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David Warren "Doc" Maurer (April 12, 1906 – June 11, 1981) was a professor of linguistics at the University of Louisville from 1937 to 1972. He was the writer of numerous studies of the language of the American underworld.^[1]^[2]

Biography

Maurer received a doctorate from the Ohio State University in Comparative Literature in 1935. He began teaching in Louisville in 1937 while living on a farm in nearby Jeffersontown. He married Barbara Elinore "Countess" Starbuck on 12 June 1937 in Highland County, Ohio.^[3] He spent much of his academic career studying the language of criminals, drug addicts, and other marginal subcultures. He claimed he decided not to seek employment at Tulane University after he was warned that the organized crime in New Orleans would not welcome his academic pursuits to study them.^[2]

In 1974, he filed a $10 million lawsuit (equivalent to $61,781,377 in 2023) charging that the movie The Sting and the book of the same name had been copied from his book The Big Con. The lawsuit was settled out of court in 1976 for an estimated $600,000 (equivalent to $3,212,632 in 2023).^[4]^[5]

A traffic collision in 1970 "severely limited his activity by unremitting pain and, ultimately, almost total blindness."^[2] He died at his home in Jeffersontown from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.^[1]^[5]

Works

The Big Con^[6]^[7] is Maurer's most popular and perhaps most important book.^{[according to whom?]} The source material for it came from Maurer's correspondence, interviews, and informal chats with hundreds of underworld denizens during the 1930s. Among the interviewed criminals were such figures as Joseph "The Yellow Kid" Weil, Charles Gondorff and Limehouse Chappie. Maurer won the trust of hundreds of grifters, who let him in on their language and their methods.^{[citation needed]} The book served as a source for the film The Sting as well as the episode "Horseplay" from The Adventures of Harry Lime.

Maurer also wrote The American Confidence Man^[8] and three other books: Narcotics and Narcotic Addiction,^[9] Whiz Mob: A Correlation of the Technical Argot of Pickpockets with Their Behavior Pattern,^[10] and Kentucky Moonshine.^[11] In all these books, Maurer described the language, mostly the lexicon, of the people living in these "subcultures". For example, in the last book, he focused on the craft of the moonshiners, discussed their infiltration of "dry" counties and reported their terminology.^{[citation needed]} Language of the Underworld^[12] is a collection of several of his previous published articles collected by two of his students. It includes an introduction that describes the methods he used to collect criminal argot.

References

^ ^a ^b "David W. Maurer Is Dead at 75. An Expert on Underworld Slang". The New York Times. United Press International. June 14, 1981. Retrieved 2009-06-11.
^ ^a ^b ^c McDavid, Jr., Raven (1982). "David Maurer (1905–1981): A Memoir". American Speech. 57 (4): 277–287. JSTOR i219223.
^ "Marriage License No. 15661" (Marriage Record). Probate Court, Highland County, Ohio. 12 Jun 1937. p. 228.
^ Wilson, John (11 May 1980). "Hollywood Heist: Scene (and Film) Stealers". Los Angeles Times. p. 29 – via Proquest.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
^ ^a ^b "Linguist spent life studying criminal slang". Los Angeles Times. 15 Jun 1981. p. 20 – via Proquest.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
^ Maurer, David (1940). The Big Con (1st ed.). Indianapolis, Indiana: Bobbs-Merrill Company.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
^ "Excerpt: from 'The Big Con' by David Maurer". Random House. Archived from the original on 11 Oct 2012. Retrieved 2012-02-01.
^ Maurer, David (1974). The American Confidence Man (1st ed.). Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas Publisher, Ltd. ISBN 9780398029760.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
^ Maurer, David; Vogel, Victor (1973). Narcotics and narcotic addiction (4th ed.). Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas. ISBN 978-0-398-02906-7. OCLC 4769301746.
^ Maurer, David W. (1964). Whiz Mob: A Correlation of the Technical Argot of Pickpockets with Their Behavior Pattern. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7425-3351-6.
^ Maurer, David W.; Pearl, Quinn (1974). Kentucky Moonshine. The Kentucky bicentennial bookshelf Kentucky moonshine. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-4354-5.
^ Maurer, David W.; Flexner, Stuart Berg (1981). Futrell, Allan W.; Wordell, Charles B. (eds.). Language of the underworld. Lexington, Ky: Univ. Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-1405-7.