Austin Bidwell

Born in 1845, Austin Biron Bidwell was an American confidence man who became notorious as the leading figure in the 1873 Bank of England forgery scheme. The fraud drew international attention, and after his conviction in London he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Bidwell later became an author through his memoir Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude. The book turns his dramatic rise and fall into a personal narrative, tracing his path from American finance into one of the nineteenth century's most famous criminal cases.

After years in prison, he was eventually released and returned to the United States. He died in 1899, but his name has endured through his memoir and through later histories of the scandal that made him infamous.