theoddmentemporium:

“Lord” Timothy Dexter

Timothy Dexter was an 18th century self-proclaimed Lord. Though ill-educated, he had published an almost indecipherable book with no punctuation and horrible spelling. His second book included an extra thirteen pages of punctuation, instructing readers that they could, “peper and solt it as they plese.” His contemporaries considered him a lackwit [and] many of them gave him bad business advice to make him lose the fortune he amassed through trade, despite his business sense being somewhat peculiar, for example:

• He sent warming pans (used to heat sheets in winter) for sale to the tropical climes of the West Indies. His captain sold them as ladles for local molasses industry and made a good profit.
• He then sent wool mittens to the same place [but] Asian merchants bought them for export to Siberia.
• People jokingly told him to “ship coal to Newcastle”, which he did, and through sheer luck there was a miners’ strike going on at the time, and his cargo was sold at a premium.

Members of the high society refused to socialise with him [so] Dexter bought a huge house and emulated them. His relationship with his family was not particularly good either. He started lying to visitors that his wife had died and that the “drunken nagging woman” who frequented the building was simply her ghost. [Source]

Timothy decided he wanted to know what people would say about him if he were dead, so he faked his own death and made plans for a funeral. Three thousand people attended the wake and, because his own wife didn’t cry for him, he decided not to reveal himself. Later, he caned his wife for not showing enough sympathy. He officially died on October 26, 1806. [Source]