Chapter XII
SWINDLES AND HOAXES.
It is of course only natural that as soon as advertising became general, that portion of the community which regards the other portion as its oyster, was not slow to discover the advantages which were soon to accrue in the way of increased facilities for publishing new dodges, or of giving extended scope to those which were old, but had so far attained only limited circulation. This has been so conclusively shown by specimens already given, and references made, that there is no necessity to discuss the question anew, and therefore we will at once plunge into the thick of those advertisements which have special qualifications for treatment different from that given to the milder classes of rogues and scoundrels. The first transaction which calls for attention is in connection with Queen Anne’s farthings. No popular delusion has perhaps made more dupes than that relating to these coins. Innumerable people believe that there never were but three farthings of this description, two of which have found their way in due course to the British Museum, the third only being still abroad; and it is also believed that the Museum authorities would give a very large sum for the possession of the missing token. Now there are no less than six distinct varieties of Anne’s farthings known to exist, and specimens of them are not at all rare. Some of them may be procured at the coin-dealers, for ten or twelve shillings; but there is one variety, struck in 1713, which is extremely rare, and would bring from £5 to £10. There is also a small brass medal or counter of Queen Anne, about the size of a farthing, of which there are hundreds. A publican once procured one of these, and placed it in his window, ticketed as “the real farthing of Queen Anne.” Credulous persons came from far and near to view this wonderful curiosity, and the owner turned his deception to good account.
Sometime about the first quarter of this century, a man in Ireland received twelve months’ imprisonment for secreting a Queen Anne’s farthing. He was shopman to a confectioner in Dublin, and having taken the farthing over the counter, he substituted a common one for it. Unfortunately for him, he told his master how he had obtained it, and offered it to him for sale. The master demanded the treasure as his property, the shopman refused to give it up, was brought into the Recorder’s Court, and there received the above sentence. When rogues fall out, honest men know what they have lost. It is wrong to assume that because thieves quarrel, their natural enemies “get their own.” At all events, experience has never taught us so, and the proverb, as generally read, is wrong.
Numerous are the instances of people having travelled from distant counties to London, in order to dispose in the best market of the supposed valuable farthing. The custodian of the medals in the British Museum used to be besieged by applicants from all parts of the country, offering Queen Anne’s farthings and imitations of them for sale, and of course the dealers in coin even now receive a liberal share of the same annoyance. Whence the treacherous fable originally sprung has never been satisfactorily explained. It is certain that Anne’s farthings never were very common, though of one variety, coined in 1714, not less than from 300 to 500 must have been put in circulation. But the others were mere patterns, and were never struck for currency: all of them were coins of great beauty, and for this reason, as well as on account of their being the only copper coins struck in the reign of Queen Anne, it is probable that they were soon hoarded and preserved as curiosities, thereby acquiring an imaginary value, which grew rapidly as soon as some sharp fellow saw how useful the figment might be made. But the immediate cause of the popular fallacy concerning the scarcity and great value may be found in the fact, that at the end of the last century a lady of Yorkshire having lost one of these coins, offered a large reward for it. Probably it was valuable to her as a souvenir of some departed friend; but the advertisement, and the comparative scarcity of these farthings, gradually led to the report that there was only one such token in circulation, and that the unique coin was of course of almost priceless value. Long before this, however, advertisements in reference to Anne’s farthings had found their way into the papers. So far as we can discover, the first of these appeared in the General Advertiser of April 19, 1745, and ran as follows:--
WHEREAS about seven years ago an Advertisement was published in some of the Daily Papers offering a Reward for a Queen Anne’s Farthing struct in the year 1714.
This is to inform the CURIOUS
That a Farthing of Queen Anne of that year of a very beautiful dye may be seen at the Bar of the Pensylvania Coffeehouse in Birchin Lane. The impression is no ways defaced but as entire as from the Mint.
This, probably, just at the time when a furor was in existence with regard to the farthings, must have given a fillip to the business at the Pennsylvania Coffee-house; and must have done a great deal to spread the belief that a Queen Anne’s coin was much more desirable than the wonderful lamp of Eastern story, or the more modern but quite as powerful four-leaved shamrock. That in 1802 the fiction was still lively is shown by an advertisement which appeared in the February of that year. This was disguised so as to appear like an ordinary paragraph:--
The Queen Anne’s farthing, advertised to be disposed of in Pall Mall, proves to be an original. There were only two coined in that Queen’s reign, and not three as has been erroneously stated. That which was sold by the sergeant from Chatham for £400, was purchased by a noble viscount, curious in his selection of coins, &c. Seven Hundred guineas was the price asked for the one advertised last week. Five hundred was offered for it and refused. The owner lives at Lynn, in Norfolk. The offer was made by the son of a baronet, who wants to complete his collection.
Attention and credulity were so excited by the above paragraph, and many others of the same tendency, that no one thought of doubting that a Queen Anne’s farthing was worth more than a Jew’s eye; nor was it till some time after that the whole was discovered to be a fabrication, intended either to impose upon the credulity of the public, or, what is more likely, to enhance the value of such a coin to the holder, who was quietly waiting to realise. Whether he did so or not does not appear, but it is more than likely that he did not allow his opportunity to slip, but hooked one of those unconsciously greedy people who are always falling victims to their own selfishness as much as to the sharpers, and who, as soon as they are deluded, look for sympathy and redress to those very laws they were prepared to outrage when anything was apparently to be got by so doing. The belief that Queen Anne’s farthings are very valuable still obtains among the vulgar, notwithstanding the many times its absurdity has been exposed; and there is no particular reason for imagining that it will become at all exploded until some fresher but quite as illogical a fiction is ready to supply its place.
One of the most notorious swindlers of the early part of the present century was Joseph Ady, who used to profess that he knew “something to your advantage.” As he did not deal in advertisements, perhaps he has no right here; but as about 1830 he was constantly being referred to in newspaper paragraphs, and was a feature of the time among sharpers, he is entitled to passing notice, if only as a newspaper celebrity. At the period we mention, “Ady was a decent-looking elderly man, a Quaker, with the external respectability attached to the condition of a housekeeper, and to all appearance considered himself as pursuing a perfectly legitimate course of life. His métier consisted in this. He was accustomed to examine, so far as the means were afforded him, lists of unclaimed dividends, estates or bequests waiting for the proper owners, and unclaimed property generally. Noting the names, he sent letters to individuals bearing the same appellatives, stating that, on their remitting to him his fee of a guinea, they would be informed of ‘something to their advantage.’ When any one complied, he duly sent a second letter, acquainting him that in such a list was a sum or an estate due to a person of his name, and on which he might have claims worthy of being investigated. It was undeniable that the information might prove to the advantage of Ady’s correspondent. Between this might be and the unconditional promise of something to the advantage of the correspondent, lay the debatable ground on which it might be argued that Ady was practising a dishonest business. It was rather too narrow a margin for legal purposes; and so Joseph went on from year to year reaping the guineas of the unwary--seldom three months out of a police court and its reports--till his name became a byword; and still, out of the multitudes whom he addressed, finding a sufficient number of persons ignorant of his craft, and ready to be imposed upon--and these, still more strange to say, often belonging to the well-educated part of society.”[36] In all the police cases we have come across, in which Ady was concerned, he seems to have considerably “sat upon” the magistrates, the “great unpaid” of the City being quite unable to hold their own with him, notwithstanding the disadvantage at which Joseph was placed.
The claims for precedence of the two most important advertising swindles of the present day are so equally divided, that it is hard to say which has caused the greater amount of ruin among credulous persons who have invested their last few coins in the hope of the certain success, or which has returned most profit to the exchequers of its wily promoters. The two claimants are the Turf-Circular and the Home-Employment swindles, both of which have been allowed full play. We will give the “home-employment” arrangement preference of treatment, as it appeals to wider sympathies, the victims being mostly credulous only, and not selfishly and idiotically greedy for other folk’s goods; and being, as well, mostly poor hard-working women, and not a few children. One of the most notorious of these advertisers flourished half-a-dozen years ago. He used to insert a small notice in the daily papers, informing those who had leisure that he could find ample remunerative employment for them, and directing applications to be made by letter at a given address, enclosing a stamped addressed envelope. Then the swindle commenced, the reply being as follows:--
GROVE HOUSE, TOTTENHAM ROAD.
ISLINGTON, LONDON, N.
In reply to your application as per my Notice (Leisure Time, &c., &c.,) I very respectfully inform you that it has now become impossible to describe my Advertisement on employing leisure time fully in the Newspaper in which the little abridged notice appeared, owing to the enormous charge demanded for inserting it, namely £2 16s. for each time it appears. So that in consequence I am compelled, reluctantly, to trouble my correspondents to forward their envelope for the purpose of an extended explanation, which I think cannot be clearer done than my forwarding in print, as under, a copy of the intended announcement, which after reading, and you deciding on sending for the packet, please deduct from the number (eighteen) the three Penny Postage Stamps you will necessarily have used, and only enclose (fifteen) which trifling outlay I think you, like others, will have no cause to regret.
Yours faithfully,
EVERETT MAY.
THE UNDER WILL BEST EXPLAIN:-- LEISURE TIME.--FOUR GUINEAS PER WEEK.--HOW TO REALISE THIS AT YOUR OWN HOMES.
MR EVERETT MAY, of Kingsland, begs to apprise the Public that he is sending off as rapidly as possible by every post his far-famed Packet, the contents of which will show the many plans of getting money most honourably by either sex employing leisure hours at their own homes. £2 to £6 weekly may be most certainly realised by all industrious persons, without five shillings outlay or any risk, by following the easy, respectable and clear instructions. Sent by Mr Everett May, of Grove House, Tottenham-grove, Kingsland, London, N. This is no visionary theory. The Present Season highly suitable. Enclose eighteen penny stamps, and you will receive post free punctually per return THIS PROVED BOON TO THE INDUSTRIOUS OF BOTH SEXES.
But to remove any doubt that sceptical persons may entertain as to the truth of the above, I here insert the under six letters received, with hundreds of others. The parties are very respectable and each well-known in the towns they reside.
Calverton, near Nottingham.
Dear Sir,--I beg to inform you that your packet came quite safe, and I was surprised and highly pleased with its contents. Like others who doubted the truth, I was ready to conclude it was only to catch those foolish enough to try it. But I have now proved otherwise, and can testify that you are no other than a true and faithful man. The contents of your indeed famed packet are well worth twenty times as much, and whoever the party may be receiving it will have no cause to repent. Yours very truly,
SETH BINCH.
Another--Spettisbury, Blanford, Dorset.
Dear Sir,--I beg to inform you that the Packet ordered arrived safely, and allow me to tender you my sincere thanks for it. Your plans for getting money so honourably are indeed excellent. Anyone having a doubt may most certainly remove such doubt. Hoping you may long continue in your good work is the earnest wish of your obedient servant,
W. OAKLEY.
Then follow the remaining four letters, which have an astonishing family likeness to the two chosen, and as these six were only inserted to show what the careful May would have done had he been able to launch into lavish expenditure in the interests of his clients, he gives a statement after the last epistle:--
Such is the exact copy of the advertisement I intended to have placed before the public by inserting in the Newspapers had the charge not been so high, but as I now do so by this circular I can add a few more of my correspondents’ approval letters, in furtherance of a still more convincing proof of the value of this esteemed Money Making Packet.
After this he gives a string of letters, which must have demanded great ingenuity on the part of their writer, if only on account of the number of signatures he must have invented. Occasionally he breaks down, however, and has to fall back on initials. We should like to reproduce a lot of these expressions of gratitude as forms to be used at any time when thanks are required for any great benefit, but space will not allow of it, and we must be content with two, which are redolent of truly Christian thankfulness:--
Short Heath Road, Erdington, near Birmingham, December 13th, 1867.
Mr. May, Dear Sir,--I have received your Packet, and am at a loss how, adequately, to express to you what I think about it--suffice it to say that I consider your Packet to be an inestimable boon to the unemployed of every class. Thousands will, doubtless, make money by it. It professes only to be a guide to the employment of leisure hours, but in reality it is a guide to the employment of a whole life, and an easy path to opulence. “Whoever receives it will have no cause to regret.” “It is worth twenty times as much.” “Anyone having a doubt may most certainly remove such doubt.” I heartily re-echo these testimonials, and recommend your Packet to every unemployed person, this is no more than I am in equity bound to do. I am, Dear Sir, faithfully yours,
THOMAS JONSON, JUN.
1, Vincent Terrace, Frome, October 5th, 1867.
Dear Sir,--I have carefully examined the contents of your excellent Packet, and am astonished and delighted with them. He or she would indeed be difficult to please who could not select from so extensive a stock some profitable employment congenial to their taste. The instructions are explicit, and the minute details in each case fully and clearly explained. A person of moderate industry and perseverance, furnished with your Packet may attain, if not a fortune, at least a very comfortable living. It ought to be widely known, and I for my part shall not fail to recommend it. I admit I answered your advertisement merely from a curious desire to know what was the latest dodge (pardon the word) for hoaxing the public, and I am now heartily glad I did answer it, though ashamed of the motive that induced me to do so. I am, Dear Sir, faithfully yours,
JOSEPH JOHNSON, Schoolmaster.
The poor gulls, after reading these effusions, which all play on the same strings of wonder, satisfaction, and gratitude, are of course anxious to participate in the benefits of lucrative employment, and off go the stamps. If the mischief ended there, the matter would not be so bad; but these advertising scoundrels have various courses open to them. If they judge that nothing more is to be obtained from the sender, they calmly pocket the stamps and take no further notice. In the event of continued “annoyance,” or threats of exposure, they will send forth a circular which states that a packet was posted, and must have been lost or stolen in transit. This circular speaks of the post-office, and other institutions, in the most disparaging manner, and of the transactions of its writers as not only just, but infallible. One of them winds up thus:--
Another matter I wish to inform you upon, namely, an error prevails regarding the punctual and prompt conveyance of Packets by the Post Office. This is at times impossible. If the letter mails are heavy, Packets are sometimes left until the following day. So that I cannot guarantee it will be delivered at your residence by return, but you may fully expect it by the second if not by the first mail, postage free, well packed, and secure from observation. These remarks may appear trifling, but they are really necessary, and while on the subject I will name another, also of importance, it is this--several of my correspondents when applying for these particulars send only their name and address on a stamped envelope, and when ordering the Packet enclose their name and omit the address, and this not being retained by me renders it impossible to forward it. So that a distinct name and address is, in the second instance, absolutely necessary. It is required for no other object than to enable me to promptly forward the order, which I can do to any address in the United Kingdom.
The correspondent who dates from a good address, or whose letter looks promising, is likely to be despoiled still more. The stamps are acknowledged, and at the same time information is tendered that a special order for the peculiar fancy goods upon which the income is to be made has just come in; and that if the intending employée will send a fee, say five shillings, for registration, and a deposit, say five pounds, for security, she will receive a packet containing the work--which is very easy--and ample instructions. A little delay enables these wandering tribes to change both names and addresses, and to appear in greater force than ever in the advertisement columns. No wonder the writers we have quoted show such gratitude for the receipt of promised parcels! But we did know two real people who got what they bargained for. One, who only paid the eighteenpence, obtained, after a good long time, and the expenditure of many threats, some scraps of brown paper, which were said to be patterns for pen-wipers, “the manufacture of which would be found to yield a lucrative profit, if a market could be found for them.” There is much virtue in an if in this case. The paper went on to say that there were many shopkeepers who would be glad to sell them on commission, “the article being extremely rare.” It is noticeable that the circular received on this occasion was printed, with blanks left for description of the patterns and the name of the work for which they were to be used. A man of imaginative mind might in the course of the day have run through a considerable list of trades; and as the reference to the demand for the article and the sales by commission would be the same in all the notices, the demand upon truth was evidently not particularly excessive. The other successful applicant was a lady who began by writing out of mere curiosity, and who gradually got on until she had parted with not much less than ten pounds. A sharp letter from a solicitor brought no answer to him, but succeeded in sending the long-expected parcel to his client. It was heavy, and accompanied by a short letter, which said:--
BIRMINGHAM, October 7, 1869.
MADAM,
We beg to inform you that some little delay has been caused by the failure of a company to whom we entrusted the manufacture of a large quantity of articles. We have now however great pleasure in forwarding you a sample of an enamelled leather child’s button boot, with lasts and leather for you to follow model. As soon as we receive from you specimen equal to pattern we shall be glad to afford you constant employment.
Yours obediently,
VENTNOR AND MORRIS.
The parcel contained some old odd lasts, a really well-made little boot, and some queer bits of leather, which the cleverest man in the world could have done nothing with; a shoemaker’s knife, an awl, and a lump of cobbler’s wax! This expedient enabled the swindlers to tide over the time till a new name and a fresh address were decided on. It is worthy of note--and we shall refer to it a little further on--that the statement of one of these scoundrels would lead to the impression that extra prices are charged for these swindling advertisements. If larger prices are charged to men because their advertisements are fraudulent, no amount of false logic or forensic oratory can dispose of the fact that the proprietors of the papers are accessories in any robbery or swindle that is committed; and the insertion of such advertisements, knowing them to be traps for the unwary, at a price which denotes the guilty knowledge of the proprietors, is as gross a breach of the trust reposed in them by the public as was ever committed by smug, well-fed, Sabbath-observing sinners. There is, unfortunately, but too much reason to believe that extra prices are charged for these fool-traps, and that in the most pious and pretentious papers. At the time of the baby-farming disclosures which led to the execution of Margaret Waters, one paper openly accused another--a daily of large circulation--with charging three or four hundred per cent. over the ordinary tariff price for the short applications for nurse children which were then usual. Perhaps the accusation was not worth disproval--at all events it remains uncontradicted till this day. These murderous advertisements presented no particularly destructive features, they simply said in each case that a nurse child was wanted at a certain address; and sometimes an offer would be made to take a baby altogether for a lump sum. This is one of a lot taken from a leading daily paper:--
ADOPTION.--Child Wanted to NURSE, or can be LEFT ALTOGETHER. Terms moderate. Can be taken from birth. Address ----.
Sometimes the terms were mentioned, and, as a rule, the sum named showed that even the tender mercies experienced by Oliver Twist and his friend Dick at the farming establishment inhabited by them could hardly have been expected by the most confiding of parents. Thus:--
A RESPECTABLE Woman wishes to adopt a CHILD. Premium £6. Will be taken altogether and no further trouble necessary. Apply ----.
As some of these establishments may be still in existence, we refrain from republishing the addresses. These specimens, as advertisements, simply call for no comment at our hands, and so we will get on with the more pronounced, though less guilty, swindlers. Here is a specimen which doubtless gave the postman some extra work:--
GENTLEMEN having a respectable circle of acquaintance may hear of means of INCREASING their INCOME without the slightest pecuniary risk, or of having (by any chance) their feelings wounded. Apply for particulars by letter, stating their position &c. to W. R. 37, W---- Street C---- Square.
To such an advertisement as this--one of exactly the same kidney--which appeared in Lloyd’s, under the head of “How to make Two pounds per Week by the outlay of Ten Shillings,” and asking for thirty stamps in return for the information, the following belongs. It is sent in reply to the letter enclosing the fee, and is too good a specimen of the humour possessed by these rogues to be passed over:--
“First purchase 1 cwt. of large-sized potatoes which may be obtained for the sum of 4s., then purchase a large basket, which will cost say another 4s., then buy 2s. worth of flannel blanketting and this will comprise your stock in trade, of which the total cost is 10s. A large-sized potato weighs about half-a-pound, consequently there are 224 potatoes in a cwt. Take half the above quantity of potatoes each evening to a baker’s and have them baked; when properly cooked put them in your basket, well wrapped up in the flannel to keep them hot, and sally forth and offer them for sale at one penny each. Numbers will be glad to purchase them at that price, and you will for certain be able to sell half a cwt. every evening. From the calculation made below you will see by that means you will be able to earn £2 per week. The best plan is to frequent the most crowded thoroughfares, and make good use of your lungs, thus letting people know what you have for sale. You could also call in at each public-house on your way and solicit the patronage of the customers, many of whom would be certain to buy of you. Should you have too much pride to transact the business yourself (though no one need be ashamed of pursuing an honest calling), you could hire a boy for a few shillings a week who could do the work for you, and you could still make a handsome profit weekly. The following calculation proves that £2 per week can be made by selling baked potatoes:--
“1 cwt. containing 224 potatoes sold in two evenings at 1d. each, £0 18 8 Deduct cost, 0 4 0 ------- £0 14 8 3 ------- Six evenings’ sale, 2 4 0 Pay baker at the rate of 8d. per evening for baking potatoes, 0 4 0 ------- Nett profit per week, £2 0 0.”
Many and most curious are the answers received from time to time by persons with sufficient faith to make application to these advertisers, the foregoing being by no means unique. One reply received in return for half-a-crown’s worth of stamps, which were to have purchased much wisdom in the way of money-saving, was this: “Never pay a boy to look after your shadow while you climb a tree to see into the middle of next week.” A man who would send his money to such evident scamps, could hardly see into the middle of anything, no matter where he chose his vantage-ground. Fortunately for the interests of the community at large, these tricksters now and again are made to feel that there is justice in the land. Twenty years ago, a City magistrate did good service by exposing a man who lived abroad in splendour at the expense of the poor governesses he managed to victimise through the advertising columns of the Times. This rascal used, by means of the most specious promises, to drag young girls to a foreign land, and there leave them to become a prey to other villains, or to make their way back accordingly as circumstances permitted. But as at the present time there are streams of foreign girls decoyed to London under all sorts of pretexts for the vilest purposes, the least said as to the criminality of one single individual among the shoals of scoundrels who live by means of advertisements the better. Since Mr Fynn was unmasked many other hawks have been captured, and only recently two have found their way into the obscurity of penal servitude under circumstances worthy of mention. Place aux dames: we will give precedence to Mistress Margaret Annie Dellair, though her retirement was subsequent to that of the other claimant on our attention. The difference of date is, however, extremely small. Mrs Dellair lived at Croydon, and for a long time lived in peace and plenty on the post-office orders, or rather the cash received in exchange for them, obtained by means of the following advertisement:--
HOME EMPLOYMENT.--Ladies in town or country wishing for Remunerative EMPLOYMENT in Laces, Church Needlework, &c., should apply at once to M. D., Fern House, West Croydon, enclosing a directed envelope. Reference to ladies employed by permission.
This must have been a fruitful source of income to M. D., who seems to have considered that people were calmly content to part with their money, as she made no attempt to put off the day of reckoning which was bound to arrive. So in due course Mrs Dellair found herself charged with fraud before the Croydon bench, and ultimately she appeared at the bar of the Central Criminal Court in April of the present year. Her mode of procedure, described during the trial, was this. Applicants in due time, after sending in their stamped and addressed envelopes, received circulars, stating that the work which the sender was able to furnish comprised braiding, point lace, tatting, church needlework, and Berlin wool. The needlework was to be done at the ladies’ homes, and they were never to earn less than eightpence or a shilling per hour. To secure employment the applicants were informed that the payment of one guinea “for registration fee, materials, and instruction,” was required, half of which sum was to be returned when the employment was resigned. Post-office orders were to be made payable at the office, Windmill Street, Croydon, to Margaret Dellair. “There is,” says a writer at the time commenting on this case, “something quite admirable in this calm repudiation of the anonymous, in this wearing of the heart upon the sleeve, on the part of Mistress Dellair. The bait she threw out was swallowed with avidity by many young ladies--some with more money than wit, others painfully anxious to secure bread-winning employment; others less solicitous about procuring work for themselves than inquisitive to discover, for the benefit of society in general and their friends in particular, whether the transaction was bonâ fide. Then the curtain rose on the second act of the drama. Some ladies sent post-office orders to Windmill Road; others took the train to Croydon, and had personal interviews with the benevolent recluse of Fern House--a little cottage near a wood--who did not fail to represent that she was extensively employed by some eminent firms of church furnishers in the metropolis.” One young lady having sent her guinea, received, after a lapse of some weeks, and after repeated communications on her part, ten toilet-mats, with the materials for braiding them. There was not enough braiding, and so she wrote for more, but received no reply. Then she finished the mats with materials purchased by herself, and despatched the articles to Croydon; but neither reply nor payment was forthcoming. After many more weeks Mrs Dellair wrote to say that she was in ill-health. Seeing, however, that the advertisement was continued in the papers, the defrauded young lady wrote to Fern Cottage, demanding the return of ten shillings, being one-half of the sum she had disbursed for “registration fee, materials, and instruction.” No answer was returned, of course; and the victim not only lost her money, but her time and her labour, to say nothing of postage, worry of mind, and other incidental expenses. One of the principal witnesses against Dellair was the Croydon postmaster, who stated that he had known her a year and a half. She had been in the habit of bringing post-office orders to his office to cash. She had brought between three and four hundred orders since July 1872, principally for guineas, but there were some for half-crowns and some for half-guineas. They were brought principally by her daughter, but sometimes by a servant. On the 30th of October 1873 a post-office order (produced) was brought to him, and the payee’s signature was that of the prisoner. He paid the money to the person who brought it. The house at which the prisoner lived was a small private house, called Fern Cottage, and there was no show of business kept up there. On cross-examination by prisoner’s counsel, the postmaster stated that the fact of so many orders being cashed by Mrs Dellair excited his suspicion. He, however, knew that she was getting her living by sending parcels of needlework by post, and since he had ascertained that fact, he did not think it so extraordinary. Mrs Dellair was in the habit of purchasing postage stamps in large quantities of him. She sometimes purchased ten shillings’ worth, and once or twice had bought them to a larger extent. At the trial the entire seat in front of the jury-box was filled by young women who attended to prosecute, some of whom had been prudent enough to ask for references, but imprudent enough to part with their guineas, although the testimonials received were not quite satisfactory. Some applicants had interviews with Dellair at Croydon, and then she gave the names of one or two eminent firms as her employers, but at the trial representatives of these firms swore that she was totally unknown to them. One of the most peculiar points in this trial was the line taken by the counsel for the defence, who argued that although the victims of his client might be deserving of sympathy, they had parted with their guineas in a foolish and careless manner, and the real question was whether the accused was guilty of a fraudulent pretence or not. The advocate raised the curious point in favour of his client, that although she had avowedly four hundred transactions with different persons, it was extraordinary that she had not been discovered and prosecuted before; but he forgot how much more extraordinary it was that for her defence the prisoner was unable to bring forward out of her four hundred clients a single witness who could swear to receiving remunerative employment from her. The defence was original, and originality in defence has a good deal to do with success when a case is being tried by a common jury; but it did not succeed, and Mrs Margaret Annie Dellair was found guilty. The woman was an impudent and abandoned swindler, who had been systematically preying for years upon a class that can, of all classes, the least afford to be cheated--decently-educated young women of small means, who fill respectable positions, and whose consequent need of employment which will enable them to earn a little something above their ordinary salaries is always pressing and frequently imperative. Before sentence was passed an inspector from Scotland Yard stated that the prisoner and her husband had formerly lived at Finchley under another name; that they had afterwards kept a shop in Bloomsbury under the title of “Fuller & Co.,” where they advertised to give “remunerative employment” both to young ladies and young gentlemen; that in May 1872 the husband was sentenced at the Middlesex Sessions to five years’ imprisonment for fraud; that on his conviction the woman removed to Fern Cottage; and that after her arrest, and its consequent publication in the papers, upwards of eighty letters had been received by the police complaining of her dealings. All that Margaret Annie Dellair could do when she was called up for sentence was to plead that she had been left in an all but penniless condition with seven young children; that she had tried in vain to obtain an honest livelihood by keeping a stall in a bazaar; and that her crime was caused by a desire to avert starvation from her innocent offspring. A good deal of sympathy was of course expressed by the public--especially by those who have nothing to lose--not for the victims, but for the victimiser. The interest taken in criminals nowadays, when they have the slightest claims to be out of the common order, would be regarded as quite overdrawn if described in a novel.
