Word: badger
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Badger Game. The method of blackmailing by decoying a person into a compromising situation and extorting money by threats of exposure...
Citizens of Wisconsin first became known as Badgers when the lead mining operations were instituted in the Minreal Point vicinity at the close of the Winnebago War, 1827. Conditions of living were crude. Illinois mining teams flitted with the seasons and were called "Suckers", colloquial name for the small migratory fish of the streams. Swiss and Cornish immigrant miners, too busy to build houses, moved into abandoned shafts on the hillsides and thus were known as Badgers. Hence Wisconsin attained the name of Badger State...
...badger game" is so old a criminal trick that dictionaries describe it. A dishonest woman lures a lickerish man into her apartment. Suddenly appears the '"husband," who for cash will overlook his "wife's" indiscretion. Occasionally such blackmail is worked by low men upon rich women. Rarely have the victims sufficient hardihood to resist the imposition...
Last week the Medical Society of the State of New York warned the profession against a peculiarly malicious application of the badger game. A "sick" woman telephones for a doctor to come to her hotel room. While he is giving her a physical examination, which perhaps requires him to remove his coat and roll up his sleeves, in dashes the outraged "husband." The Society advises doctors either to refuse to visit unknown female clients, or to take along a witness; if no one else, the hotel clerk...
...badger in this sense derives, not from the old English pastime of baiting badgers but, according to Webster, from the nickname for natives of Wisconsin, "The Badger State," who once enjoyed a reputation for cheating, trickery...