Jeremy Diddler is a fictional character in James Kenney's 1803 farce Raising the Wind.
A needy, artful swindler, Jeremy Diddler has become a stock farce character, and the word "diddle" may be derived from him. The character of Jeremy Diddler is discussed in some detail in Herman Melville's The Confidence Man: His Masquerade.
He appears in Thomas Haynes Bayly's novel "David Dumps" (Chapter XV).
References
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wood, James, ed. (1907). The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne.