Editing Tom Collins (section)

===The Tom Collins Hoax of 1874===

In 1874, people in New York; [[Pennsylvania]]; and elsewhere in the United States would start a conversation with, "Have you seen Tom Collins?"<ref name="Great">{{cite news|last=Sinclair|first=George|date=26 March 2007|via=[[Scribd]]|title=The Great Tom Collins Hoax|access-date=25 November 2008|url=https://www.scribd.com/doc/18790/Tom-Collins-Article|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081202024918/http://www.scribd.com/doc/18790/Tom-Collins-Article|archive-date=2 December 2008}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Walsh|first=William S.|year=1892|title=Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities|pages=[https://archive.org/details/handybooklitera03walsgoog/page/n456 450]|publisher=J. B. Lippincott Company |access-date=25 November 2008|url=https://archive.org/details/handybooklitera03walsgoog|isbn=0-7426-4152-X}}</ref> After the listener predictably reacts by explaining that they did not know a Tom Collins, the speaker would assert that Tom Collins was talking about the listener to others and that Tom Collins was "just around the corner", "in a [local] bar", or somewhere else near.<ref name="Great"/> The conversation about the nonexistent Tom Collins was a [[List of hoaxes#Proven hoaxes of exposure|proven hoax of exposure]].<ref name="Great"/> In The Great Tom Collins hoax of 1874, as it became known, the speaker would encourage the listener to act foolishly by reacting to patent nonsense that the hoaxer deliberately presents as reality.<ref name="Great"/> In particular, the speaker intended the listener to become agitated at the idea of someone talking about them to others such that the listener would rush off to find the purportedly nearby Tom Collins.<ref name="Great"/> Similar to the [[1874 Central Park Zoo Escape|New York Zoo hoax]] of 1874, several newspapers propagated the very successful practical joke by printing stories containing false sightings of Tom Collins.<ref name="Great"/> The 1874 hoax quickly gained such notoriety that several 1874 music hall songs memorialized the event (copies of which now are in the [[U.S. Library of Congress]]).<ref name="Great"/><ref>For the 1874 sheet music about the Tom Collins hoax, see [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/mussm:@OR(@field(TITLE+@od1(Tom+Collins++))+@field(ALTTITLE+@od1(Tom+Collins++))) Library of Congress].</ref>