The other delinquent was not so interesting, and being only a man, did not find any hearts to bleed for him even among those who had not been deceived. His practices were provincial, his advertisement, of which the following is a copy, being inserted in the Warwickshire and London papers:--
HOME EMPLOYMENT.--Ladies (several) wanted to COPY manuscript SERMONS for supply to the clergy. Reasonable terms. Apply by letter only to R. H., 39, New-buildings, Coventry.
R. H. was Robert Hemmings, who was eventually tried at the Warwick Assizes of last March, and whose modus operandi was then described. Several young ladies seeing the advertisements, and wishing for employment, wrote to the address given, in answer to which they received the “Prospectus of the Private Office for the Supply of Sermons and Lectures to Clergymen and Public Speakers.” In this highly-titled and pretentious document, clergymen “who find the composition of sermons too heavy a tax on their ingenuity, are invited to subscribe for manuscript sermons, arranged according to the three schools of thought in the English Church. The High Church section is subdivided into Ritualistic and moderate Anglican. The subscription for three sermons weekly is four guineas per annum, payable in advance. The same sermon will not be sent to any two clergymen within twenty miles of each other.” It also states, that the business of the office rendering necessary the employment of copyists, it has been decided to employ ladies only, the reason being that home occupation to gentlewomen of limited income is such a great desideratum of our times. Then it goes on to say that “the ordinary avenues for respectable women desiring to replenish their scanty purses are so overstocked that the limited number we are able to employ will gladly welcome the opportunity of turning a fair handwriting to a profitable account. The remuneration paid will be 2d. per 100 words. To avoid the possibility of unscrupulous persons obtaining valuable sermons on pretence of copying, a guarantee of 10s. will be required from each copyist before MSS. are sent, to be returned when she may discontinue working. Applicants for employment should enclose 2s. 6d. on account of their deposit, which will either be returned or a notification of engagement sent. In the latter case the balance must then be remitted, in order that the first parcel may be supplied. All communications to be sent to Mr Robert Hemmings, 39, New-buildings, Coventry.” One young lady resident in London, who gave evidence, sent the half-crown, and then received a letter stating that she would be employed on forwarding a post-office order to Birmingham for 7s. 6d. She did not do so, but many other ladies were not so wise. The prisoner having obtained the money, ceased to communicate with the applicants. The jury found the prisoner guilty, and the judge sentenced him to twelve months’ imprisonment with hard labour.
A more fortunate rogue was one who came into notice at the Sussex Assizes four or five years back. Justice may or may not have overtaken him since, for these fellows have so many and such various aliases that unless you happen to see one tried and hear him sentenced, there is no way of telling who he is or what he may have been. The object of our care at the present moment was known at Bognor in Sussex as Henry Watkis, though as he admitted to one more name, the suggestive one of Walker, even there, it would be difficult to say what might be his name in London or any other large town. He used to advertise to procure situations in London daily and weekly papers, and some complaints having been made to the police, he was taken into custody on a warrant, and appeared at the Chichester Quarter Sessions. From a newspaper report of the time we take some of the following particulars of what must be considered a decided miscarriage of justice.
Watkis lived at 6 Jessamine Cottages, Bognor, and when the superintendent of police from Chichester searched his cottage, he found under the stairs 530 letters, consisting of testimonials, replies to, and drafts of advertisements; and in another part of the house he found about 150 envelopes, apparently sent for replies, from which stamps had been cut. When Watkis was apprehended, he acknowledged that he was the person who had been advertising in the name of “B. C., Post-office, Chichester,” by which it seems that he had still another alias, though not in Bognor. On that day he sent a lad to the Chichester post-office, and a large bundle of letters, addressed as above, was brought back from the office. In the course of a few days after Watkis’s apprehension, between seven and eight hundred letters were received at the post-office all directed in the same way. Evidence was given that advertisements were inserted in the Daily Telegraph and Lloyd’s in consequence of orders received in letters signed “Hy. Watkis,” and “Hy. Walker.” About 500 letters were received at Chichester, addressed “X. Y. Z,” in accordance with one of the advertisements, and a very large number were also received at Emsworth under still a fresh set of initials. Altogether nearly 20,000 letters are supposed to have been sent to the two offices for the accused. It was proved that 34s. worth of stamps, all singles, had been sold by Watkis. At the conclusion of the address for the prosecution, the deputy recorder ruled that there was no case to go to the jury as far as the law was concerned. There was no proof that Watkis had, either on his own part or on that of others, no such situations to offer as had been advertised. The jury were not satisfied without hearing the evidence that the prisoner was not guilty. The deputy recorder said they had placed him in a very difficult position, and he must tell them again that the indictment could not be maintained in point of law. Therefore they would be doing a very irregular thing to go into the case. It was for them to find a verdict in accordance with the ruling of the court on the point of law. After some discussion the jury returned into court, and the foreman, in answer to the usual question, said, “If we are obliged to say not guilty, we must; but the jury wish to express a strong opinion.” By advice of the deputy recorder, however, this opinion was not recorded, and the prisoner was accordingly discharged.
We will wind up this portion of our list of swindles with an advertisement of the same order, which succeeded in realising a good income for its promoter:--
LADIES and EDUCATED WOMEN are respectfully invited to consult Mrs. EGGLESTON’S SERIES of 60 HOME and other NEW EMPLOYMENTS, which are beginning to attract a large share of public interest for their marked superiority over very unremunerative pursuits usually engaged in.--Enclose an addressed stamped envelope to Mrs Eggleston, ----, Ramsgate, for prospectus.
Sixty different businesses to choose from for home employment! Dollseye and leather-apron weaving was doubtless among them; and in sorting out those occupations most suited to her various correspondents, Mrs Eggleston doubtless passed a pleasant time at the seaside, even if she did not lay up riches against the time she returned to London.
Turf-swindlers are next upon our list, and no one will doubt that these gentry are well deserving of attention, the more so as, partly by themselves, and partly by means of the shortsightedness peculiar to the public, which causes it to form judgments on subjects it does not understand, welchers and thieves who advertise the most impossible “certainties” have been in numerous instances taken to represent the respectable and honourable turfite. We know it is the custom now to assume that a man is bound to be dishonourable if he be professionally connected with racing in any capacity; and any effort made to contradict wholesale and thoughtless accusations is supposed to be the outcome of self-interest, or the blind devotion of quixotry. Men who are cool and calculating enough when discussing ordinary subjects, become almost rabid when the turf is mentioned; and in most articles which have been written on the subject of sporting advertisements, it is assumed that the scheming concocters of baits for fools are fair representatives of the bookmaking class, and all are alike denounced. Surely it would be as just to assume that the baby-farmers and promoters of home employment whose effusions we have quoted were fair representatives of ordinary commerce, as that the “discretionary-investment” promoter is in any way connected with the legitimate bookmaker. We have no wish here to argue for or against betting; but we cannot help noticing that even in Parliament--which is never supposed to legislate upon what it does not understand!--notorious thieves have been taken to represent the principal advertising bookmakers, and long arguments as to the equity of the Betting-House Act framed on the assumption. During the present year there has been considerable discussion in the House of Commons with reference to the Act which was passed in 1853, Scotland being at the time exempt from its operation. The effect of leaving the “land of cakes” in the position of one who is known to be too virtuous to need protection was not visible for some years; for though the Act of Sir Alexander Cockburn had the effect of clearing away the numerous betting-offices, which were undoubtedly at the time public nuisances and open lures to men whose speculative disposition was in inverse proportion to its means of gratification, the better-class agents, whose business was carried on through the post only, continued to flourish or decay, according to circumstances, until 1869. The attention of the police being then drawn to numerous advertisements which appeared in the London and provincial papers on the subject of betting, a raid was made on a large establishment near Covent Garden: books and papers, clerks and managers, were seized and conveyed to Bow Street; and though the employés were ultimately discharged, the proprietor was ultimately fined heavily, the decision of the magistrate being eventually endorsed by the judges to whom the case was referred on appeal. A flight of betting men resulted, the resting-place of some being Glasgow, and of others Edinburgh; from both of which places they put forth their advertisements as before, safe in the knowledge that so far, at all events, the law was on their side. The extension of the Act of 1853 was of course only matter of time; but the first two or three efforts failed signally, principally on account of the blind animosity of the promoters of the measure, which caused them to frame bills which, for intolerance and hopeless stupidity, have perhaps never been equalled. Another cause was a feeling that, while one form of betting was allowed at Tattersall’s and the chief sporting clubs--a form which had shown itself equal to ruining several peers and hundreds of young men of less degree--it was impolitic to over-legislate with regard to the half-crowns and half-sovereigns of working men and small tradesmen, and to say to them, while yet the terrible “plunging” years were fresh in memory, “Dukes and marquises only shall ruin themselves at will, you, the common people, must be saving as well as industrious.”
At last Mr Anderson, one of the members for Glasgow, introduced his Extension Bill (1874), and though his arguments were eminently ridiculous, as he assumed that every advertiser was a swindler, his legislative attempt was a much greater success than any former effort had been in the same direction, and his bill, with a few modifications, eventually became law. As an instance of the feeling to which this measure gave rise, we quote part of a criticism upon it from the most able of the sporting papers which make the turf their principal study, the Sportsman, the first journal that refused the advertisements of swindlers whose intentions were evident, a method of self-abnegation which might be studied to advantage by many virtuous newspapers, which, while they weep over the iniquity of sporting advertisements, are strangely oblivious as to the character or effect of those which appear in their own columns. It must be remembered that the “ring” and Tattersall’s betting--of which mention is made in the following--is not interfered with by law, because nothing is staked before the decision of the race but “honour.” This, being often deeply mortgaged, is found insufficient for the demand when settling-day arrives.
