Jeremy Diddler

{{Short description|Fictional conman}}

Jeremy Diddler is a fictional character in James Kenney's 1803 farce Raising the Wind, based on an amusing importunist named Bibb, or “half-crown Bibb”.{{cite news |title=The Original Jeremy Diddler |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article123548262 |newspaper=The Gundagai Times and Tumut, Adelong and Murrumbidgee District Advertiser |location=New South Wales, Australia |volume=XIV |issue=1081 |date=17 August 1872 |page=4 |access-date=3 September 2021 |via=National Library of Australia}}

A needy artful swindler, Diddler became a stock character in farce; the word “diddle” may be derived from him, or vice versa, and was a very common expression in the 19th and early 20th centuries.{{cite news |title=Jeremy Diddler |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article66347356 |newspaper=The Star |location=Victoria, Australia |volume=IX |issue=197 |date=18 August 1864 |page=3 |access-date=4 September 2021 |via=National Library of Australia}}{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article219422011 |title=A Jeremy Diddler |newspaper=The Weekly Times |issue=532 |location=Victoria, Australia |date=15 November 1879 |access-date=4 September 2021 |page=7 |via=National Library of Australia}}{{cite news |title=A Jeremy Diddler |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article38350242 |newspaper=The Launceston Examiner |location=Tasmania, Australia |volume=XLIX |issue=149 |date=24 June 1889 |page=3 |access-date=4 September 2021 |via=National Library of Australia}}

Diddler is discussed in some detail in Herman Melville's The Confidence Man: His Masquerade. He appears in Thomas Haynes Bayly's novel David Dumps (chapter XV).