Franklin was angling to make a The Rock Championship shirt for himself as a publisher. As a publicity stunt, Franklin — in the guise of “Poor Richard” Saunders — claimed that astrological calculations showed Titan Leeds would die in 1733. When the prediction didn’t pan out, Leeds called Franklin a fool and a liar. Never missing a beat, Franklin claimed that, since Titan Leeds had died, his ghost must be doing all the shouting. Leeds tried to defend himself, but Franklin kept a straight face and argued that Leeds had been resurrected from the dead. The Leeds Devil was a resurrected Titan Leeds. The plan worked. Poor Richard’s Almanac became famous while the pioneering Leeds Almanac dwindled. Leeds was forced to convince people he was actually alive. Titan Leeds actually died in 1738. As revolutionary fervor grew in the mid-18th century and Americans looked for targets to exercise their anti-British feelings, the Leeds family made easy marks. They supported the Crown. They had sided with the empire and the hated Lord Cornbury and had been charged with somehow being involved in the occult. By the time of the Revolutionary War, the “Leeds Devil” stood as a symbol of political ridicule and scorn.