Says the writer in the Sportsman, after demolishing several of the charges made against ready-money betting: “Take the case of those who bet in the ring, or at Tattersall’s, or in the clubs. What guarantee is there between the contracting parties that there shall be no element of fraud, and consequently no immorality in the transaction? And what guarantee is there that one or other of the contracting parties who is induced to bet is not a person who cannot afford to lose? There is an inducement to bet on either side: on the side of the layer and on the side of the backer, and will any one acquainted with the subject be prepared to say that in scores of cases there is not on both parts a total inability to pay in the event of loss? What man is there who, having seen much of the ring, cannot recall many instances of layers betting to such an extent that they could never pay if the fates were against them, and of backers ‘having’ the ring all round without a sovereign in their pockets? Nay, cannot even the general public who are not initiated into such mysteries remember numbers of men who have ruined themselves and others under the system in which Mr Anderson ‘does not feel there is any immorality,’ because in it ‘the element of fraud is not introduced,’ and because under it ‘people who cannot afford to lose’ are not induced to bet? The result of his bill will be that he will drive men from one style of betting, in which they lose or win, knowing the extent of their gains or their losses, to another, under which they may be drawn into hopeless speculation, and perhaps concomitant fraud, simply because they are not called on for ready money. We do not propose to follow Mr Anderson through his ingenious and amusing descriptions of the advertisements of tipsters and ‘discretionary-investment’ people. He was good enough to introduce ourselves as a striking example of the facility with which such persons could foist their schemes on the public, and of the large profits which were derived by certain newspaper proprietors from them. He had the honesty to acknowledge that we had refused to take any further announcements with respect to ‘discretionary investments,’ and that we had persistently cautioned our readers to have nothing to do with them.... As for tipsters, who merely offer to give information for a shilling’s worth of stamps, what immorality can there be in that which is not to be found in the ‘selections’ of the daily newspapers? Even the Times, in a roundabout ‘respectable’ way, now and then indicates horses which, in the opinion of its sporting writer, will win certain races, and there is hardly a daily paper in town or country which has not its regular ‘prophet,’ who from day to day lifts up his voice or his pen and offers inducements to the public to bet. Can any one of such journals say to us, ‘I am holier than thou, because I sell my prophecies for a penny, and thou insertest the advertisements of men who want a dozen stamps for theirs’? But the whole policy of objecting to certain classes of advertisements is absurd. If the proprietor of a newspaper were to inquire, even superficially, into the bona fides of all the announcements he makes every day, his journal could not be conducted. If he were even to confine his attention to the examination of the prospectuses of joint-stock companies--and this will appeal to Mr Anderson--he would be in the Bankruptcy Court in six months. Suppose the directors of any one of hundreds of bubble concerns which every year carry away the public with ‘bogus’ announcements were to appear before the manager of the Times with their prospectuses, what would they think if he said, ‘Gentlemen, before I insert this you must prove to me that it is not a gross swindle;’ and how would they proceed to do so?”
We admit to a weakness for reading the sporting papers, and can therefore vouch for the truth of what the Sportsman says about its own action. It would have been well, however, if other papers had been as careful, for we happen to know that all the contemporaries of the journal from which we have quoted did not come out with quite such clean hands. Some not only continued to insert the advertisements, despite numerous complaints, but actually doubled the usual tariff price to the thieves. This seems to have been a pretty general proceeding when the discretionary movement was at its height, all papers which continued to insert the specious swindles after the exposures had begun being very careful to be well paid for their trouble. As in these days the plain truth is often the most desperate of libels, we must refrain from particularising; but we should think that no one in his sober senses will dispute the evident fact that such newspaper proprietors as took double pay from men because they knew they were assisting them in robbery, were morally far and away more guilty than the robbers themselves. If any apology is needed for our going so far into the betting subject, it will be found in the almost total ignorance, as well as the blind prejudice, which is every day manifested about the difference between the commission agents and their greatest enemies, the advertising welchers.
The raid which drove the bookmakers from London to the principal towns in Scotland seems almost to have been organised by the authorities in the interest of the scamps of the betting world. It certainly was considerably to the latter’s advantage. In the hurry and turmoil which eventuated from the hegira, it was hard for people who were not experts to tell the good men from the bad; and as, the more unfounded a man’s pretensions, the greater were his promises, letters containing remittances almost swarmed into the offices least worthy of confidence. One good, however, resulted from this. The conversion of sinners we have the best authority for regarding as a blessing, and it must be admitted that owing to the manner in which money poured in upon them, and one or two subsequent bits of luck in the way of unbacked horses’ victories, men who went to Glasgow and Edinburgh as adventurers, if not as actual thieves, remained to become not only solvent, but strictly virtuous. It was not, however, until affairs had somewhat settled down in the North, until Scotland began to be regarded as the permanent abode of the layer of odds, that advertisements which on the face of them were gigantic swindles appeared. Hitherto the attempts of impostors had been confined to a semblance of really fair and legitimate business, the firm being existent as long as there was nothing to pay, and non est immediately the blow came. And people who imagine that a bookmaker has nothing to do but take money, would respect him rather more than they do now if after one or two big races they could see his account, and note the scrupulous manner in which every debt is paid, if he bids for respectability in his vocation. A delay of a day in his settlement would lead to unpleasant results, for the very contiguity of the thieves makes the honest men more exact in their transactions. So it is usual, when a man has money to receive by post from a commission agent, for him to get it at once, or most likely not at all. The tipstering and touting fraternities had, while the headquarters of advertising turfites remained in London, been satisfied with short paragraphs intimating their absolute knowledge of the future, and their willingness to communicate such knowledge to the British public for a consideration in the way of stamps, or a percentage on winnings. But when once ready money had been tasted, it seemed to act on these people as blood is said to on tigers, and they determined to have more at all risks. It was useless to try for it a year or so after the migration by applications couched in the ordinary style, for the run of business was by that time divided among certain firms, and the old slow way of giving advice for shillings and sixpences was abhorrent to minds that soared after bank-notes and post-office orders; besides, it had very nearly worn itself out. Fresh moves were therefore necessary, and they were made in various ways, each of which was more or less successful. The most important of them all, and the one with which we have to do now, was the discretionary-investment dodge, which was for a time a complete success, and which would have lasted much longer than it did, had it not been for the faculty of imitation possessed by thieves other than those who inaugurated the venture. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but even flattery must be painful when it is destructive, and Messrs Balliee & Walter could doubtless have dispensed with the crowds who followed in their wake, and almost made the fortunes of all papers who would take their advertisements. We are not aware whether the system was invented by Balliee & Walter, either or both; but, anyhow, they were its first promoters to any extent, and became thoroughly identified with it. Rumour states that Balliee was a kind of Mrs Harris, and that Walter was the firm. This is nothing to us, though, however much it may be to those who were despoiled of their cash by the discretionary swindle. The advertisements put forth for the benefit of those willing to trust their money blindly into the hands of men of whom they knew nothing must have been very successful, for it is admitted that the letters received in Glasgow for Balliee & Walter were so enormous in quantity that special arrangements had often to be made for their delivery. It is noticeable that swindlers of this description always assume that their firm is not only long established but well known, and the following, taken from the first page of the Sporting Life of the Derby-day 1871, will show that the particular people in question had no scruple about inventing facts for the purpose of substantiating their arguments:--
THE KINGSCLERE LONDON AND GLASGOW TURF COMMISSION AGENCY.
Messrs. BALLIEE and WALTER beg to inform their subscribers and the sporting public that, in consequence of increase of business, they have opened a Commission Agency in Glasgow, where in future all commissions will be executed.
Gentlemen may rely on liberal treatment and prompt settlement of all claims. All letters answered same day as received.
* * * * *
MESSRS. BALLIEE AND WALTER
(Members of the principal West-End Clubs),
62, JAMAICA STREET, GLASGOW.
As heretofore, Commissions of every description, and to any amount, will be undertaken, the following being the leading features:--
INVESTMENTS ON FORTHCOMING EVENTS effected at the best Market Prices.
FIRST FAVOURITES backed at the post, and the rate of odds guaranteed as quoted by the sporting paper the investor chooses to adopt.
JOCKEYS’ MOUNTS invested upon in accordance with any scale or principle.
POST COMMISSIONS for EPSOM MEETING will meet with prompt attention.
* * * * *
THE EPSOM CARNIVAL.
THE OAKS A CERTAINTY.
“So if to be a millionaire at present is your aim, Don’t hesitate, but join at once our systematic gains.”
Shakspeare, revised and improved.
A SAFE INVESTMENT.--WINNING A CERTAINTY.
KINGSCLERE RACING CIRCULAR DISCRETIONARY INVESTMENTS.
Messrs. BALLIEE and WALTER, Proprietors (Members of the principal West-End Clubs).
The only recognised method by which backers of horses can win large sums at all the principal meetings.
PROSPECTUSES FREE ON RECEIPT OF ADDRESS.
* * * * *
MESSRS. BALLIEE and WALTER draw the attention of investors to the all-important fact that they alone of all firms who undertake Discretionary Investments are to be seen personally in the Ring, and are represented at the lists outside, at every meeting throughout the racing season. Some firms, although they state they are present, are never to be seen.
SELECTED MORTEMER TO WIN AND A PLACE FOR CHESTER CUP; THE DWARF, GREAT NORTHERN; LORD HAWTHORN, FLYING DUTCHMAN; STANLEY, DONCASTER SPRING HANDICAP;
With nearly every other winner at York and Newmarket. We defy contradiction, and court inquiry.
RESULTS OF LATE MEETINGS:--
Each £10 investor at York was remitted by Friday’s post (May 12) £108 nett winnings.
Each £5 investor at Doncaster was remitted by Monday’s post, £85.
Being exclusive of stake and nett return after commission (5 per cent.) had been deducted.
Newmarket accounts and winnings were forwarded by Tuesday’s post, May 16.
Gentlemen of capital and backers of horses can now judge of the intrinsic value of this infallible system of backing our Final Selection at the post.
* * * * *
MESSRS. BALLIEE and WALTER will continue their highly successful system of DISCRETIONARY INVESTMENTS at the
EPSOM MEETING,
where they personally attend, and as such a great influx of business is expected during the Derby Week, they have engaged three extra Commissioners to assist them in carrying out the system, and again are sanguine of realising a gold-achieving victory.
AT EPSOM MEETING LAST SUMMER, SEASON 1870,
Each £25 investor was returned £703 nett Winnings, in addition to stake deposited.
Each investor of £20 in 1868 realised £487. „ £25 „ 1869 „ £324 15s. „ £50 „ 1870 „ £1,406.
The above sums were paid to each investor of the specified amounts, and this season we with confidence assert that the investments will be more remunerative to the investor.
The Oaks this season will be won by, comparatively speaking, an outsider. Last season’s subscribers will remember our warning them against Hester, and we assure our readers that Hannah will, like all the Baron’s favourites, be doomed to defeat. A clever Northern division have a filly the beau ideal of Blink Bonny, as being tried a 7℔ better animal than Bothwell, and with health must win the fillies’ race in a canter. The owner most unfortunately omitted to enter her for the Two Thousand and Derby, or we should have seen her credited with the first-named event, and first favourite for Blue Riband honours.
SEVERAL RODS ARE IN PICKLE
for the minor events. Particulars were given in our last week’s Circular (May 12), and even at this distant period we are enabled to predict the success of six certain winners.
HAVING HORSES OF OUR OWN,
and others identical with our interests, running at this meeting, coupled with the important commissions we have the working of at EPSOM.
Our knowledge of market movements, the intimate terms we are on with the various owners, jockeys, and trainers, our social position with the élite of the racing world, enables us to ascertain the intentions of other owners and the chances their respective candidates possess--information far beyond the reach of other advertisers.
This is by no means all; we merely pause to take breath and recover self-possession, after a steady perusal of Mr Walter’s benefactions. It is noticeable that the standard of verse employed by these philanthropists is about on a par with their standard of morality. It seems wonderful that any sane person should believe in the existence of a certain guide to the winning-post, and the idea that, if there had been such a thing, Messrs Balliee & Walter would have assuredly used it for themselves alone, never seems to have entered into the heads of their victims, at all events until too late. After the vaunt about position and information, the intimates of “the élite of the racing world” go on:--
MESSRS. BALLIEE and WALTER, alone of all firms that undertake Discretionary Investments, are to be seen personally in the Ring, and they wish to draw the attention of Turf speculators to the fact that NO OTHER ADVERTISERS ARE OWNERS OF HORSES, despite what they may say to the contrary. If their systems equalled ours, would they not accept the challenge given by us for the past twelve months in the various sporting papers? Vide commencement of advertisement.
So sanguine are we of success at Epsom, the innumerable and peculiar advantages presented, and every facility being offered for the successful working of our
DISCRETIONARY METHOD, that we are enabled to GUARANTEE AGAINST LOSS, and assert with confidence that WINNING IS REDUCED TO AN ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY.
DEPOSIT REQUIRED FOR DISCRETIONARY INVESTMENTS AT THE EPSOM SUMMER MEETING:-- £500, £100, £50, £25, £10, or £5.
By investing in accordance with this infallible method of backing our final selections at the post, loss is simply an impossibility, and guaranteed against,
WINNING BEING REDUCED TO AN ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY.
This often-repeated assertion (and not once contradicted for the past five years), and the winnings realised weekly for subscribers who patronise this system, is sufficient to prove its intrinsic value.
This is just the sort and class of meeting for gentlemen of capital and systematic investors to invest a £500 or £1,000 bank, being indeed a golden opportunity that all should embrace. The fact of our guaranteeing
A WIN EQUAL TO OUR SUCCESS OF LAST SUMMER, and, as previously stated, GUARANTEE TO HOLD THE INVESTOR AGAINST LOSS OF EVEN A FRACTIONAL PART OF CAPITAL EMPLOYED,
should be sufficient to convince gentlemen of the true character and value of this infallible method of backing our final selections at the post.
CAN ANY SYSTEM BE SO LUCRATIVE TO THE INVESTOR?
Our position as owners of horses and proprietors of “THE KINGSCLERE RACING CIRCULAR,” the most successful medium of all Turf advices, and has treble the circulation of any other circular published; the flattering encomiums passed on our “Infallible Method” by the Sporting Press of the United Kingdom, and being recommended by them as
“The only recognised method by which backers of horses can win large sums at all the principal meetings;”
coupled with our position as the most influential Commission Agents both in the London and Manchester Markets, ensure gentlemen entrusting us with Discretionary Investments being fairly and honestly dealt with, and the successes that we promise and achieve meeting after meeting in the columns of this and other papers.
