no. 17 (1917): 26. “Stop Malicious Rumors: Help to Win the War,” The Bulletin 5, no. 19 (1917): 1–3.

69 Anna Stemmermann, Beiträge und Kasuistik der Pseudologia Phantastica. Quoted in Healy, Pathological Lying, Accusation, and Swindling, 278.

70 For the history of free speech in the period and criticism of the “falsely shouting fire” analogy as “a parallel so manifestly inappropriate,” see David M. Rabban, Free Speech in Its Forgotten Years, 1870–1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 297. Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919).

71 H. L. Mencken, “On Lying,” Smart Set, August 1922, 47–48.

72 Walter Lippmann, “The Basic Problem of Democracy,” Atlantic Monthly 124, no. 5 (1919): 620.