Friday, the Thirteenth (Dodo Press)

Thomas William Lawson (1857-1925) was an American businessman and author. A highly controversial Boston stock promoter, he is known for both his efforts to promote reforms in the stock markets and the fortune he amassed for himself through highly dubious stock manipulations. He is also famous for his namesake ship, the Thomas W. Lawson, the only seven-masted schooner ever built. As an odd coincidence, Lawson wrote the novel Friday, the Thirteenth (1907) in which a broker picks that day on which to bring down Wall Street; the schooner Thomas W. Lawson was also wrecked on Friday 13th, 1907. Lawson authored numerous books, the most famous of which was Frenzied Finance: The Crime of Amalgamated (1905), his controversial account of the formation of the Amalgamated Copper Company. Although Thomas Lawson was once a multimillionaire, he died poor.