Frederic Scrimshaw

Very little biographical information about Frederic Scrimshaw appears to be firmly documented online. What can be confirmed is that Scrimshaw is credited as the author of The Dogs and the Fleas, a book published in Chicago by D. McCallum in 1893.

That work is remembered as a late-19th-century social and political satire. Using an allegorical world of dogs and fleas, Scrimshaw explores class conflict, labor struggles, corruption, and the concentration of wealth and power, giving the book a strong reformist edge.

Because reliable personal details are scarce, Scrimshaw is best approached through the writing itself: sharp, polemical, and clearly engaged with the economic anxieties of the Gilded Age. Readers interested in labor history, populist critique, or unusual political allegory may find this forgotten author especially intriguing.