Headnote

Published 1722; copy text 1722 (see Textual Account).

Like A Famous Prediction, this hoax depends for much of its effect on the typographical as well as generic imitation of a popular print format, drawing on a detailed knowledge of the print trade and of the previous history of the victim (the spelling of whose names varies significantly among the various sources, as shown in the quotations below). In this case Swift worked with John Harding, the printer who was producing The Last Farewell of Ebenezor Elliston to this Transitory World in which, according to established custom, the condemned man, under the supervision of the official chaplain, gave an account of his life and errors (see Textual Account, and for The Last Farewell, Appendix I). Swift had early satirised the convention in the Tale: ‘Of Ladders I need say nothing … The ascending Orators do not only oblige their Audience in the agreeable Delivery, but the whole World in their early Publication of these Speeches; which I look upon as the choicest Treasury of our British Eloquence.’ Swift's interest in the genre is also attested by ‘TheDying Speech of Tom Ashe’ (Appendix B), and ‘The Last Speech and Dying Words of Daniel Jackson’. For a possible link to Tatler no. 68, see Appendix G.

Swift's hoax focuses on Elliston's supposed threats that information against his fellow criminals would be released to the authorities if they offended again, and that victims who allowed themselves to be robbed in the street would be shamed in print. A note in 1735 claimed that the hoax had indeed caused a decrease in crime:

Mayhew, whose ‘Jonathan Swift's Hoax of 1722 upon Ebenezor Elliston’ gives the most detailed account of the affair, remains sceptical.