Murphy's law: possible origin

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>   Barry Popik has done considerable research on  "Murphy's Law" in an
>attempt to track down the original Murphy. Thus far no relevant
>Murphy has turned up whose existence can be verified.

There is a discussion with a purported exact (Edward A. Murphy) origin at:

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/Murphy's-Law.html

-- as was discussed in 1999, I think. The exact original citation couldn't
be found, IIRC, but the story still may be true (or approximately so), may
it not? Has a pre-1949 citation been found? I wouldn't be surprised either
way. The Cassell slang dictionary gives John Glenn's "Into Orbit" (1962) as
a reference for the alternative origin (also given in RHUD) from a US Navy
educational-cartoon mechanic ... of course the 1950's cartoon character
still could have been named Murphy after Murphy's Law!

>So where did the expression come from?  A possible answer is given
>in an unlikely source: Robert A. Wilson's _Playboy's Book of
>Forbidden Words_, Chicago, Illinois: Playboy Press 1972. Page 198
>contains the following item:
>"PLAYING THE MURPHY--
>    "A confidence game, or swindle, in which a young lady and a hotel
>clerk conspire to defraud horny men. The girl pretends to be a
>prostitute and lures a man to a room in the hotel, whereupon she
>strips naked but demands payment before climbing into bed.  Slipping
>the money into her purse, she goes into the bathroom, allegedly to
>wash up and affix a diaphragm; since she is nude except for the
>purse, the man has no suspicions. The bathroom, however, adjoins a
>room that is empty and the purse contains a dress.  When the mark
>(victim) gets wise, she is far away, and, of course, nobody in the
>hotel knows anything about a nude girl running through the halls. The
>expression itself, _playing the Murphy_, may come from the old
>fold-up Murphy bed, which disappeared into a wall.  Among engineering
>students, the Murphy factor is a term included in an equation, after
>the fact, to make the answer come out right and deceive the teacher.
>Murphy's Law, among engineers, holds that if anything can go wrong,
>it will."
>
>    I will remain non-committal on this etymology until I have a
>chance to check it out. Still, it may offer a possibility of solving
>the Murphy's Law mystery.
>
>----Gerald Cohen

I think this is probably unrelated. There are a number of slang expressions
using "Murphy" as one might use "Smith" or "Jones" -- some might assert
that there is an implicit derogation of Irishmen, but I doubt this myself
(in the current connections).

As for the "Murphy game", the above is one of several variants. The basic
idea is that a man is relieved of his cash while attempting to employ a
prostitute; variants can involve a similar situation where one seeks drugs
or other illicit merchandise; the victim is unlikely to complain to the police.

The variants with which I'm most familiar are:

(1) The sucker goes into a strange room with a (supposed) prostitute and is
simply robbed by her accomplice(s), with no complex activities. This is
facilitated by the victim's drunkenness, by his state of undress, etc. I
think this is the most common but least interesting way of getting "murphied".

(2) The sucker begins to engage in intimate relations with a new female
acquaintance, and her accomplice bursts in, claims to be her enraged
husband/boyfriend, threatens to kill the sucker, but is placated by a huge
bribe.

(3) The sucker is greeted in a lobby (or whatever) by a supposed pimp, who
takes a payment and directs the sucker to a certain apartment, where of
course the promised prostitute does not exist; on return to the lobby the
"pimp" (actually the Murphy man) is gone.

Needless to say, the Murphy man must be very careful, or he will encounter
events like those described recently under "Missouri bankroll" ("greasing
the rails"). Some years ago, some acquaintances told me the following
story. One of them was victimized by variant (3) above. Subsequently he
returned on several days with four friends; on each occasion one of the
friends would ask around about some "action" while the others stayed back.
After a few days, one of them encountered (it turned out) the same "pimp"
at the same location, gave him the money, started toward the imaginary
prostitute's place, then turned and joined the others who had converged on
the briskly departing Murphy man. Of course they beat him up and took all
his cash. I don't know whether the story was true; if not, it happened at
other times/places, I'm sure.

The "Murphy game" is more or less the same as the "badger game", although
sometimes these are regarded as referring to distinct variants, I think.
Sometimes other (unrelated) scams are referred to by the name "Murphy"
also. I would understand "Murphy man" to refer to a robber specifically
targeting prostitutes' customers, however.

-- Doug Wilson