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Blackmail   Listen
verb
Blackmail  v. t.  (past & past part. blackmailed; pres. part. blackmailing)  To extort money from by exciting fears of injury other than bodily harm, as injury to reputation, distress of mind, etc.; as, to blackmail a merchant by threatening to expose an alleged fraud. (U. S.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Blackmail" Quotes from Famous Books



... arranged. Pay down a hundred thousand francs, and you will have peace.—All this is no concern of mine. I am only the agent of those who levy this blackmail; nothing more." ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... you knew. The North Pass has been paying blackmail to the Yukon steamboat companies for three years. When you built the line it practically put 'em out of ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... all that," he said, laying a hand on the excited man's arm. "Remember, that Wales would never dare breathe a word of it; Carmen has no reputation or standing whatsoever now in this city; and Ames would make out a case of blackmail against you so quickly that it would sweep you right into the Tombs. Go easy. And first, let us get the girl herself ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... schleep in mine hat because I had got a cold in my head. I vas not dronk, no more zan you. Vat you found in my pocket vas a mere joke, and ze cabman who called next day vas jost vat I told him to his ogly face—a blackmail." ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... be left here in peace. I've not come to blackmail you into loving me, Cecily. Yes, you shall be left in peace to move the furniture about." Glancing toward the table, he saw Mr Gainsborough's birthday gift. He took it up, looked at it for a moment, and then replaced it. His manner was involuntarily expressive. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... who, suspecting I had some secret in emigrating here, tried to blackmail and ruin me," said Blandford, with a sudden expression of hatred that seemed inconsistent with anything that Ezekiel had ever known of his old master's character—"a scoundrel who tried to break up my new life as another had broken up the old." He stopped and recovered ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte

... corporations and the dishonest man who was always bribed to vote for them. My experience was the direct contrary of this. For every one bill introduced (not passed) corruptly to favor a corporation, there were at least ten introduced (not passed, and in this case not intended to be passed) to blackmail corporations. The majority of the corrupt members would be found voting for the blackmailing bills if they were not paid, and would also be found voting in the interests of the corporation if they were paid. The blackmailing, or, as they were always called, the "strike" bills, could themselves ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... of Troy before Troy is taken," laughed Pratinas. "Don't be alarmed, my good fellow. Your excellent patron will reward us, no doubt, amply." And he muttered to himself: "If I don't bleed that Lucius Ahenobarbus, that Roman donkey, out of two-thirds of his new fortune; if I don't levy blackmail on him without mercy when he's committed himself, and becomes a partner in crime, I'm no fox of a Hellene. I wonder that he is the son of a man like Domitius, who was so shrewd in that old ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... express it in an address which was in fact a sloppy poem. I should not like to have that manuscript printed precisely as it came from my pen, and a phonographic record of my voice would serve admirably as an instrument of blackmail. However, I thought at the time that I had done moderately well, and my mother's shy smile confirmed me ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... will boast about it! He may blackmail all of you. He may convince the public that he has really married ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath

... Bowery. You can beat Tammany Hall permanently in one way—by making the government of a city as human, as kindly, as jolly as Tammany Hall. I am aware of the contract-grafts, the franchise-steals, the dirty streets, the bribing and the blackmail, the vice-and-crime partnerships, the Big Business alliances of Tammany Hall. And yet it seems to me that Tammany has a better perception of human need, and comes nearer to being what a government should be, than ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... you so you would understand how much right I have to be interested. I am perfectly sure this dreadful creature, Hugh Gordon, is at the bottom of the whole business, that these charges in the papers this morning are nothing but revenge for his failure to blackmail Mr. Brand, and it is just as certain as can be that he has got Mr. Brand imprisoned somewhere, maybe drugged, and the thing for you to do now is to find this Gordon and make him tell where Felix is. Oh, please do!" she ended, with a sudden drop ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly

... of her, he pulled his coat together, and arranged the rough scarf at his neck involuntarily. Ten thousand dollars—but ten thousand dollars by blackmail, hush-money, the reward of fire, and blood, and shame! Was it to go on? Was he to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... so. Of course, it may be some sort of blackmail." Christopher looked whimsically at his wife. "As I remember my father-in-law," he said, "it seems to me improbable that out of the past could come this engaging young girl—very pretty, ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... he said angrily, 'you can't blackmail me like that. You can't prove anything on me. I reckon the people around here will take the word of the sheriff of their county against the booze fightin' ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston

... Home Rule there could not be a more remarkable concession to popular right and feeling. Yet Mr Dillon had to find fault with it because its provisions, to use his own words, included "blackmail to the landlords" and arranged for "a flagitious waste of public funds"—the foundation on which these charges rested being that, following an unvarying tradition, the Unionist Government bribed the landlords into acceptance of the Bill by relieving them of half their payment for Poor Rate, whilst ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... here hardly ten minutes; and already he's tried to borrow 150 pounds from me. Then he proposed that I should get the money for him by blackmailing his wife; and youve just interrupted him in the act of suggesting that I should blackmail my patients into sitting ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw

... looked safe. His face sagged more than ever, as though the Postlethwaite nose had withdrawn its support from that pale flesh of funk. If it had any clear meaning at all it expressed a terrified expectation of blackmail. His very moustache and ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair

... "But—but that is blackmail!" he whispered aloud. "A man can't do that sort of thing. What the devil ever put it into my head? ... And there are men I know—women, too—scoundrelly blackguards, who'd use that information somehow; and make it pay, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... knew no bounds. He railed at me as a trickster. He charged me with wishing to blackmail him. Then seeing that this was not the way to gain his point, he adroitly shifted ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... to keep still, make it worth his while—but don't say anything to him about it. That opens the way to blackmail. ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... tired of it and tried to end it. Then she used it to blackmail me for ten years, till, in desperation, I came to America, to see if I couldn't ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... you, I'm damned if he can. Leaving the whole high church party to blackmail all they can out of us and vote how they like! Here ... I've got my Yorkshire people to think of. I can bargain for them with you in a cabinet ... not if you've the pull ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker

... her, and kept her from going. She would not be able to restrain and to master herself; their son would guess it and take advantage of her, blackmail her; ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... a fair fight, the duty of every American would be to keep on the side-lines and preserve an open mind. But it is not a fair fight. To devastate a country you have sworn to protect, to drop bombs upon unfortified cities, to lay sunken mines, to levy blackmail by threatening hostages with death, to destroy cathedrals is not to ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... there were more degenerate miscreants still, who connived with the Police and went unscathed. As if the vast sums collected from these willing bribers were not enough, the Police added a system of blackmail to be levied on those who were not deliberately vicious, but who sought convenience. If you walked downtown you found the sidewalk in front of certain stores almost barricaded by packing-boxes, whereas next door the way might ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... driven to the court, which was crowded with the prisoners and those who had come out of curiosity or in the hope of recognizing one of the men and getting a case for blackmail. The men were called up first, and reprimanded in a bunch, and then dismissed; but, Jurgis to his terror, was called separately, as being a suspicious-looking case. It was in this very same court that he had been tried, that time when his sentence ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... were foolish enough to give her one of your private numbers," she said a trifle acidly. "Which will mean that you will be paying her a modest blackmail all the rest of your life, and you'll probably have to provide for her in your will. Oh, I know Elizabeth! She'll be perfectly secret—if she's paid for it—she'll never make you willing to risk the scandal by asking for more than just enough. But if this is the ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... country, now infested with hordes of wild Bedawin tribes, who attacked, robbed, and killed right and left. Several Englishmen had been to Palmyra, but always with a large escort of the tribe of El Mezrab, and Richard wanted to break through the system which this tribe had of practically levying blackmail upon travellers, which often meant as much as six thousand francs, as each man in the escort costs about 2 pounds sterling a head. We decided therefore to go without any Bedawin escort, to show that it could be done, and thus to throw open this most interesting part of Syria to travellers. ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... Edward Arens, and contains the famous chapter on "Demonology" in which Mrs. Eddy devotes forty-six pages to settling scores with half a dozen of her early students, charging one and another with theft, adultery, murder, blackmail, etc. The Reverend Mr. Wiggin, when he revised Mrs. Eddy's book in 1885, persuaded her to omit these vituperative passages on the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... they had kept that up, and things had gone from bad to worse. The police blackmail had taken out of it what little profit there was in the push-cart business. Times had grown harder than they ever were in Hester Street. To cap it all, two weeks ago gas had begun to leak into the basement from somewhere, and ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... retribution; consideration, return, quid pro quo. salvage, perquisite; vail &c. (donation) 784[obs3]. douceur[Fr], bribe; hush money, smart money|!; blackmail, extortion; carcelage|; solatium[obs3]. allowance, salary, stipend, wages, compensation; pay, payment; emolument; tribute; batta[obs3], shot, scot; bonus, premium, tip; fee, honorarium; hire; dasturi[obs3], dustoori[obs3]; mileage. crown &c. (decoration of honor) 877. V. reward, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... know? Blackmail? Graft? I can't call the dope. But listen here! Don't forget that it ain't Quint who wants it. It's the big feller behind him who's backin' him. It's some swell guy higher up who's payin' Quint. And Quint, he pays us. So where's ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... of Prussia is a commercial agent, and works by those modern methods of bribing and sacking, of boycott and blackmail, which are not only meaner, but often more cruel, than militarism. For any one who realizes the power of such international combinations, there is the more credit due to the artists and men of letters who, like ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... on the ground that he had not intended to march through it. Blucher's fury when Wellington would not allow him to plunder Paris, and his exclamation when he saw London "What a city to loot!" is still regarded as fair soldiering; and the blackmail levied recently by the Prussian generals on the Belgian and French towns they have occupied must, I suppose, be let pass as ransom, not as ordinary criminal looting. But if the penalty of looting be thus spared, the Germans can hardly complain if they are themselves held ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... the detective denouncing him, he would denounce the detective. Of the police he would become an ally. He would call upon them to arrest a man who was planning to blackmail ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis

... allowed to keep doves themselves, and when the swarms from my lord's dovecote settled on their crops they must not lose their temper and kill a bird, for awful would the penalty be; when the harvest was at last gathered, then came the procession of robbers to levy their blackmail upon it: first the Church carted off its fat tenth, then the king's commissioner took his twentieth, then my lord's people made a mighty inroad upon the remainder; after which, the skinned freeman had liberty to bestow the remnant in his barn, in case it was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... do it, but I couldn't," he muttered to himself after a time. "A gentleman can't blackmail the man ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... this riffraff blackmail you and, incidentally, put a big black mark against the company's ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... the worst comes to the worst, you needn't necessarily be convicted under your own name. Then they're indispensable in dealing with the fences. I drive all my bargains in the tongue and raiment of Shoreditch. If I didn't there'd be the very devil to pay in blackmail. Now, this cupboard's full of all sorts of toggery. I tell the woman who cleans the room that it's for my models when I find 'em. By the way, I only hope I've got something that'll fit you, for you'll want a rig for ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... restaurants which cater for them, and, in short, all the trades to which they are good customers, not to mention the public officials and representatives whom they silence by complicity, corruption, or blackmail. Add to these the employers who profit by cheap female labor, and the shareholders whose dividends depend on it [you find such people everywhere, even on the judicial bench and in the highest places in Church and State], and you get a large and powerful class with a strong pecuniary incentive to ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw

... prompted this visit at ten in the evening? Did she come to plead a financial matter?—or was she here for purposes of blackmail? Did she have knowledge of his incriminating conduct, and was she sent to ensnare him into further complications? Above all, what attitude should ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... said. I recognised that, to force words from me, he was threatening a kind of blackmail. Another voice began to call from the ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... in his cell he chewed the cud of revenge. Yes, let them take him before the magistrate; it was not he that was afraid of justice. He would expose her, the false Catholic, the she-cat! A pretty convert! Another man would have preferred to blackmail her, he told himself with righteous indignation, especially in such straits of poverty. But he—the thought had scarcely crossed his mind. He had not even thought of her helping him, only of the joy ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... the highest tribunal in Oude, of the murder of the twenty-seven persons in Dewa, in October, 1849, and executed on the 18th of September, 1850. Thakur Purshad and his cousin, Bhugwunt Sing, remained at large, and at the head of their gang of robbers continued to plunder the country, and levy blackmail from landholders and village communities till the 1st of February 1851, though pressed by a force of one thousand infantry, fifty troopers, and some ten guns. On the morning of that day, Captain Hearsey, commanding a detachment of the Oude Frontier Police, who had been ordered to co- operate ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... obtained from private individuals by means of theft and blackmail has not been levied by order of the 'committee,' but by certain unscrupulous Nihilists acting on their own behalf. However, we are all the more ready to admit that such things have been done when we remember that only five such cases are known ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various

... morning, while Mr. Clarkson was reading Burke's speeches which he had brought with him, one of the jurors objected to the evidence in the eighty-seventh case. "We cannot be too cautious, gentlemen," he said, "in arriving at a decision in these delicate matters. The apprehension of blackmail in relation to females hangs over every living ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... money in exchange for protection? True that they practise blackmail and extortion? Of course it's true. Whenever a big temptation appears loose in a city half the people who get a look at it trip and fall. Oh, I'd like to reform this city, Miss Barbara—and this country. I'd like to ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... grown in the neighbourhood of the Highlands, on account of its being liable to be reaped and carried off by the caterans, and that before it was ripe. The only method by which security of a certain sort could be obtained was by the payment of blackmail to some of the principal chiefs, though this was not sufficient to protect them against the lesser marauders. Regular contracts were drawn up between proprietors in the counties of Perth, Stirling, and Dumbarton, and the Macgregors, in which it was stipulated ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... out of town, were "introduced" there by "members" whose standing and presumed respectability were beyond reproach—and they were bled white; while, to add variety to the crooked games, orgies, revels and carousals of the most depraved character likewise furnished the lever for blackmail—the "member" ostensibly being in as bad a hole, and in as desperate a predicament as the "guest" he ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... way, Peter's half-brother," said Urquhart casually. "But that is neither here nor there. Peter and I are—have been—friends, as you know. I should naturally give him help if he asked me for it. He has not done so; all that has happened is that you have tried to blackmail me.... I really see no use in prolonging this interview, Mr. Margerison. Good night." Urquhart was bored and impatient ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... have you ever, in all these years, ran across anything—any item of expenditure, any correspondence, anything whatever—which would lead you to think that Mr. Holladay was a victim of blackmail, or that he had ever had a ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson

... for the first time she had confessed her wretched secret which she had thought so wholly her own—and confessed it—horrible and degrading thought!—to Roger Delane. Not in words indeed—but in act. No innocent woman would have paid the blackmail. The dark room in which she lay seemed to be haunted by ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... nice-looking girls; for her sake and her mother's (a very decent woman), he had forgiven Tom many irregularities. At last his patience gave out and Tom was prosecuted; when arrested, Tom had tried blackmail; Sir Winterton was not to be bullied, and Tom's speech from the dock was no more than an ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... from personal experience as well as from what I have heard on unimpeachable authority, I have no hesitation in saying that there are evil-disposed, Indians, especially of late years, who deliberately seek to provoke disagreeable incidents by their own misbehaviour, either in the hope of levying blackmail or in order to make political capital by posing as the victims of English brutality. But even when Englishmen put themselves entirely in the wrong, there is perhaps a tendency amongst Anglo-Indians—chiefly amongst the non-official community—to treat such cases with undue leniency, and it is ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... away from here, far, far away. So far away that you won't be able to blackmail Jack Harpe. See? Yore knowledge won't be worth a whoop to you then. An' I'll find out what I ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... told her that I was to be married, hang me if she hadn't cleared out. No scene, no tears, no maledictions—just good, hard sense, Bingle, that's what it was. Not many of them would have been so decent about it. They usually make a bluff or something of the sort—money, you know, regular blackmail. But she didn't. She got out as quietly as a mouse, left no trace behind, no regrets, no complaints. Just a note saying she understood and wishing me luck. Rather ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... in Washington, California, or Nevada are not recognized by other states, and so because a couple are separated upon the grounds of cruelty or incompatibility in some Western state, they are still legally man and wife in New York or Massachusetts. All sorts of hideous complications are going on: blackmail and perjury! ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... possible that the bellowing bluster of the guns at Metz may have allayed that fear in high places; and that terror of the Hun was already becoming less deathly among the cantons of a race which had trembled under Boche blackmail for a hundred years. However, for whatever reason it might have been, no Swiss patrols bothered the blue ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... as a parting shot, "that girls don't get into clubs here by blackmail. Even if Judy had put you up, you wouldn't have had the ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed

... greatly relieved when I left Godfrey. I expected that he would want to take some sort of legal proceedings against Bob Power which would have involved us all in a great deal of unpleasantness. I should not have been surprised if he had tried to blackmail Bob or Conroy, or both, and I should have disliked that very much. But his letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to be merely foolish. In the first place Bob Power was not smuggling. In the next place the Chancellor ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... and in conjunction with some mandarins of high rank, levied a system of blackmail upon the Chinese coasting junks that brought them—not the junks—in money very rapidly, and Hayes's daring attack on and capture of a nest of other and real pirates procured for him a good standing with ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke

... fragrance of boiling sugar would make one's mouth water as he passed, and the same assistants, never weary in well-doing, might be seen setting saucers of black jam upon the window-sill to "jeel," and receiving, as a kind of blackmail, another saucerful of "skim," which, I am informed, is really the refuse of the sugar, but, for all that, wonderfully toothsome. Bear with a countryman's petty foolishness, ye mighty people who live in cities, and whose dainties ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... account of him in the European Magazine, Jan. 1786. BOSWELL. There we learn that he was in his time a grammar-school usher, actor, poet, the puffing partner in a quack medicine, and tutor to a youthful Earl. He was suspected of levying blackmail by threats of satiric publications, and he suffered from a disease which rendered him an object almost offensive to sight. He was born in 1738 or 1739, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... coolly, "I can ring for the gendarmes to take you back to the cells, and you will stand your trial for blackmail, ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... said to him, quietly. "And you can rise in the Senate on Tuesday and move your vote of want of confidence and object to our concession, and when you have resumed your seat the Secretary of Mines will rise in his turn and tell the Senate how you stole out here in the night and tried to blackmail me, and begged me to bribe you to be silent, and that you offered to throw over your friends and to take all that we would give you and keep it yourself. That will make you popular with your friends, and will show the Government ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... Though, probably, he'd have to give her some money? How much would he have to give her? And how much would he have to pay the lawyer? He had a crazy vision of Lily's attaching his salary. He imagined a dialogue with his employer: "A case of blackmail, sir." "Don't worry about it, Curtis; we'll shut her up." This brought an instant's warm sense of safety, which as instantly vanished—and again he was walking down the road, with Edith beside him, talking, talking... ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... central seat of the empire and its richest region, and from Babylon went on to seize the fabulous riches which the Persian kings had amassed in their spring residence, Susa. Thence he at last ascended upon the Iranian plateau. The mountain tribes on the road (the Oxii, Pers, Huzha), accustomed to exact blackmail even from the king's train, learnt by a bitter lesson that a stronger hand had come to wield the empire. Alexander entered Persis, the cradle of the Achaemenian house, and came upon fresh masses of treasure in the royal city, Persepolis. He destroyed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... put it up to our lawyers. Maybe they'll call it conspiracy, maybe blackmail. They'll make it whatever carries a long ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... bank in Orham. Almost ready, he was, till you offered a higher price to him to fight. Why, he'll have your hide nailed up on the barn door! If you don't pay him every red copper, down on the nail, he'll wring you dry. And then he'll blackmail you forever and ever, amen! Unless, of course, I go home and stop the blackmail by printing my story in the Breeze. I've a precious good mind to do it. By the Almighty, I WILL do it! unless you come off that high horse of yours and ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... pays that it may remain undisturbed. The very existence of a segregated district under police regulation means, of course, that the existing law must be nullified or at least rendered totally inoperative. When police regulation takes the place of law enforcement a species of municipal blackmail inevitably becomes intrenched. The police are forced to regulate an illicit trade, but because the men engaged in an unlawful business expect to pay money for its protection, the corruption of the police department is ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams

... blackmail for this?" vociferated Harran. "How much do you want to let us go? How much have we got to pay you to be ALLOWED to use our own ploughs—what's your figure? Come, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... such purposes; the gerrymander is another clever method of manipulating the results of elections. Such means, together with the use as bribe money of funds deflected from the public treasury, the blackmail of vice, and the acceptance of "contributions" from favored parties, create a vicious circle which tends to keep in power corrupt officials who have once ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... 'This impost shall no longer be called talliage; it shall be a free grant.' Is it in words, pray, and not in things, that our labor and the well-being of the state consist? Verily, we would rather still call this impost talliage, and even blackmail (maltote), or give it a still viler name, if there be any, than see it increasing immeasurably and crushing the people. The curse of God and the execration of men upon those whose deeds and plots ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... doing something worth doing; something that was making me more nearly a person you could respect and be friends with. And, from what you've said just now, it seems as if you couldn't believe even that I was a person with any decent self-respect. The notion that I could blackmail your family into lending me their name and social position to get me a better job on the stage than I could earn! Or the notion that I could come back to your house and pretend to be your ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... his greatness. Evil greatness it is—but neither does that matter. Briefly, this is his history. He was originally a witch-finder—about as low an occupation as exists amongst aboriginal savages. Then he got up in the world and became an Obi-man, which gives an opportunity to wealth via blackmail. Finally, he reached the highest honour in hellish service. He became a user of Voodoo, which seems to be a service of the utmost baseness and cruelty. I was told some of his deeds of cruelty, which are simply sickening. They made me long for an opportunity ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker

... sight, sir! But have it from me first that Rickie and his aunt have both behaved most generously. No, no, Agnes, I'll not be interrupted. Garbled versions must not get about. If the Wonham man is not satisfied now, he must be insatiable. He cannot levy blackmail on us for ever. Sir, I give you two minutes; then you will be ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... I would now be going peaceful, with the kind policeman instead of being a willing victim of a very pleasant form of blackmail." ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... this course be continued, a very few years will see the venerable institution represented by only the Mahmal and its guard. The late Sa'id Pasha of Egypt once consigned the memorial litter per steam-frigate to Jeddah: the innovation saved Ghafr ("blackmail") to the Bedawin; but it was not approved ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... Gulf to Cape Comorin the whole coast was beset by native pirates, and, with the rise of the Mahratta power, the evil increased. Petty chiefs sometimes levied blackmail by giving passports to those who would pay for them, claiming the right to plunder all ships that did not carry their passes; but often the formality was dispensed with. Owing to the paucity of records of the early days, and the more serious hostility of the Portuguese and Dutch, we hear little ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph

... him, gladly, if he'd cease to blackmail me about the Field matter," said Fowler. "Good God! How many of us are there who've not committed sins that we ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... the earmarks of a castiron moocher. Let me tell you, suh—such methods are unbecoming. They suggest damyankee push and blackmail. Remember Reconstruction ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... much speculation as to whether there is German blackmail behind the announcement that the maximum period of quarantine for imported dogs has been reduced from ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various

... A'mighty! Why the h—l didn't you ask, man!" And to tell the truth, I am not designed by nature for the cut-throat business of interviewing. To stand before a stranger, note-book in hand, and pry into his personal record, always seems to me only a form of infamy midway between blackmail and burglary. There is to me something in any man's personality that is sacred, something before which there should be a veil, never to be drawn aside save in secret places. An effete whim, no doubt. At any rate it explained ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... lines as far as he can. Perhaps he may succeed, and, in any case, he will be almost certain to ruin my chances of success—that is, if I were not willing to buy him off. He would be pretty sure to try blackmail if he found he could not make good use of the knowledge ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... the poor man." It reads simply and plainly, "Thou shalt not steal." No good whatever will come from that warped and mock morality which denounces the misdeeds of men of wealth and forgets the misdeeds practiced at their expense; which denounces bribery, but blinds itself to blackmail; which foams with rage if a corporation secures favors by improper methods, and merely leers with hideous mirth if the corporation is itself wronged. The only public servant who can be trusted honestly to protect the rights of the public against ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... know," said Esther. "She is half crazy. Don't you see she is? She might have had a hundred reasons. She might have thought if he tried to steal it he'd get caught, and she could blackmail him." ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... see, I could have proved an alibi for the weapon, at all events, during my trip to town a year ago. Yes, poor Minchin wrote to me, and I went up to town by the next train to take him by surprise. How you got to know of his letter I can't conceive. But it carried no hint of blackmail. I think you did wonders, and I hope you will forgive me for that little trap; it really wasn't set for you. It is also perfectly true that I stayed at the Cadogan and was out at that particular time. I went there because it was the one ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... was a dummy director and a tool of corporations that secretly robbed widows and orphans. This gentleman, who collected fine editions and was an especial patron of literature, paid blackmail to a heavy-jowled, black-browed boss of a municipal machine. This editor, who published patent medicine advertisements and did not dare print the truth in his paper about said patent medicines ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... must cut down on his charities. He could not reduce the sum for the General Hospital Fund; he had been giving to that a number of years.—Nor that for the asylum; Mrs. Wright was the president of that board, and had told him she counted on him.—Hang Mrs. Wright! It was positive blackmail!—Nor the pew-rent; that was respectable—nor the Associated Charities; every one gave to that. He must cut out ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page

... shadow of a pretext for misusing her worse than he's already done. Yes, sir; he'd be actually tickled to death if he could nose up some hint of a scandal about her—something that he could pretend to believe, and work for his own advantage to levy blackmail, or get rid of her, or whatever suited his book. I didn't think there was such an out-and-out cur on this whole footstool. I almost wish, by God, I'd thrown him ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... I am not afraid of the Old Nick himself. I'll give this man McQuade the biggest fight he has ever had. Bolles will have his pains for nothing. Any scandal he can rake up about my past will be pure blackmail; and I know how ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... the transaction of the lots as Mrs. Peabody had explained it to her, and Bob understood that the farmer, basing his reasoning on his own probable conduct under similar conditions, suspected him of intended blackmail. ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson

... metropolis. The extent of corruption was not suspected until the Lexow investigating committee brought it to light. It is certain that not even the committee itself conceived the vastness of the system of thuggery and blackmail. Having begun its labors, evidence poured in upon it in a constantly increasing stream. It could do no less than go ahead. Its prosecuting attorney, John C. Goff, who not so many years ago was a counter jumper in a big New York store, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... it remembered, for their early sins by making those names in after years a terror to the invaders of their native land: but as yet their prowess was limited to drunken brawls and faction-fights; to upsetting old women at their work, levying blackmail from quiet chapmen on the high road, or bringing back in triumph, sword in hand and club on shoulder, their leader Hereward from some duel which ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... still, I may tell you frankly. That's why I took in O'Brien. I wasn't supposed to keep any liquor in the house—that was one of the conditions. But damn it, I wasn't born to be a teetotaler, and that's the plain truth, Mr. Merton. That devil O'Brien found me out and started to blackmail me—" ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston

... the character of John Broderick there was no doubt possible. No matter how she might evade the identification, he was convinced he was the hero of her book. Why had she attacked him so bitterly? At first, it occurred to him that blackmail might be her object; she might be going to ask for money as the price of future silence. Yet it needed but a glance at her refined and modest demeanour to dispel that idea as absurd. Then he remembered, too, that it was not she who ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... strong against the incursions of the terrible Mohawks, whose name sent a shiver of fear throughout savage New England, and whose forbearance the Nipmucks and Mohegans were fain to ensure by a yearly payment of blackmail. Each summer there came two Mohawk elders, secure in the dread that Iroquois prowess had everywhere inspired; and up and down the Connecticut valley they seized the tribute of weapons and wampum, and ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... I claim to be no wiser than my fellow-men, but in this I knew myself wiser; I knew where I was cheated. I knew that the schoolmaster who cost me thirty pounds a year was a licensed footpad; half the money spent in restaurants and tea-shops was blackmail paid to respectability; the landlord who took his forty-five pounds a year from my pocket was a mere robber, who took advantage of the need I had to live in a certain locality that I might attend to my vocation. Not only were my brains ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... only attempt at blackmail I have been subjected to in California, and I hope it will be the last. On I read the paper till I saw my name in good round English, and the allusions to my 'bare-faced hypocrisy and insolence.' Europe, hear this! Has not the 'hypocrisy' been on the other side? What were you thinking of, Alexandra ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... Parliament in England removes the temptation to "influence" primaries and bribe delegations. In the absence of State legislatures, railway and other corporations are not exposed to the same system of blackmail. ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... banker, "this is the second time that you have seen fit to throw yourself in my path. Yesterday you addressed me in a fashion that savored of blackmail. What do you want? I do not know you, nor you me. I am a patient man, but even my patience has limits; and it may happen that I give my servants orders to throw you out of doors, ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... to lay the chief blame on Bonaparte for the pillage of Lombardy. His actions were only a development of existing revolutionary customs; but never had these demoralizing measures been so thoroughly enforced as in the present system of liberation and blackmail. Lombardy was ransacked with an almost Vandal rapacity. Bonaparte desired little for himself. His aim ever was power rather than wealth. Riches he valued only as a means to political supremacy. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... "It was blackmail. They, too, fancied I was at Stanwick that night. They knew about the diamonds, though I did not then know how they came by the information. They thought to frighten me into paying a sum of money. The tall man's threat was of ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... complainant recognized were legally in the hands of Aguinaldo. It could be carried on only with great difficulty without his presence and without his account books. Meetings were held, and Artacho was denounced as attempting to extort blackmail, but he refused to yield, and Aguinaldo, rather than explain the inner workings of the Hongkong junta before a British court, prepared for flight. A summons was issued for his appearance before the supreme court of Hongkong on April 13, 1898, but he was by ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... said. Hannah is Tish's maid. "She's paying blackmail. Like as not that janitor will collect a hundred dollars from her, and that phonograph never cost more than thirty-five. They're paying for it on the installment plan, and the man only gets ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Now look here, I'd better tell you straight that there's no blackmail about this at all. He's my father, isn't he? Well, can't a son come to his father if he's hard up? Where are your threatening letters? Where's the blackmail? Anyway, what's he going to do about it? ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne

... Bacchus, festivals of Bacis, a soothsayer Bagpipes, ancient Barathrum, cleft of rock —place of execution Basket-bearers, the Baths of Heracles Beans, used for voting Beetle, flying on a Beetles, names of boats Blackmail Blankets, soiled with urine Blood, unspilled in sacrifice Boasting derided Boeotians, the Boulomachus, meaning of Boy's name, dispute over Brasidas, fell in Thrace Brauron, its temple "Brazen House," the Bread, used for finger-wiping Buckler, swearing over ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... with the brass head, and, associating one with the other, he tried the key in the lock. The door opened. He saw nothing but papers. They must be very valuable to have been put away in a safe, and the key to which to be of so much importance. Perhaps a thought of blackmail occurred to him as a useful possibility in helping him in his designs on Mademoiselle Stangerson. He quickly made a parcel of the papers and took it to the lavatory in the vestibule. Between the time of his first examination of the pavilion and the night ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux

... Blackmail, I hear you exclaim! And, so, if you wish, you may construe my behavior, since I reply—"Science first, science last!" To have been deprived of the means to pursue my experiments at this time would have been, I believed, ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... visit is blackmail?" he said. "You will fail in this, as you will also fail in your effort to force Mr. Gorham's hand. You have been ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... "Blackmail?" said the Terror in a tone of pleasant animation. "Why, that's what the Scotch reavers used to do! I never knew exactly what ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... whether the witness's impression was that an attack was dangerous, a threat serious, a blackmail conceivable, a brawl intentional, a gesture insulting, an assault premeditated. In these, and thousands of other cases, we must know the point of view, and are compelled to draw our deductions from it. And finally, who of us believes ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... financial anxiety hasn't, by begetting them, placed himself in a position of captivity to fortune, or to the future, or whatever you like to call it. He very much has. He's backed a bill that any day may fall due and find him without means to meet it; he's let himself in for blackmail, always over him a threat. But I'm talking about men above the struggle line. They don't, in their children, give hostages. It's the woman does that. Men don't give nor forfeit anything. It's the woman gives and forfeits. Why, when his friends meet a man who was last ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... and her father, a professional gambler, abandoned the little girl to the tender mercies of an indifferent neighbor. When she was about eight years old her father was arrested. He refused to pay police blackmail, was indicted, railroaded to prison and died soon after in convict stripes. There was no provision for Annie's maintenance, so at the age of nine she found herself toiling in a factory, a helpless victim of ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... his arm, and die of fright when he had a letter from Fordingham? Then I remembered that Fordingham was in Hampshire, and that this Mr. Beddoes, whom the seaman had gone to visit and presumably to blackmail, had also been mentioned as living in Hampshire. The letter, then, might either come from Hudson, the seaman, saying that he had betrayed the guilty secret which appeared to exist, or it might come from Beddoes, warning an old confederate that such a betrayal was ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... a policy," said the Viceroy. "A Policy is the blackmail levied on the Fool by the Unforeseen. I am not the former, and I do not believe ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... due, and further than that he was demanding it with threats. It is not the practice of the average money lender to go after his clients with a loaded revolver. Another peculiar thing is that if he wished to blackmail you, that is to say, bring you into contempt in the eyes of your friends, why did he choose to meet you in a dark and unfrequented road, and not in your house where the moral pressure would be greatest? Also, why did he write you a threatening letter which would certainly bring him into the grip ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... as well point out, to let you see where you stand, that as you have now done your worst, there's no use trying on blackmail or anything of that kind. You have been so very clever, you've thrown away any hold you might fancy you had. Do ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... him the equivalent of five hundred sterling in blackmail. I am afraid it will be a long ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... might not put in the halter when he chose. Thus he preserved the union and the fidelity of his gang, punishing by judicial murder the smallest insubordination, the faintest suspicion of rivalry. Even when he had shut his victim up in Newgate, he did not leave him so long as there was a chance of blackmail. He would make the most generous offers of evidence and defence to every thief that had a stiver left him. But whether or not he kept his bargain—that depended upon policy and inclination. On one occasion, when he had brought a friend to the Old Bailey, and relented ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... what the man's object could have been. Alfred said vulgar curiosity; but Beth suspected that there was more than that in the manoeuvre; and when Dicksie suggested acutely that Gard had intended to blackmail them, she and Alfred both exclaimed that that ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... rights of some citizens, why, they asked, was it pushing so hard for a civil rights bill? The fact was, several legislators argued, the Department of Defense was interfering with the civil rights of businessmen and practicing a crude form of economic blackmail.[21-72] ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... he and Satan could find it, and the longest liver should take all'; how, out of some such tradition, Edgar Poe built up the wonderful tale of the Gold Bug; how the planters of certain Southern States, and even the Governor of North Carolina, paid him blackmail, and received blackmail from him likewise; and lastly, how he met a man as brave as he, but with a clear conscience and a clear sense of duty, in the person of Mr. Robert Maynard, first lieutenant ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... printer, who lived in the market-place, was believed to be the chief instigator. His character was indifferent, and he had money invested in Gregory's shop; and the business was in so bad a way that there was a temptation to seek for some large haul by way of blackmail. Mrs. Leigh Perrot was selected as the victim, people thought, because her husband was so extremely devoted to her that he would be sure to do anything to save her from the least vexation. If so, the conspirators ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... with small packets of sycee, make up a tolerably valuable bag, and would often fall a prey to the highwaymen which infest many of the provinces, but that most offices anticipate these casualties by compounding for a certain annual sum which is paid regularly to the leader of the gang. For this blackmail the robbers of the district not only agree to abstain from pilfering themselves, but also to keep all others from doing so too. The arrangement suits the local officials admirably, as they escape those ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... anticipated, and I cheerfully admitted the same to the stockholders assembled. The Eastern mind, living under established conditions, could hardly realize the chaotic state of affairs in the West, with its vicious morals, and any attempt to levy tribute in the form of blackmail was repudiated by the stockholders in assembly. Major Hunter understood my position and delicately suggested coming to terms with the company's avowed enemies as the only feasible solution of the impending ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... Order of Hibernians. The Church, the better class of Irishmen, and the Hibernians, however, were shocked by the doings of the Molly Maguires and utterly disowned them. They began their career of blackmail and bullying by sending threats and death notices embellished with crude drawings of coffins and pistols to those against whom they fancied they had a grievance, usually the mine boss or an unpopular foreman. If the recipient did not heed the threat, he ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... "I have money at my camp. If that is not enough to pay your blackmail, my valet has gone back to the railway with my guide for a remittance of a thousand dollars, which must have come on ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... primal cause of their life-failure. Throughout that long and horrible night he felt only resentment toward his mother, and cherished no better purpose toward her than was embodied in his plan to wring from her, even by methods that savored of blackmail, the means of living a dissipated life in some city where he was unknown, and could lose himself in ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... "Very much. Blackmail's Warbler is often mistaken for the Chiff-chaff, even by so-called experts"—and I turned to the Authority and added, "Have another sandwich, won't you?"—"particularly so, of course, during the breeding season. It is true that the ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne

... of nephew to have!" Francis declared. "Abandon these futile attempts at blackmail and just come ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the sea to see the end of this tragedy, even as he, the villain and victim of it, the terrible man in the tall hat, had once crawled up from the sea. For the whole air was dense with the morbidity of blackmail, which is the most morbid of human things, because it is a crime concealing a crime; a black plaster ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... money on such a perishable note the courts would now hold him at fault, not me; they would demand evidence, and all he could show them would be what he had himself bargained for. Now it occurs to me that seashore sand, and the tricks of rogues, and blackmail, and tyranny perhaps ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... which is not a country but a longish strip of market-garden, nominally in charge of a government which is not a government but the disconnected satrapy of a half-dead empire, controlled pecksniffingly by a Power which is not a Power but an Agency, which Agency has been tied up by years, custom, and blackmail into all sorts of intimate relations with six or seven European Powers, all with rights and perquisites, none of whose subjects seem directly amenable to any Power which at first, second, or third hand is supposed to be responsible. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... the danger of mutiny always looms large and the bludgeon of blackmail lies ready to the hand of the mutineer. Therefore the actual handling of the money had been a matter of extreme care to Lute and those in his closest confidence. When the leader had taken most of his men out of the mine he had led away ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... when Captain Sharp told his story to the commander of the Guardian-Mother at Aden, that Mazagan had been operating on his own hook in Egypt and elsewhere to "blackmail" the trustee of Louis. The Pacha had ordered a new steamer to be built for him in England; and when she arrived at Gibraltar, he had given the command of her to Captain Sharp, to whom he owed ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... Through the South. Secession Times. December in New Orleans. Up the Mississippi. Leaving Henry in Massachusetts. Back in Maine Again. Return to Boston, Profitable Horse-Trading. Plenty of Money. My First Wife's Children. How they Have Been Brought Up. A Barefaced Robbery. Attempt to Blackmail Me. My Son Tries to Rob and Kill Me. My Rescue Last of ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott

... the pretence of collecting "Peter's Pence" for the Pope; or, as the compiler of Murray's Handbook to the County of Kent suggests, "were probably the bearers of licences to collect alms for hospitals," etc. Possibly the worthy Master Richard Watts objected to the levying of this blackmail; or he may in his walks have been subjected to the proctors' importunities, and consequently in his will rigorously debarred them in all futurity from any ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... four days since the papers had reported the strange kidnapping of Gennaro's five-year-old daughter Adelina, his only child, and the sending of a demand for ten thousand dollars ransom, signed, as usual, with the mystic Black Hand—a name to conjure with in blackmail and extortion. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various

... I said. "The machine isn't going to be put on the market at all. It is to be used simply as a threat to make other people pay what I should call blackmail." ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... remarked meditatively, "have you ever considered the possibilities of blackmail if the right sort of evidence were obtained under this new 'white-slavery act'? Scandals that some of the fast set may be inclined to wink at, that at worst used to end in Reno, become felonies with federal prison sentences looming up in ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... not so long ago that a regular business of blackmail was conducted in connection with the leading assignation houses. Ladies, as well as gentlemen, who visited them by appointment were "shadowed" and "spotted"; sometimes followed home and their standing and character in the community carefully ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... is particularly hard on what is called blackmail. It is therefore essential that the applicant should write nothing that might afterwards be twisted to ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... predominance of Russian influence in these territories would give them the power to invade India at their discretion, with what chances of success need not be here discussed. The predominance of Afghan influence would make the Amir master of the situation, and enable him to blackmail the Indian Government indefinitely. A change of policy, a departure from the old frontier line, presented itself with increasing force to responsible men. To-day we see the evils that have resulted from that change. The dangers that inspired it ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... of fame as the literary man of Scotland. Thirty years ago, in the North countries, a fellow achieved an immense reputation as 'The Tollman,' being the solitary individual entitled by law to levy blackmail at a ferry." In 1860 he was made Honorary President of the Associated Societies of the University of Edinburgh, his competitor being Thackeray. This was the place held afterward by Lord Lytton, Sir David Brewster, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... could get out of her. If she had meant me to know the character of Gedge's turpitude, she would have told me of her own accord. But in our talk at the hospital she had hinted at blackmail—and blackmailers are ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke



Words linked to "Blackmail" :   offence, extort, law-breaking, work, pressure, blackjack, crime, influence, criminal offence, extortion



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