54 pages • 1 hour read
Steve SheinkinLincoln's Grave Robbers
Nonfiction | Book | Middle Grade | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Index of Terms
Boodle Carrier
A paid accomplice to a counterfeiting operation, the boodle carrier protects the “shover” from being caught with fake bills by carrying the “boodle” (money) on their person. Typically, the boodle carrier is an innocent-looking individual, often a teenager. The boodle carrier follows the shover discreetly, handing them one bill at a time for them to pass at businesses. That way, if the cashier recognizes the bill as counterfeit, the shover can show that the rest of his money is genuine and claim that the fake bill was given to him elsewhere as change. In Lincoln’s Grave Robbers, Patrick Tyrrell gets his first lead on the shover Jack Hughes when Hughes’s boodle carrier is arrested by police with his pockets full of fake cash. This capture leads Tyrrell to the underworld bar known as the Hub and, eventually, to the discovery of the Lincoln bodysnatching plot.
Coney
Coney is a contraction of “counterfeit money.” This posed a grave threat to the US government during the second half of the 19th century, when, at times, fully half of the country’s paper money was counterfeit. During this era, engraving was a huge industry; it consisted of cutting detailed designs into a hard surface, usually by hand, for use in printing. Some of the best engravers were lured into the much more lucrative business of printing fake money. One of these engravers, Benjamin Boyd, produced the best coney plates in the business, so his arrest in 1876 dealt a huge blow to the coney industry. The counterfeiter James Kennally first conceived of his plot to steal Abraham Lincoln’s body to free Boyd from prison.
Ghouls
Ghoul was a slang term for a body snatcher or a burglar of human corpses. Unscrupulous doctors and medical students who needed fresh bodies for dissection drove this trade, which reached scandalous proportions in the 19th century. Sheinkin’s book describes how Lewis Swegles pretends to have expertise in this field to worm his way into Hughes and Mullen’s graverobbing scheme.
Roper
Possibly derived from “roping” (entrapping) a miscreant, a roper is an undercover informer employed by the police. Lewis Swegles, the “prince of ropers,” is a former horse thief who infiltrates James Kennally’s counterfeiting gang for the Secret Service, passing on the gang’s plans and other secrets to Patrick Tyrrell. Thanks to him, Tyrrell is able to keep tabs on the bodysnatching plot every step of the way, from inception to its aborted conclusion.
Shover
In counterfeiting parlance, a shover is a criminal who passes fake bills at stores and banks, getting change and thereby exchanging his bad money for good. A shover often works in concert with a boodle carrier, who carries his supply of counterfeit money. Before joining Kennally’s bodysnatching plot, Jack Hughes is a shover for Kennally’s gang, which is how he first comes to Patrick Tyrrell’s attention; after Hughes’s boodle carrier is arrested and talks to the police, Tyrrell sets a roper on Hughes.
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By Steve Sheinkin