* * * * *
FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS.
The following average results speak volumes in favour of this method:--
The following successes have been achieved this season by
THE KINGSCLERE RACING CIRCULAR’S INFALLIBLE METHOD OF DISCRETIONARY INVESTMENTS.
Each £25 investor at Enfield received nett winnings value £200.
Each £10 investor at Lichfield was remitted by Thursday’s post (April 13) £82 10s., being winnings and stake included, after the 5 per cent. commission had been deducted.
Each investor of a £10 stake at the Lincoln Meeting received nett winnings of £180 10s. by Tuesday’s post, March 28.
Each investor at Liverpool in accordance with this system, on two investments, viz.,
THE LAMB Win, SCARRINGTON A place,
realised £75 with each £10 invested.
A £10 stake realised £200 nett winnings at the Burton (Lincoln) Meeting.
A £25 stake invested on Waterloo Cup realised £300,
MASTER MCGRATH
being selected right throughout the piece, and again in finals with Pretender.
A £10 stake realised at the Cambridgeshire Meeting the sum of £240 nett winnings.
A £5 stake at the West Drayton Meeting realised £30 nett winnings.
Bromley and several other meetings were also highly successful.
At Croxton Park each £10 invested realised £102 nett.
Each £25 invested at Thirsk realised £150.
THE ABOVE AMOUNTS HAVE BEEN PAID THIS SEASON TO ALL PATRONS WHO ENTRUSTED US WITH DISCRETIONARY INVESTMENTS OVER THESE MEETINGS, again proving the value of this method over all others advertised.
The past augurs well for the future, as the above successes testify. We personally attend EPSOM, and are always successful at this meeting.
A LOSS HAS NEVER OCCURRED TO FOLLOWERS OF OUR SYSTEM, and this season we are even more than ever confident of success.
Cash reaching us on Thursday will be in time for two days’ investments; and cash arriving by Friday’s first post will be invested on Oaks winner and the last day of the meeting.
Five per cent. deducted from all winnings.
THE LARGER THE STAKE, THE GREATER SCOPE IS AVAILABLE FOR LUCRATIVE SPECULATION. LOSS OF STAKE IS IN ALL CASES GUARANTEED AGAINST.
The opulent winnings realised weekly throughout the season cannot fail to convince systematic speculators that this system is the par excellence of all methods for winning large sums at each and every important race-gathering.
Winnings and account of investments will be forwarded on Monday, May 29.
Investors can have their winnings (less 5 per cent.) remitted by open cheque or bank notes, as preferred, by signifying their wishes on that point when remitting cash for investment.
One trial is sufficient to prove to the most sceptical the value of this method over all others advertised. Gentlemen who have lost their money in the so-called winning modus swindles, or through following their own fancies, advice of puffing tipsters, newspaper selections, backing first favourites, jockeys’ mounts, or any other system, should give our infallible method a trial at the Epsom Meeting. Cash should be forwarded to reach us on or before Tuesday, addressed to Mr W. H. WALTER, 62 Jamaica-street, Glasgow. If after that date, address letters, &c., &c., W. H. WALTER (of Kingsclere), Box 20, Post-office, Epsom, where due precaution has been taken for their safe delivery.
Cheques to be crossed, Bank, Newbury. Letters containing gold or notes to be registered. Scotch and Irish notes taken as cash. Stamps, 20s. 6d. to the pound. P.O. Orders in all cases to be made payable to W. H. WALTER, and drawn on the Post-office, Newbury, Berkshire.
⁂ The successes we achieve weekly, our social status on the Turf, the years we have been before the public, the fact of our being promoters of Discretionary Investments, our selecting Jack Spigot for City and Suburban, Vulcan for Lincoln Handicap, the Lamb for Grand National, Bothwell for Two Thousand, Mortemer (a place), Chester Cup, the Dwarf for Great Northern Handicap; Lord Hawthorn, Flying Dutchman’s Handicap; Stanley, Doncaster Handicap, with nearly every other winner at York and Doncaster, &c., prove the value of our information and the integrity and value of our system of backing Discretionary Investments.
* * * * *
THE
KINGSCLERE RACING CIRCULAR of Friday next (May 26), price 1s., will contain a Review of the Derby running, and the WINNER OF THE ASCOT STAKES, with some important notes anent ROYAL HUNT CUP and ST. LEGER, with selections and keys for all races at the Manchester, Scarborough, Winchester, West Drayton, and Wye Meetings. Notes on the Two Year Old Form of the Season, and a Bird’s-eye View of the Middle Park Plate, being particulars of Walter’s Visit to the Dark Two Year Olds at their Training Grounds. Terms:--Season, 21s.--Address orders and letters, W. H. WALTER (of Kingsclere), Ravenscourt Park, Hammersmith, London, W.
In thanking our Derby subscribers for their past support, we respectfully solicit a continuance of their favours on the above terms.
The Private Telegraphic Key Book will be issued to Season Subscribers only in the course of a few days. Those that intend renewing their subscriptions should do so at once.
It must not be imagined that this advertisement was intended to obtain one large haul before the business was abandoned. With little alteration it ran for a very considerable time in many papers, and the expenses of advertising alone must have been enormous. For it is not to be expected that any blind credulity exhibited itself in the various publishing offices, and hard cash, and plenty of it, had to be expended before a line of Balliee & Walter’s was allowed to appear. It will be seen by what we have quoted that winnings and accounts of investments are promised on Monday, and in true business-like style every depositor received his envelope. With what feverish anxiety many must have torn open the enclosure! So many men, so many minds, says the proverb, and the ways of expressing wrath must have been various indeed. We are, however, not in a position to furnish any particulars as to how the news was received, it is enough to know what the information was. And, as may be guessed, it was not satisfactory. The circulars were always neatly constructed, and set forth with a regret that owing to a combination of untoward circumstances the hopes of the chief investor, “the man at the post,” had been dashed, and for that week--always the first week of such an occurrence--matters had resulted disastrously. Then would follow a statement of account, in which it was shown that investments had been fortunate at the outset, that then they had changed, and that by placing too much money on an apparent certainty, so as to recover the losings, the whole bulk of the bank had departed, never to return. The sums received by Messrs Balliee & Walter were of course various, and according to the amount, so was the table arranged; but there was a great family likeness about them all, the principle being to show that the horses, when they did not win, were very close up, and so seconds, with now and again a third, were nearly always chosen! Thus one £10 stake for the Derby week of 1871--the week in which the advertisement given appears--was accounted for thus:--
Epsom, Tuesday, May 23. Won. Lost.
Trial Stakes, Manille, -- £0 10 0 Horton Stakes, Trident, -- 1 0 0 Maiden Plate, Queen Bee, -- 2 0 0 Rous Stakes, Banderolle, -- 0 10 0 Woodcote Stakes, Cremorne (11 to 8 on), £0 14 6 --
Wednesday.
Bentinck Plate, Lady Atholstone, -- 0 10 0 Derby, King of the Forest, -- 1 0 0 Stanley Stakes, Hamilton, -- 2 0 0 Match, Lizzie Cowl (5 to 4 on), 0 8 0 -- Manor Stakes, Holdenby, -- 0 10 0 Town Plate, Banderolle, -- 1 0 0
Thursday.
Glasgow Plate, Countryman (2 to 1 on), 0 5 0 -- High Level Handicap, Free Trade, -- 0 10 0 Two-year-old Stakes, Clotilde filly, -- 1 0 0 Tadworth Stakes, Manna, -- 2 0 0
£1 7 6 £12 10 0
With five per cent. commission charged on the winnings, this left a balance £1, 3s. 9½d. due to Messrs Balliee & Walter, which it was hoped would be at once remitted. This was cruel, but crueller still was the statement, that had the stake been larger, affairs would have arranged themselves satisfactorily, as a great change took place at the close of Thursday and on Friday, and those whose banks lasted over the first run of ill-luck left off winners of large sums. With the demand for payment of balance came a request which, from its very coolness, must have staggered those who, being once victimised, could see through the swindle, though in very many instances--as if in corroboration of Mr Carlyle’s theory--it was complied with. This was a desire for a fresh trial, and positive security from loss was guaranteed. It is noticeable in the table given that by a judicious selection of races and horses the winnings were bound to be always low, as animals with odds on are selected, and that when stakes are lowest. When on the doubling principle the stake on the chosen winner would be inconveniently large a race was omitted. The returns made were necessarily various, but that given is an accurate representative of the system.
Balliee & Walter continued to flourish for a long time; but whether it was that they became individually greedy, whether newspaper proprietors became exorbitant in their demands on the spoil, or whether rivalry affected them, we know not, all we do know is that they committed a most openly outrageous act on a race-course, and the bubble at once burst. It may seem strange that anything discretionary-investment agents, who had been gradually becoming a byword and a reproach, could do would affect their position; but our duty is to record the fact, and not to allow it to be disputed on any theoretic grounds. If they had calmly continued to merely swindle, they might have advertised till now; but they outraged the sanctity of the British race-course, and were damned for all time, if not to all eternity. They had become possessed by some means or other of a hurdle-racer called Goodfellow, and two or three weeks before one of the suburban gate-money meetings they made a match for him to run a race at it against a very moderate mare. Immediately this was done they circularised all customers, telling them to be sure and back Goodfellow, as he could not possibly lose, and stating that on account of very heavy investments already made, they could afford, as a favour to their clients, to return them double the odds which would be laid against Goodfellow on the day. In the Kingsclere Racing Circular, a weekly pamphlet issued by these honourable gentlemen, we find under date March 10, 1871, the following ingenious application. This, it has been since proved, brought heavy sums to the Ravenscourt Park exchequer, whence it was not allowed to depart, Messrs Balliee & Walter, like true and legitimate bookmakers, preferring to lay the 6 to 4’s against their own horse themselves, rather than that their patrons should be inconvenienced by having to take shorter prices from others:--
CROYDON SPECIAL INVESTMENT.
The match--Goodfellow v. Harriett--will come off at Croydon on Tuesday next. It is simply a matter of putting the coin down and picking it up again. It is any odds on our horse, and as we wish our Subscribers to participate in this certainty, we will undertake to obtain for them 6 to 4 for all cash sent, which must reach Mr Walter, Ravenscourt Park, if possible by Monday evening, and not later than Tuesday’s first post. Gibson is sure to back Harriett for a 1000, and probably bring her favourite. The sole reason of us wishing Subscribers to allow us to invest for them, is to prevent them rushing on and spoiling the market, which will be to their interest as well as our own. We have engaged one of the cleverest cross country riders of the day to ride Goodfellow, and our horse never was so fit and well as at the present time. Daniels will have the mount of Harriett. Such a chance may not occur again throughout the season. Investors should speculate a £50 or £100 Bank. We cannot undertake to invest more than £300 for any one of our patrons.
By this means Balliee & Walter obtained from their purblind dupes a large amount of money with which to back Goodfellow, and of this they of course placed as much as they could upon Harriett, the opposing candidate. In the race, if race so iniquitous a transaction can be called, the discretionary-investment horse was, as might have been expected, “pulled,” so that Balliee & Walter had all the money they received to the good, besides what they won from the unsuspecting by backing the animal they had pretended to oppose. This led to their gradually disappearing from the front pages of the newspapers, though they continued their business under an alias very successfully. Walter was eventually fined a hundred pounds at one of the metropolitan courts, under the Betting-House Act, 1853, for having carried on a part of his business at Hammersmith. It seems rather ludicrous that a man should have been fined for what he in reality never did. But lawyers and magistrates could not distinguish the difference between betting and only pretending to bet, so they fined Mr Walter just as they would have done if he had been a really honourable man, and had therefore deserved punishment.
From the discretionary-investment class of turf-swindler we will now pass on to another, quite as ingenious and very often as dangerous. A few years back, when opportunity served--that is, when the honest layer of odds was harassed by the police and driven from London, and when good men and bad were almost irremediably mixed up--a sharp rogue hit upon an idea for making the tipstering and private-advice business a means to quite a new phase of imposition. This was known among those who profited by it as “forcing the voucher,” and a very pretty little game it was while it lasted, though the profits of pioneers were of course considerably diminished as soon as ever the secret got wind, by the imitative faculty to which reference has been already made. Commencing, as usual, with small advertisements and large profits, forcers in time found themselves, by stress of competition, obliged to spend a good share of their hard earnings in specially-tempting invitations to those who would go any but the right way towards being wealthy; or else to seek other courses. So in 1872 we find three or four firms occupying a large share of the papers, and giving forth promises without stint. Whether the original forcer was in any of these partnerships it is impossible to tell, as the names were, as a rule, fictitious, and often changed; but whether or not, it is certain that those who advertised heaviest drove all small thieves from the field, and so, two years back, the business, as far as we are concerned, was carried on chiefly by Adkins & Wood, Robert Danby & Co., Marshall & Grant, and James Rawlings & Co., who advertised quite separately, but whose notifications might very easily have been the work of one pen. We will therefore take Rawlings & Co. to represent the fraternity, and in their advertisement which appeared at the end of April 1872 will be found the peculiarities of all the others. This is it:--
DIGBY GRAND sent to every season subscriber, and for a place at 6 to 1, to every reader of THE PREMIER RACING CIRCULAR.
