The Life and Crimes of Jared Flagg Adventures of a Gilded Age Huckster Swindler & Pimp

<p>Born in 1853 Jared Flagg was the black sheep of an illustrious New York family. His father Jared Bradley Flagg was a noted portraitist and Episcopalian minister who served as Rector of Grace Church in Brooklyn Heights. His older brothers were prominent Paris-trained artists. A younger brother became a famous architect while another went on to found a major Wall Street brokerage. One of his younger sisters married publisher Charles Scribner II; another was one of the famed 400 Manhattan socialites.</p><p>Jared Jr. on the other hand took to the seamier side of American life instigating any number of illegal schemes ranging from leasing furnished flats to facilitating prostitution to finding chorus line and modeling jobs for pretty but talentless young women to a phony investment scheme that paid 52% a year to the sale of worthless bonds backed by heavily mortgaged real estate. Frequently penalized for his criminal and unethical activities by the time of his death in 1926 Jared Flagg had barreled his way through Gilded and Jazz Age America offering a fascinating and heretofore unknown view of how a rising empire evolved through crucial eras in its history.</p><p><br></p>