During this period another great series of disclosures regarding Tammany chieftains was made public. Samuel Swartwout, whom Jackson had made Collector of the Port shortly after coming into office in 1829, fled from the city late in 1838. He had long been a power in the organization. His name had been mentioned unpleasantly when he, with M. M. Noah and Henry Ogden,[10] contrived by means of their official positions to get $10,000 reward for the recovery of the jewels stolen from the Prince of Orange, though the recovery had been made by others. And in 1833 he had threatened, as Collector of the Port, to remove the Custom House uptown because the merchants would not lend him more than $7,000 on the strength of some worthless “Jersey meadows.” Three years later he was connected with the unsavory Harlem Railroad stock corner and the manipulation of the funds of the Commercial Bank. Early in 1838 he joined forces with the notorious politicians of the Seventh Ward Bank for the defeat of William Leggett for the Democratic nomination for Congress, securing the nomination of Isaac L. Varian in his stead. A few months later the city was astounded to learn that since 1830 he had been systematically robbing the Government, through the manipulation of Custom House receipts, and that the total of his thefts amounted to nearly $1,250,000.[11] Fleeing to Europe, he wandered aimlessly about[12] for many years.[13] The community was so impressed with the size of this defalcation that a verb, “to Swartwout,” was coined, remaining in general use for many years thereafter. A defaulter was generally spoken of as having “Swartwouted.” A lesser figure in Tammany circles, though a person of considerable consequence, followed Swartwout in flight. This was William M. Price, at the time District Attorney for the Southern District of New York. It was discovered that he had defaulted to the Government in the sum of $75,000. Price, like so many other Tammany politicians of his time, had been mixed up with Seventh Ward Bank politics. During the latter part of his career he had been known as the personal representative in the city of President Van Buren.