Proprietors, JAMES RAWLINGS and Co., 65, YORK PLACE, EDINBURGH.
Published by the Proprietors every Saturday, at their chief office, 65 York Place, Edinburgh.
THE PREMIER RACING CIRCULAR still maintains its well-merited reputation as the only infallible and unerringly-successful winning guide, by the aid of which private backers can and do, week by week, realise hundreds of pounds with perfect safety over the principal races throughout the kingdom. The uninterrupted series of successes which have attended its vaticinations during past seasons have been gloriously crowned by the success of every special investment advised in its pages this season, as will be seen by the following list of winners already given:--
Price at which clients were Race. Selection. Result. put on.
Croydon Footman Won 15 to 1 Lincoln Handicap Guy Dayrell Won 20 to 1 Grand National Casse Tête Won 25 to 1 Nottingham Handicap Flurry Won 10 to 1 Great Warwick Handicap Cedric the Saxon Won 12 to 1 Warwick Grand Annual Snowstorm Won 7 to 1 Northamptonshire Stakes Messager Won 8 to 1 City and Suburban Digby Grand Won 25 to 1
Thus a £10 stake on each of our selections already made this season has now won the handsome sum £1,164 after deducting our commission of 5 per cent.
If one statement of the above glorious triumph is untrue, we boldly invite our subscribers and clients to expose us in the fullest manner in the sporting papers. Promptitude, despatch, exactitude, and liberality, as in the past, will ever be our watchwords in the future.
Every reader of “The Sporting Life” is earnestly invited to send at once for this week’s number, as the information therein contained will enable everyone to win a little fortune over that splendid and highly lucrative mode of investment--
A DOUBLE EVENT That cannot be upset. The positive Winners of THE TWO THOUSAND and ONE THOUSAND GUINEAS.
It is rarely that we advise this method of investing, but when we have sent out to our clients a double event it has never failed to come off. Last year we advised a double event for these races--
Two Thousand Bothwell Won One Thousand Hannah Won
And this year both our selections are, if possible, greater and more undeniable certainties.
THE TWO THOUSAND GUINEAS.
Of all the good things that in the course of a long and varied experience on the Turf it has ever been our good fortune to be possessed of, we cannot recall a single occasion on which every attendant circumstance combined so surely to render, as in the present instance, the race such an absolute foregone conclusion for our selection. The trial which took place this week was unprecedented in its severity, and, to the surprise of owner and trainer, the animal performed so far beyond their most sanguine expectations or hopes as to show them that success is reduced to the greatest moral certainty ever known in the history of the English Turf. This is an opportunity similar to those that have made the fortunes of many of our most wealthy speculators, for whom, as in the present instance, victory is a foregone conclusion and defeat a moral impossibility. Everyone should seize the opportunity of reaping the rich harvest of golden fruit that awaits the bold speculator of foregone conclusions like this.
THE ONE THOUSAND GUINEAS.
It is to us an easy task to select the winner of this race, as the immense superiority she enjoys over every other animal engaged (known only to owner, trainer, and ourselves) is so vast that this race will be little more than an exercise canter for this speedy filly. So quietly has this good thing been nursed by the shrewd division to which the mare belongs, that a real good price is now to be had, though when this superb specimen of an English thoroughbred is seen at the post, we are confident that even money will be eagerly snapped up by those who till then neglect to back her.
THE DOUBLE EVENT,
as stated above, is as sure to come off as these lines are in print. Send then at once for this week’s number, and do not delay an hour if you wish to land a fortune over these two genuine certainties.
We could wish no better opportunity to display the genuine good things sent out by the “Premier Racing Circular” than these two races present, and we beg that everyone will at once send six stamps and stamped addressed envelope for this week’s number, and stand these morals to win them a fortune.
Address--
JAMES RAWLINGS and Co., 65, YORK PLACE, EDINBURGH.
If we were not certain that these men got large sums of money from willing victims, it would seem almost impossible that people could be found credulous enough to believe that absolute certainty could be secured on the turf. Certainty of losing is naturally much easier than certainty of winning, and yet even loss cannot be reduced to less than imminent probability so long as a horse goes to the post unphysicked, and the jockey is not allowed to openly pull him. And so, though no one will attempt to defend Messrs Rawlings & Co., their dupes deserve but the smallest amount of pity; for even the most foolish of them must have known that certainty of winning to them must have meant certainty of losing to the other side, and that therefore, even if the contract had been carried out, somebody must have been swindled. If it were not for the greed and avarice which mainly direct the actions of those who are generally known as fools, magsmen, sharpers, discretionary-investment commissioners, and voucher-forcers would have to take to honest employment. This may seem a truism, yet when a skittle-sharper or “street-mugger” is tried in a police court, and convicted for having victimised a “flat,” it never seems to strike the magistrate or the general public that the prisoner simply swindled a man who had all the will but not the ability to swindle him. And there can be no reasonable doubt--we should much like to see the matter tried--that the principal supports of rogues are the most grasping, selfish, and hard-hearted of mortals, and not at all the soft, good-natured bumpkins that they are generally depicted. We should not like to trust to either the honour or the honesty of any man who had been concerned even as a victim in one of the transactions which now and again appear in the police reports; and if we had any sympathy, which is not very likely, to bestow on either side, it would certainly be given to the man who gets sent to prison.
Rawlings & Co. seem to have managed the spring campaign of 1872 very successfully, for while other members of the same brotherhood had to drop out of the papers or to appear in new guise after April, we find our heroes still merrily addressing the public from the front page of the sporting papers of June 8, and as able to guarantee freedom from loss as ever. And though it may not seem long from the end to April to this early part of June, it must be recollected that within that space several very important meetings are held, and that dismal gaps are found in the ranks of both “wrong” and “right” men after a Derby, especially after such a Derby as Cremorne’s, which found out the weak spots in a good many big books, and altered the prospects of many a turfite, professional and amateur. So finding Rawlings so well through, we were tempted at the time to communicate with him, and discover the principle upon which he “forced the voucher.” Here is his advertisement of June 8, in which he glories in past triumphs and feels confident of future successes:--
CREMORNE, QUEEN’S MESSENGER, AND REINE.
JAMES RAWLINGS and Co., the oldest established Turf advisers in Great Britain; proprietors of
THE PREMIER RACING CIRCULAR,
the most successful winning guide extant.
* * * * *
THE PREMIER RACING CIRCULAR, selected Cremorne and Reine.
* * * * *
THE PREMIER RACING CIRCULAR of this day contains three certainties.
* * * * *
THE PREMIER RACING CIRCULAR’S selections pulled off the double event for the Derby and Oaks, likewise Queen’s Messenger for a place at 4 to 1.
* * * * *
THE PREMIER RACING CIRCULAR has this season selected each and every important winner, as may be seen by referring to back numbers of this publication, invaluable alike to large and small speculators. The proprietors beg respectfully to draw the attention of that section of the public who have neglected to take advantage of the opportunities that they have, for the past three months, weekly drawn attention to in the columns of this and other journals, that this week’s number of the Premier Racing Circular will contain three of the greatest morals and most undeniable certainties ever known in this or any other era of the Turf’s history, namely, the winner of
THE ASCOT STAKES,
a real good thing, at a real good price. Over this race any gentleman may safely invest as heavily as he may think fit, as we know that our selection cannot be beaten; the course is peculiarly adapted to the animal’s action, and the stable have satisfied themselves, past question or doubt, that he possesses both speed and stamina to land this event with the utmost ease.
THE ROYAL HUNT CUP
is equally a certainty for a veritable flyer, whose merits have hitherto been so cleverly concealed by the owner, that the handicapper has no idea of his sterling excellence. He is undergoing a special preparation for this race, the best light-weight in the world will be in the saddle, and a long price is now to be had.
THE NORTHUMBERLAND PLATE.
We have never yet missed selecting the winner of this race, and as the cleverest division on the Turf, as to whose movements we are always au fait, have specially laid themselves out to secure this prize, the public may rely upon it that, as in past years, we shall again select the winner.
This week’s number contains full particulars of these undeniable and gold-producing morals, in addition to a mass of other information invaluable to backers. No one should invest a shilling on any one of the above races without first forwarding us six stamps and stamped directed envelope for this week’s issue.
Address--
JAMES RAWLINGS and Co., 65, YORK PLACE, EDINBURGH.
Six stamps and a stamped directed envelope were accordingly sent, and in return we received a copy of the Premier Racing Circular, dated June 6, which was full of congratulations, and which promised far more than even the advertisements did. One paragraph in it was specially worthy of attention. It ran thus: “We have several commissions still unsettled over the Derby and Oaks. Gentlemen holding winning vouchers will please send them in at once.” What could be more fair, honourable, and straightforward than this; and who would think of suspecting Rawlings of unfair dealing? Yet, at the very time the invitation we have quoted appeared, the people who sent in their winning vouchers received in return, not money, but the following circular, which we reprint exactly, and which, with the alteration of the signature and the name of the meeting, will do for any firm and any week’s racing the reader may choose. This is one of a lot we have collected at times from many victims:--
65 YORK PLACE, EDINBURGH.
SIR,
We regret to inform you that, in consequence of some of our important Accounts not having been settled at Epsom this week, we must unavoidably postpone the settlement. This is the first time that such an unpleasantness has occurred, but we can assure you that we have done all in our power in the matter. No one regrets this unfortunate affair more than ourselves, after serving the public so faithfully for such a number of years, and all we can do is to remit you immediately we receive winnings from the temporarily embarrassed Commissioners.
Meanwhile, We remain,
Yours faithfully,
JAMES RAWLINGS & CO.
There is no boast in the statement, that when we received the Premier Racing Circular, we were pretty well acquainted with the manner in which Rawlings conducted his business--it would be a poor thing to boast about--and so we turned to the envelope to look for the vouchers we knew would be there. And there they were, enclosed in a piece of paper, on which was the information, that owing to the large sums they had invested when the horses were at long shots, they could afford to return odds considerably over the current market; and winding up with a request that intending backers would at once forward the amounts for which the vouchers were filled in, or any part of it which would suit them. Yes, there they were, three in number, looking like cheques--the first, No. 32,323, being for the Ascot Stakes, and bearing the bet of £200 to £10 against Palmerston for the Ascot Stakes. The second was numbered 36,162, and said £300 to £10 Pitchfork for the Royal Hunt Cup; and the third was 39,346, and was to the tune of £400 to £20 Minerve for the Northumberland Plate. And this is the advice with regard to them, given in the Circular, without the alteration of even a letter:--
_THE PITCHFORK, PALMERSTON, AND MINERVE COMMISSION_
We have been able to work the Commission (Pitchfork, Palmerston, and Minerve), at an unusual liberal price, and we herewith offer for your acceptance, as per enclosed vouchers, the very advantageous bets about these absolute morals. Should you accept the whole (which we strongly recommend), you will please forward stake money by return and retain vouchers; if only a portion, return same, with stake money, and a corrected voucher to amount of stake will be at once forwarded to you. In the remote contingency of your not accepting any portion of either bet, you will please return vouchers without a moment’s delay, that we may have an opportunity of offering the bets to other clients.
Those who wish to back Pitchfork, Palmerston, and Minerve for a place, can be on at one-fourth the odds, but to no greater amount than a £50 stake.
The secret of forcing the voucher, therefore, lay in the fact of offering far longer prices than could be obtained of any one who intended to pay when the races were over; for on June 6th, 1872, the day on which the vouchers were drawn, the market prices, as quoted in the papers Mr Rawlings advertised in, were 10 to 1 against Palmerston for the Ascot Stakes; 15 to 1 against Pitchfork for the Royal Hunt Cup; and 10 to 1 against Minerve for the Northumberland Plate. Now as double the fair price is offered, and as the quoted market represents the odds which are laid at the chief clubs by the chief men, who can say that the victims of Rawlings deserve pity? The ability of Rawlings & Co. as tipsters is strangely shown in this transaction. In their circular, Pitchfork, Palmerston, and Minerve are their selections for the several races, even to people who only accepted their advice and did not intrust them with commissions. They assert that they have positive information that these horses cannot lose. Under the head of “Royal Hunt Cup,” and perfectly independent of anything but the private-advice department, they say, in reference to Pitchfork: “This is a ‘Woodyeates moral,’ and all must be on. Every now and then this influential coterie throws in for a fortune, and when they do, the good thing invariably comes off. We have never missed the winner of this race, and now, with all confidence, we assure every client that no better opportunity could possibly occur of landing a rich and substantial stake. Some of our clients will neglect the opportunities we frequently lay before them; but on this occasion as the price is so liberal, we do heartily hope that one and all will go in for a rattling good stake.” Then about Palmerston for the Ascot Stakes, they tell us that “previous to the great Epsom event, Palmerston performed such a wonderful feat with the Brother to Flurry as to show the stable that the Ascot Stakes were completely at their mercy. Mr Payne and the owners who train at Fyfield look upon defeat as impossible, and will stand their horses to win a very large stake. We cannot recollect a more genuine investment, and must urge all to stand this moral freely.” For the Northumberland Plate they are, if anything, still more confident, their article on it containing this: “Another triumph awaits the French contingent in the Northumberland Plate, as Minerve, own sister to Miss Hervine, is certain to carry off this event.” Rawlings’s prophecies might have turned out right if they had had a chance, but he does not seem to have possessed even a hint as to what would be started for the various stables, for not one of the three selected ever saw the course on which victory was to be so easily obtained. What sorry rogues make fortunes nowadays! It is more than likely that Rawlings, or whatever this trickster’s name was, like his own selections on this particular occasion, had never seen a race-course. Strange as this may seem, it is not at all improbable; for there are lots of men who live by the turf, and who are as conversant with pedigrees and performances of horses as can be, yet who know nothing beyond what they see on paper, and who, authorities on racing when in Fleet Street, would be quite nonplussed if taken to Newmarket among the horses whose names they know so well.
