Hoaxes of Benjamin Franklin

Between April and October 1722 a series of letters appeared in the New England Courant written by a middle-aged widow who called herself Silence Dogood. In her correspondence she poked fun at various aspects of life in colonial America, such as the drunkenness of locals, religious hypocrisy, the persecution of women, the fashion for hoop petticoats, and particularly the pretensions of Harvard College.

Silence Dogood's letters became quite popular. Some of the male readers of the Courant were so taken with her that they offered to marry her. But unfortunately for these would-be suitors, Silence Dogood did not exist. She was the invention of sixteen year-old Benjamin Franklin, who was working at the time as an apprentice to his older brother, James, a Boston printer.

Franklin initially concealed his authorship of the letters from his brother. When he finally confessed to his brother that he was the author, his brother grew quite displeased, fearing that all the compliments paid to Silence Dogood would make young Benjamin grow vain. Soon after this, Franklin decided to run away and seek his fortune in Philadelphia.

Silence Dogood was the first of many hoaxes Franklin perpetrated throughout his life. More…

On October 22, 1730 an article appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette describing a witch trial that had recently been held in Mount Holly near Burlington, New Jersey.

According to the article, over 300 people had gathered to witness the trial of two people, a man and a woman, who had been accused of witchcraft. The charges included "making their neighbours sheep dance in an uncommon manner, and with causing hogs to speak, and sing Psalms, &c. to the great terror and amazement of the King's good and peaceable subjects in this province." More…

Benjamin Franklin published a highly successful, yearly almanac from 1732 to 1758. He called it Poor Richard’s Almanac, adopting the literary persona of "Poor" Richard Saunders, who was supposedly a hen-pecked, poverty-stricken scholar.

In the first year of its publication, Franklin included a prediction stating that rival almanac-writer Titan Leeds would die on "Oct. 17, 1733, 3:29 P.M., at the very instant of the conjunction of the Sun and Mercury."

The prediction was intended as a joke. Nevertheless, Leeds took offense at it and chastised Saunders (Franklin) for it in his own almanac.

Franklin responded by turning the death of Leeds into a running joke. When the date and time of the prediction arrived, and Leeds did not die, Franklin declared that Leeds actually had died, but that someone had usurped his name and was now using it to falsely publish his almanac.

In the following years Franklin continued to insist Leeds was dead until finally, in 1738, Leeds actually did die. This prompted Franklin to congratulate the men who had usurped Leeds’s name for finally deciding to end their pretense.

Franklin adapted the Titan Leeds hoax from Jonathan Swift’s similar Bickerstaff hoax of 1708.
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Poor Richard's Almanac was a yearly almanac that Benjamin Franklin began publishing in 1732. In 1737, five years into the life of the almanac, Franklin included three "enigmatical prophecies" in the almanac. He predicted that:

• A great storm would cause all the major cities of North America to be under water;
• A "great number of vessels fully laden will be taken out of the ports… by a Power with which we are not now at war;"
• and that an "army of 30,000 musketers will land… and sorely annoy the inhabitants."

A year passed and none of the prophecies appeared to come true. But just when Franklin's readers were about to label him a faulty soothsayer, he triumphantly declared that all three prophecies had actually come true. Rain storms had placed every city under water, the power of wind ("a Power with which we are not now at war") had taken fully-laden vessels out of ports, and more than 30,000 musketers (or mosquitoes) had definitely annoyed the inhabitants. More…

On April 15, 1747, the London General Advertiser printed the text of a speech said to have been given by a woman, Polly Baker, at her trial. She had just given birth to her fifth child, was unmarried, and had been charged with having sexual intercourse out of wedlock.

Polly Baker readily admitted her guilt but argued that the law itself was unreasonable. Why was she being punished, she asked, while the men who committed the crime with her were let off scot free? According to the article, Polly's argument so moved the judges that one of them asked her hand in marriage the next day.

Polly Baker's speech became a popular sensation, and it quickly "went viral" (to use a modern phrase). Within days, the text of it had been reprinted by other British newspapers, and it was then reproduced by monthly magazines, such as the Gentleman's Magazine. The text subsequently circulated widely throughout Europe and America.


The story of the trial of Polly Baker was widely believed to be true. But it was not. There was no such woman or trial. Thirty years later, Benjamin Franklin admitted he had written the speech. It's not clear how he managed to insert the article into the General Advertiser. But almost all scholars accept that he wrote it. His intention appears to have been to draw attention to the unfairness of the law which punished mothers, but not fathers, for having children out of wedlock. Franklin himself had fathered a son out of wedlock. The hoax was also Franklin’s first criticism of the penal system, a subject which he devoted much attention to in later decades.

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On October 19, 1752, the Pennsylvania Gazette published a brief description of an experiment recently conducted by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, the article said, had flown a kite in a thunderstorm, causing electricity to be conducted down the line of the kite and electrifying a key tied to it. This demonstrated that lightning, as many had speculated, was a form of electricity.

Franklin's electric kite became the most famous experiment of the eighteenth century, helping to make Franklin famous throughout Europe and America. And yet, some historians argue that it probably never happened.

They point to a curious lack of details about the experiment. It is not known exactly when the experiment occurred. Sometime in June, 1752 was the closest Franklin ever came to an exact date. Nor did Franklin ever write a formal report about it. The only witness to the event was Franklin's son, who never said a word about it. Finally, such an experiment would have been extremely dangerous, possibly fatal, as Franklin knew.

Historian Tom Tucker suggests that Franklin originally proposed the idea for the experiment as a joke. Frustrated because the British Royal Society had been ignoring his letters to them about his earlier electrical research, he might have proposed the deadly experiment as a subtle joke. It was his way of saying, Go fly a kite in a storm! But when his suggestion reached France, where people took it seriously, Franklin decided to play along and claimed he really had conducted the experiment.

Tucker's theory remains controversial. Other historians argue that Franklin would never have risked being exposed as a liar by the scientific community. More…

In 1782 a shocking letter was printed in the Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle. It alleged that Indian warriors were sending hundreds of American scalps as war trophies to British royalty and Members of Parliament. The scalps included those of women, as well as young girls and boys.

Soon the letter had crossed the Atlantic and began to circulate throughout Europe, where it shocked European public opinion. But in fact, the British had not received scalps from any Indians. The Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle was a fake newspaper which Benjamin Franklin had printed and distributed to his friends.

Franklin intended his hoax to aid the American war effort by turning European opinion against the British. More…