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The phrase the long arm of coincidence designates the far-reaching power or effect of coincidence.
—Note: More generally, the noun long arm has long been used to designate far-reaching power and influence—cf. ‘the long arm of the law’: meaning and origin.
The phrase the long arm of coincidence occurs, for example, in a review of A Bronx Tale (first performed in 1989), by the U.S. actor and playwright Chazz Palminteri (born 1952)—review by the British author and critic Clive Barnes (1927-2008), published in The Stage (London, England) of Thursday 15th November 2007 [page 26, column 4]:
Just how autobiographical and unadorned is his tale of a kid escaping from the seductive embrace of the Mob, I’m not certain. Unquestionably, the long arm of coincidence is pulled like elastic, and the bile of life is much sweetened by the sugar of sentimentality.
The phrase the long arm of coincidence alludes to the following monologue from Captain Swift: A Comedy Drama in Four Acts (London: Samuel French, Ltd., 1902), by the Australian playwright Charles Haddon Chambers (1860-1921) [Act 2, page 29]—the speaker is Wilding (i.e., Captain Swift):
I’m not safe here. This place is a hornet’s nest. The long arm of coincidence has reached after me. Ah, I neglected one thing—silence! Yet how could I suspect when I told the story about the tramp in the bush that the gaping ears of a prying servant were drinking it in, and that he should be this horrible Marshall. How could I have foreseen when I accepted Seabrook’s invitation that I should meet a suspicious squatter, and that he should be this very Gardiner? What must I do? Abandon it all, and go back? […] No, I can’t, I won’t be an outcast again, I’ll fight it out. The end is worth the struggle.
Charles Haddon Chambers’s Captain Swift was first performed at the Haymarket Theatre, London, on Wednesday 20th June 1888, and the following ironic review is from The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art (London, England) of Saturday 23rd June 1888 [page 762, column 1]:
One of the characters in Mr. C. Haddon Chambers’s new play, Captain Swift, produced during the week at the Haymarket Theatre, comments on “the long arm of coincidence.” It is a metaphor which must be cautiously employed, but we shall perhaps be safe in saying that in Mr. Chambers’s play this arm has a peculiarly comprehensive and remarkable embrace. Captain Swift is the professional name of a notorious Queensland bushranger, who visits England when the colony has grown too hot to hold him. He chances to be passing along a London street when an old gentleman named Seabrook is knocked down by a hansom cab, and “Mr. Wilding,” as the bushranger calls himself, rescues the victim of the accident from a perilous position under the wheels. The muscles of the long arm of coincidence are here being expanded. Mr. Seabrook asks his preserver to dine, and it gradually appears that Mrs. Seabrook is Captain Swift’s mother; that the Seabrook butler is the Captain’s foster-brother; and that the only other guest besides himself is a Queensland squatter, Mr. Gardiner, from whom Swift had once stolen a famous black horse. In course of time a detective, in search of the bushranger, calls at the house, and meets the object of his quest (whom he does not know) face to face, and this is another coincidence—indeed, nothing but the appearance of the black horse is wanted to make the series of coincidences quite complete and to gather under the roof of the casual stranger met in the street all who had been in any way connected with the bushranger’s proceedings, so far as the story is concerned with them. This is really too much coincidence—the arm is unduly long. It is as if Box and Cox * not only discovered that they were long-lost brothers, but also that Mrs. Bouncer was their mother, Mr. Knox a first cousin, and Penelope Ann an aunt by marriage. Mr. Chambers would have got on better without the butler, a very melodramatic personage whose behaviour is generally impossible. If the author reconstructs his play, as he may perhaps see the advisability of doing, the butler should go. He increases the sum of coincidences beyond the limits of probability, he is really of little service, and is a personage who not only never would be missed, but who is a source of weakness rather than of strength.
* This refers to Box and Cox (1847), a farce by the English playwright John Maddison Morton (1811-1891)—cf. details in ‘Box and Cox’: meaning and origin.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest texts that I have found in which the phrase the long arm of coincidence is not applied to Charles Haddon Chambers’s Captain Swift:
1-: From a review of Reminiscences of a Story-teller, by the British author Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), published in The Universal Review (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co.) of June 1888—review published in the Liverpool Mercury, and Lancashire Cheshire and General Advertiser (Liverpool, Lancashire, England) of Wednesday 27th June 1888 [page 5, column 4]:
What a recent playwright calls “the long arm of coincidence” often shows itself in the experience of novelists.
2-: From the column Boudoir Gossip, published in the Lady’s Pictorial (London, England) of Saturday 10th November 1888 [page 510, column 3]:
Stuart Cumberland, the thought-reader, tells a curious story of the enactment of an imaginary murder by the Queen of Spain. By an odd stretching out of “the long arm of coincidence” the strikingly dramatic incident described by him is very similar to the central episode in a story recently specially written for, and to appear in, the Christmas Number of the Lady’s Pictorial.
3-: From a review of The Good Old Times, a play by the British author Hall Caine (1853-1931)—review published in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art (London, England) of Saturday 16th February 1889 [page 184, column 2]:
John Langley […] is sent to Tasmania on conviction of a crime which, as he knows, his wife committed. She shot a man […]. To shield her, Langley declares himself guilty of shooting Crosby Grainger, as the villain is called, and he is transported. So is Crosby Grainger,—why, no man may say; and so is Crosby Grainger’s father-in-law, who had served Mr. Langley […]. Mrs. Langley settles down in Tasmania, near the prison, applies for a servant, as was the custom in former days, and, what in a recent play was called “the long arm of coincidence” again coming into operation, her husband is assigned to her.
4-: From a review of Love Story, a play by Pierre Leclercq—review published in the Weekly Dispatch (London, England) of Sunday 24th February 1889 [page 6, column 3]:
Here is the story. Madeline Bort, after her father’s death, has been living with her friend, Mrs. Fanshawe, in a cosy villa at Hampstead. She loves the lady’s son, Paul, but is afraid to show it. He loves her, but treats her coldly, because his reputation as a novelist is not yet worthy of her. […] A fraudulent bank manager, who moves in the Fanshawes’ circle, has, however, heard privately that Madeline has suddenly inherited a fortune. To escape his difficulties, he offers her marriage […]. She […] accepts the bank manager. Of course, she repents. On her wedding-day, she and her husband, by accident, seek shelter in a cottage in a Welsh village, where Paul Fanshawe has despairingly buried himself. By this liberal use of “the long arm of coincidence” Mr. Leclercq is able to bring Paul on the scene at the critical moment when the bank manager, enraged at the coldness of his ruesome bride, is about to enforce his conjugal rights.
5-: From the column Football Notes, by ‘Forward’, published in the Leicester Daily Mercury (Leicester, Leicestershire, England) of Saturday 16th March 1889 [page 3, column 5]:
Has not the Leicester Tiger again bearded the big Rugby Lion in his almost impregnable lair, and once more mopped the floor with the massive mane of the majestic beast? Have not the Leicester players, to change the metaphor, confirmed Saturday’s form by irrevocably embellishing Rugby with the magnificent and dazzling Order of the Knock? Aye, and the victory is indeed one to be proud of. True it is that the long arm of coincidence stretches out in connection with the vital points obtained. In the first act of this drama we put up six major points against Rugby’s five, and in the second act of what nearly ended in a tragedy we totalled four to Rugby’s three, the disparity, therefore, being little to shout about.
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