Who was the first shyster?

QUESTION

Is a ‘shyster’ specifically a crooked or disreputable lawyer, rather than a cheat from any other trade or profession?

THE word shyster describes a lawyer who is shrewdly dishonest, though it has been applied to other professions.

The term was an enigma for years. One suggestion was that it derived from a corrupt lawyer called Scheuster who so annoyed a New York judge, Barnabas Osborn, that he began to refer to ‘Scheuster practices’. No such lawyer has ever been traced.

Another theory was that it came from the Gaelic siostair, meaning someone who is deceitful.

The puzzle was solved in 1982 by Professor Gerald L. Cohen, who cited previously overlooked material in The Subterranean, a New York City newspaper.

In an 1843 account, Mike Walsh, the paper’s editor, told of a conversation he’d had with a lawyer called Cornelius Terhune.

It seems Terhune asked Walsh not to lump him in with the many ‘shysters’ who flocked around the Manhattan House of Detention for Men. Walsh didn’t know the word and asked Terhune to explain.

‘The Counsellor expressed the utmost surprise at our ignorance of the true meaning of the expressive appellation ‘shiseter’; after which, by special request, he gave a definition, which we would now give our readers, were it not that it would certainly subject us to a prosecution for libel and obscenity.’

Cohen concluded that shyster evolved from ‘shiser’ or ‘shicer’, underworld slang of the time for a worthless fellow, which derived in turn from the German Scheisser, from Scheisse (s**t).

Jon Hobbes, Leeds.

QUESTION

The name Vanessa was coined by Jonathan Swift. What other popular names were created by authors?

FURTHER to the earlier answer, another candidate I would like to mention is the name Wendy (in memory of my dear late sister), which first appeared in Peter Pan and was thought to have been inspired by Margaret Henley, the daughter of author J. M. Barrie’s poet friend, W. E. Henley.

Heather Ward, Stretton, Derbys.