We trust we have now made plain the two greatest swindles in connection with the turf, and at the same time shown the unworthiness of even the pretence to knowledge made by them. But we have no wish that readers, forgetting the scamps with whom we set out, shall conclude this chapter with the impression that there are no thieves so bad as sporting thieves, and so we will fall back on some swindling advertisements of the general kind, from the general papers, which are not only as roguish, but as ignorant of the subjects selected as the effusions of Rawlings himself. Here is one from the Weekly Times of a couple of years or so back:--
WONDERS OF THE HOROSCOPE.--Any person sending an addressed envelope, age, height, colour of hair and eyes, together with 13 stamps, will receive within 24 hours a correct likeness of their future husband or wife, and date of marriage.--Address, A. WEMYSS, 2, Drake-street, Red Lion-square, London.
We don’t mind giving Mr Wemyss--what an aristocratic name, by the way!--a gratuitous advertisement, though we hope that the first customer he gets through our instrumentality will be the reverse of profitable. Wemyss can do better still at a better price, as other advertisements show. He is a milder form of rascal than Methralton, who makes offer as follows in several of the weekly papers, and who is not content with his effect on the mind, but actually wishes to interfere with the matter:--
WONDROUS ARTS.--Your future revealed--Seven years, six stamps; lifetime twelve stamps. State age. Love Charm, sixteen stamps. Medicine for removing Gravel and Private diseases in a few days, without injuring the constitution, sixty stamps. Methralton’s Bible Key, twenty-six stamps. Book of Spirits, 408 pages, thirty-two stamps. Millennial Prophecies, Gratis. METHRALTON, the Seer, Daventry.
Another kind of scoundrel, whose victims are like those of the home-employment robbers, mostly poor helpless girls, and whose villany is far greater than that of the discreet Walter or the forcible Rawlings, is the fellow who advertises constantly for actors and actresses, who may be perfectly inexperienced, but who are to get salaried engagements through his influence. His form varies, but this is one of his concoctions, and is from the Daily Telegraph:--
THE STAGE.--WANTED, TWELVE LADIES and GENTLEMEN (ages 16 to 40) for salaried engagements. Totally inexperienced persons may apply.--Communicate, by letter only, enclosing photograph and thirteen stamps, Histrionicus ----.
This is either a swindle on the girls, or else on the members of the British public who pay their money to see acting. It is rumoured that now and again women moving in a certain hemisphere give large sums for the purpose of appearing on the stage. This may be, but we fancy the managers are quite shrewd enough not to let outsiders like the advertiser, Histrionicus, interfere in such delicate matters. It might be as well to ask why the “promotion in absentiâ” dodges are still allowed to parade themselves in the leading papers, or in fact why people should be permitted to take upon themselves titles they have no right to. Possibly the matter is thought too ridiculous to call for interference, but there are other qualities besides those of ridicule and contempt to be found in connection with the following, which is an advertisement having no particularly distinctive features, and therefore will represent the thousands of the same order that appear during the year, and for payment of which a considerable number of spurious degrees must be manufactured:--
PROMOTION IN ABSENTIÂ.--Qualified surgeons, chemists, dentists, oculists, chiropodists, and professors of music or arts aspiring to a doctor’s degree, may communicate by letter to Professor ----.
Qualified, forsooth! why, any one who liked to pay could obtain the most honourable degree for the biggest idiot in Earlswood Asylum. One of the chief difficulties to be encountered over such a bad business as this is that the good and the sham degree holders very often get irretrievably mixed up in certain phases of society. Physicians, surgeons, and gentlemen in similar position are protected, and so little dealing is done in medical, surgical, or chemical degrees; but bachelors and masters of arts and doctors of laws are made by the score, the recipients of honours being in a majority of cases men whose ignorance must be probed before it is appreciated, but whose depth requires no delving whatever. Now, when a man of this kind elects to call himself doctor, or puts B.A. or M.A. after his name, even those who know what little right he has to the degree are hardly quixotic enough to decline giving him the title he covets; so in a year or so, Dr Brown or Dr Jones has as firm a hold upon his title as if he had obtained it by a personal examination under the most rigorous system; and strangers who are unable to discover for themselves the unworthiness of the pretender, give him all the honours which belong to the learned. Sometimes the applicant swindles the professor, and we not long back heard of an aspiring youth who paid for the degrees of M.A. and LL.D. with a cheque and a bill, each being for £20, and both being dishonoured. It is a pity that these two scamps cannot be treated to three months in the House of Correction, just to encourage all other professors and practisers of small and paltry swindles.
There is yet another kind of rogue for whom we have room, who addresses his victims by means of advertisements. This is the sorrowful Christian, who makes the profession of religion his stock-in-trade, and finds it profitable. Under the guise of sanctity there is hardly anything at which he will stick--he is the foulest and nastiest of all the foul and nasty birds who have supplied material for this chapter. He is as great an impostor in his pretences as any of the other swindlers are in theirs, and so it would be just as fair to blame religion for the existence of the sanctimonious scoundrel, or commerce for the home-employment agent, as it is to blame racing for the welcher and the forcer. Here is a sample of the whining and despicable hound, compared with whom, to our taste, the ordinary pickpocket is a gentleman:--
TO THE LORD’S PEOPLE.--A dear Christian tradesman, who about four months ago drew from the Savings’ Bank £60, his all therein, to give to a fellow Christian who urgently required that sum, “thus lending and hoping for nothing again” but from a bountiful “God whose name is Love,” is now in WANT OF FORTY POUNDS to pay all demands upon him, ere he accepts a call to the ministry of the Everlasting Gospel, which he believes his Heavenly Father is about to make known unto him. A lady, his friend in Christ the Lord as revealed, in the power of God the Holy Ghost, thus ventures in simple faith to try the door of Providence in his behalf; and would leave the issue in the hands of Him who has heart, hand, breath and purse of men at sovereign command. The smallest help will be gratefully acknowledged by the Advertiser. Address to ----.
If this is not blasphemy, what is it? Imagine the greasy smirk of satisfaction with which the coin of the faithful was received and divided between the dear Christian tradesman and his lady friend. There is something suspiciously jocular about the wind-up of the application; but then, as an old proverb informs us, people who are doing well can afford the luxury of laughter. Another plan of the religious rascal is to answer applications for loans, and under the guise of philanthropy and Christianity to offer the required accommodation. By this means, and by the exhibition of certain forms, he obtains a deposit from the unfortunate would-be borrower, and decamps. This is, however, but a means of relaxation, and is simply indulged in at intervals, just to keep the hand in while more important business is in course of projection. The loan-office advertisements may to a certain extent be regarded as swindles, especially when they promise money without security. Depend upon it, no professional money-lender is likely to let out his cash without security any more than without interest. Still loan-office advertisers are not swindlers absolutely, as they do lend money and to some extent perform their contracts. The papers at the present time swarm with their advertisements, and the curious reader may inspect them as they appear, as for obvious reasons we must decline making a selection, which might be the reverse of judicious, more especially as the notices do not come strictly within our limits. Now and again temporary offices are started, generally in poor neighbourhoods, for the purpose of bagging the inquiry fees, and with no intention whatever of lending money. Their general ultimatum is, “Security offered insufficient;” and a good story is told of a gentleman who from motives of curiosity applied for a loan of £5, and gave as guarantors two of the most notoriously wealthy bankers of the City. In due course he received the usual notification, that the security offered was not sufficiently “responsible,” and that the accommodation could not therefore be afforded.
This brings us to the end of our list of swindlers and thieves; and if we have succeeded in our endeavour to show that the advertising rogue belongs to no particular class or profession, and that it is idle to assume that any rank or class is answerable for him, we shall be well satisfied. To our mind, and we have studied the subject rather closely, the advertising swindler is a swindler per se, and attaches himself to anything which offers a return, without caring what its title so long as it has claims to attention. It would be a great pity, therefore, to assume that these men have anything to do with the respectable forms of the professions--from sporting to religion--they from time to time adopt, and a great blunder to blame any body of respectable men because a lot of rogues choose to assume their business. As long as there are advertising swindlers, some profession or other must have the discredit of them.
There are, however, still advertisement swindles of a totally different description from any that have been here mentioned or referred to. There is the swindle of the newspaper proprietor who guarantees a circulation which has no existence, and who, when he takes the money of those who insert notices in his journal, knows that he is committing a deliberate and barefaced robbery. There are in London, at the present time, papers that have absolutely no circulation, in the proper sense of the word, whatever; and of which only a sufficient number of copies is printed to supply those who advertise in them, according to the custom observed in many offices. The readers, therefore, pay a rather heavy premium for the privilege of perusing each other’s announcements. It may seem that this state of affairs cannot possibly continue long; but whatever theorists may make of it, we can speak with confidence of more than six papers which to our knowledge have possessed no buyers whatever for more than six years, yet their proprietors get good livings out of them--better, perhaps, than they would if sale and not swindle was the reason of their being--and calculate on continuing this state of things for their time at all events. After them the deluge may come as soon as it likes. We remember quite well an office in which six of these newspapers were printed--that is, supposed to be printed, for with the exception of an alteration of title and a rearrangement of columns, and with, very rarely, the substitution of a new leading article for an old one, these six newspapers were all one and the same to the printers. Now, of course, had there been any chance of one man buying two copies of this instrument of robbery under any two of its distinct names, the swindle would have run some risk of being exposed; but so far as we could discover, there was no desire ever shown to buy even one, the circulation being exclusively among the advertisers. A very small circulation which finds its way in any particular direction may often be far more useful to one who wishes his notice to travel that way than would the largest circulation in the world; but the intensest of optimists could hardly discern any likelihood of benefit in the system just noticed.
Still another kind of advertisement swindle--still more distinct from the general run of swindles--is that by which certain ambitious persons try to obtain a spurious notoriety. Their desire is in no way connected with trade, though as it has in its effect the passing off of inferior wares upon the public as though they were of first-class quality, the word swindle very properly applies to their little trickery. These men pine for recognition in the public prints, and so long as their names are mentioned, no matter how, they regard the task of achieving a cheap immortality as progressing towards completion. Literature and the various phases of art suffer most from these impostors, who very often not only attain notoriety by means of the specious puffery they exercise, but by it obtain money as well. No one can be blind to the manner in which some very small literary lights manage to keep their names continually paraded before the public; and the puffs are so worded that the unthinking are bound to believe that these rushlight writers are the souls of the literature and journalism of the present day. Said the publisher of a magazine, who is not renowned for either taste or education, when it was proposed that a really eminent man should write him an article, “No; I dessay he’s very good, but I want men with names. I can get Montague Smith and Chumley Jones and Montmorency Thomson, all famous, and all glad to write for two pound a sheet--why, I never heard of your man, and yet he wants ten times as much. I never see his name in the papers.” This was the publisher who is said to have refused to pay for the refrain of a set of verses except where it first occurred, and demanded that the rest should be measured off and deducted from the price originally agreed upon. So not only in the case of the publisher, but in that of the public do these small potatoes, who have a knack of glossing over their mean surnames with high-sounding prefixes, render themselves representatives of an institution the real leaders in which are often quite unknown out of their own circles. For every thousand familiar with the name of Shakespeare Green, the writer of “awfuls,” there is not one who can tell you who are the editors of the leading daily papers and principal reviews. The anonymity of journalism has its advantages, and very likely the directors of public opinion are content to remain behind its curtain; but it is through this same anonymous arrangement that the smallest of small fry measured on their merits are enabled to parade themselves as they do. There are, we know, many deservedly well and widely known writers for newspapers and serials who are really what they profess to be, and who depend upon nothing so much as merit, for success; but even they must admit the truth of what we have said, and must often feel very like the apples did as they went down stream in the fable.
It might be as well here to say a few words about the advertisement swindles that are perpetrated by means of photographs. It has long been a crying evil that at certain theatres shameless women who wear many diamonds and few clothes are allowed to appear upon the stage and play at acting. Much training enables them now and again to deliver half-a-dozen lines without displaying their ignorance and peculiarity of aspiration too glaringly; but they cannot be depended on to do even this much with certainty. Sometimes they sing in the smallest of small voices, and a few of them have mastered the breakdown and the can-can; but their chief attraction consists, to the audience, in their lavish display of limbs and “neck,” and, to the manager, in their requiring but nominal salaries. One would have thought it sufficient that such creatures should exhibit themselves to the people who choose to go and see them; but it is not so, they get themselves photographed in the most extraordinary attitudes, and their counterfeit presentments leer out from the shop windows upon passers-by in much the same manner as in the flesh--sometimes in very much of it--they leer at their friends in the stalls and boxes. Now and again we see the portrait of one real and justly-celebrated actress surrounded by these demireps, but of late what are known as actresses’ portraits consist mainly of those to whom the title is convenient, or of those who combine a little of the actress with a great deal of the courtesan. Those artists whose portraits should grace the photographers’ show-cases hardly care to run the risk of being mixed up in the questionable society they see there; and we can vouch for the fact that in a leading thoroughfare, of twenty-five English portraits exhibited in a window as those of actresses, at which we were looking but recently, there were not five that were really what they pretended to be.
Of hoaxes which come within our scope a very noticeable one took place in August 1815. A short time previous to the departure of the French Emperor from our coast on his last journey, to St Helena, a respectably-dressed man caused a quantity of handbills to be distributed through Chester, in which he informed the public that a great number of genteel families had embarked at Plymouth, and would certainly proceed with the British regiment appointed to accompany the ex-Emperor to St Helena: he added further, that the island being dreadfully infested with rats, his Majesty’s ministers had determined that it should be forthwith effectually cleared of those noxious animals. To facilitate this important purpose, he had been deputed to purchase as many cats and thriving kittens as could possibly be procured for money, in a short space of time; and therefore he publicly offered in his handbills “sixteen shillings for every athletic full-grown tom-cat, ten shillings for every adult female puss, and half-a-crown for every thriving vigorous kitten that could swill milk, pursue a ball of thread, or fasten its young fangs in a dying mouse.” On the evening of the third day after this advertisement had been distributed, the people of Chester were astonished by an irruption of a multitude of old women, boys, and girls into their streets, each of whom carried on his or her shoulders either a bag or a basket, which appeared to contain some restless animal. Every road, every lane, was thronged with this comical procession; and before night a congregation of nearly three thousand cats was collected in Chester. The happy bearers of these sweet-voiced creatures proceeded (as directed by the advertisement) towards one street with their delectable burdens. Here they became closely wedged together. A vocal concert soon ensued. The women screamed; the cats squalled; the boys and girls shrieked aloud, and the dogs of the street howled to match, so that it soon became difficult for the nicest ear to ascertain whether the canine, the feline, or the human tones were predominant. Some of the cat-bearing ladies, whose dispositions were not of the most placid nature, finding themselves annoyed by their neighbours, soon cast down their burdens and began to box. A battle royal ensued. The cats sounded the war-whoop with might and main. Meanwhile the boys of the town, who seemed mightily to relish the sport, were actively employed in opening the mouths of the deserted sacks, and liberating the cats from their forlorn situations. The enraged animals bounded immediately on the shoulders and heads of the combatants, and ran spitting, squalling, and clawing along the undulating sea of skulls, towards the walls of the houses of the good people of Chester. The citizens, attracted by the noise, had opened the windows to gaze at the fun. The cats, rushing with the rapidity of lightning up the pillars, and then across the balustrades and galleries, for which the town is so famous, leaped slap-dash through the open windows into the apartments. Never, since the days of the celebrated Hugh Lupus, were the drawing-rooms of Chester filled with such a crowd of unwelcome guests. Now were heard the crashes of broken china; the howling of affrighted dogs; the cries of distressed damsels, and the groans of well-fed citizens. All Chester was soon in arms; and dire were the deeds of vengeance executed on the feline race. Next morning above five hundred dead bodies were seen floating on the river Dee, where they had been ignominiously thrown by the two-legged victors. The rest of the invading host having evacuated the town, dispersed in the utmost confusion to their respective homes.
In 1826 the following handbill was circulated in Norwich and its neighbourhood for some days previous to the date mentioned in it, and caused great excitement:--
St James’s Hill, back of the Horse Barracks.
The Public are respectfully informed that Signor CARLO GRAM VILLECROP, the celebrated Swiss Mountain Flyer, from Geneva and Mont Blanc, is just arrived in this City, and will exhibit with a Tyrolese Pole, fifty feet long, his most astonishing Gymnastic Flights, never before witnessed in this country. Signor Villecrop has had the great honour of exhibiting his most extraordinary Feats on the Continent before the King of Prussia, Emperor of Austria, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and all the resident Nobility in Switzerland. He begs to inform the Ladies and Gentlemen of this City that he has selected St James’s Hill and the adjoining hills for his performances, and will first display his remarkable strength in running up the hill with his Tyrolese Pole between his teeth. He will next lay on his back, and balance the same Pole on his nose, chin, and different parts of his body. He will climb upon it with the astonishing swiftness of a cat, and stand on his head at the top; on a sudden he will leap three feet from the Pole without falling, suspending himself by a shenese cord only. He will also walk on his head up and down the hill, balancing the Pole on one foot. Many other feats will be exhibited, in which Signor Villecrop will display to the audience the much-admired art of toppling, peculiar only to the Peasantry of Switzerland. He will conclude his performance by repeated flights in the air, up and down the hill, with a velocity almost imperceptible, assisted only by his Pole, with which he will frequently jump the astonishing distance of Forty and Fifty Yards at a time. Signor Villecrop begs to assure the ladies and gentlemen who honour him with their company that no money will be collected till after the exhibition, feeling convinced that his exertions will be liberally rewarded by their generosity. The Exhibition to commence on Monday, the 28th of August 1826, precisely at half-past five o’clock in the evening.
On the evening of the 28th August there were more than twenty thousand people assembled at the foot of the hill, on foot, on horseback, and in every kind of conveyance. Of course Signor Carlo Gram Villecrop did not put in an appearance, for that best of all the reasons that could be given--his having no existence out of the minds of the perpetrators of the swindle.
* * * * *
We had intended to introduce as a congenial subject the great bottle-trick hoax, but as we have already run to such length, and as this famous piece of humbug will stand well alone, we give it a chapter to itself.
[36] Book of Days.
Chapter XIII
THE GREAT BOTTLE-TRICK SWINDLE.
At the close of the year 1748, or in the beginning of 1749, the Duke of Montague, Lord Portman, and some other noblemen were talking about the gullibility of the people, and the Duke offered to wager that, let a man advertise the most impossible thing in the world, he would find fools enough in London to fill a playhouse, and pay handsomely for the privilege of being there. “Surely,” said the Earl of Chesterfield, “if a man should say that he would jump into a quart bottle, nobody would believe that.” The Duke was somewhat staggered at this, but for the sake of the jest determined to make the experiment. Accordingly the following advertisement was inserted in the papers of the first week in January 1749:--
AT the New Theatre in the Hay market, on Monday next, the 12th instant, is to be seen a Person who performs the several most surprising things following, viz.--1st. He takes a common walking Cane from any of the Spectators, and thereon plays the music of every Instrument now in use, and likewise sings to surprising perfection.--2dly. He presents you with a common Wine Bottle, which any of the spectators may first examine; this Bottle is placed on a Table in the middle of the Stage, and he (without any equivocation) goes into it, in the sight of all the Spectators, and sings in it; during his stay in the bottle, any Person may handle it, and see plainly that it does not exceed a common Tavern Bottle.--Those on the Stage, or in the Boxes, may come in masked habits (if agreeable to them); and the Performer, if desired, will inform them who they are.--Stage, 7s. 6d. Boxes, 5s. Pit, 3s. Gallery, 2s. Tickets to be had at the Theatre:--To begin at half an hour after six o’clock. The performance continues about two hours and a half.
Note.-If any Gentlemen or Ladies (after the above Performance) either single or in company, in or out of mask, is desirous of seeing a representation of any deceased Person, such as Husband or Wife, Sister or Brother, or any intimate Friend of either sex, upon making a gratuity to the Performer, shall be gratified by seeing and conversing with them for some minutes, as if alive; likewise, if desired, he will tell you your most secret thoughts in your past Life, and give you a full view of persons who have injured you, whether dead or alive. For those Gentlemen and Ladies who are desirous of seeing this last part, there is a private Room provided.
These performances have been seen by most of the crowned Heads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, and never appeared public any where but once; but will wait on any at their Houses, and perform as above, for five Pounds each time. A proper guard is appointed to prevent disorder.
On the appointed day the theatre was crowded to excess, but as there was not even a single fiddle provided to keep the audience in good-humour, signs of impatience soon began to manifest themselves. When the hour was past at which the conjuror had to make his appearance, there arose a horrible uproar, and the loud cat-calls, heightened by cries and beating of sticks, soon brought a person on the stage, who, amidst endless bowing and scraping, declared that if the performer did not appear within a quarter of an hour, the money should be returned. At the same time a wag in the pit exclaimed that if the ladies and gentlemen would give double prices he would creep into a pint bottle. Scarcely was the quarter of an hour’s grace elapsed, when a gentleman in one of the boxes seized a lighted candle and threw it on the stage. This was the signal for a general outbreak, the benches were torn up and everything that could be moved was thrown about. The greater part of the audience made the best of their way out of the house, the rush to the doors being so dreadful that wigs, hats, cloaks, and dresses, were left behind and lost. Meantime the mob remained and almost gutted the building: the wood was carried into the street and made into a mighty bonfire, whilst the curtain was hoisted upon a pole by way of a flag. Of the conjuror nothing was ever heard, but the affair gave rise to a number of curious advertisements. The Duke of Cumberland having lost his sword in the general panic, it was advertised in the following manner:--
LOST, last Monday night at the Little Play house in the Hay market, a Sword with a gold Hilt and cutting Blade, with a crimson and gold Swordknot tied round the Hilt. Whoever brings it to Mr Chevenix’s Toy shop, over against Great Suffolk Street, near Chearing Cross, shall receive thirty Guineas reward, and no Questions asked.
It was probably a Jacobite who answered this by the following:--
FOUND entangled in the slit of a Lady’s demolished smock Petticoat, a gold hilted Sword, of martial length and temper, nothing worse for wear, with the Spey curiously wrought on one side of the blade, and the Scheldt on the other; supposed to have been stolen from the plump side of a great General, in his precipitate retreat from the Battle of Bottle-Noodles, at Station Foote. Enquire at the Quart Bottle and Musical Cane in Potter’s Row.
N.B.--Every word of a certain late advertisement is true, except all the advertisement.
Foote having been blamed by many for the occurrence of this disgraceful hoax, excused himself by an advertisement, in which he threw the blame upon Potter, the proprietor of the playhouse, whom Foote had warned that he thought a fraud on the public was intended. To this Potter replied by a counter-advertisement, explaining the precautions he had taken: how he had not allowed the conjuror or any of his men to take the money, but placed his own servants at the door, and how he would have returned it all, but that the house was sacked and the takings stolen. On the 20th of January there appeared an advertisement of Potter’s, which ran as follows:--
WHEREAS a letter signed S. M. dated the 18th instant, was sent yesterday by the Penny Post, directed to Mr Potter, in the Hay market; which by the contents seems to come from the person who took Mr Potter’s Theatre, for Monday last; wherein he complains of much ill usage, and insists that the Man can perform the things he advertised, and would have performed them, and was actually in a Coach in order to come, but was intimidated by two Gentlemen who came from the Gun Tavern, who told him he would be taken up if he performed: and in his Letter he threatens, that in case Mr Potter will not give him £22, which he says he was out of pocket, that he will apply to some Court of Law or Equity, for justice: He also desires an answer in this Paper--In answer to which, S. M. is desired to appear personally and to give an Account of his Name and place of Abode; and he shall have such Satisfaction as in justice deserves.
JOHN POTTER.
The same paper also contained the following exculpation:--
WHEREAS the Public was on Monday last basely abused by an Impostor, who pretended to perform what was impracticable, at the Theatre in the Hay market; the same imposition some evil-minded villains imagined John Coustos, Lapidary, to be the author of: This is to assure the Public that the said John Coustos had never such Design, nor ever hired or caused to be hired, the House on any occasion whatever; and to caution those his Enemies, who are the Authors of this Report, not to assert a thing which they know to be a gross Falsity: And there are those who are ready to attest on Oath that he was in their company that Evening, and was at the Theatre as a spectator only.
JOHN COUSTOS.
Many attempts were made to fathom the depth and discover the origin of this hoax, and several humorous explanations were given in the papers, among them being the following:--
WHEREAS various stories have been told the Public, about the Man and the Bottle, the following account seems to be the best as yet given of that odd Affair; viz. A Gentleman went to him the same evening he was to perform in the Haymarket, and asking him what he must have to perform to him in private, he said £5, on which they agreed; and the Conjuror getting ready to go into the Bottle, which was set on a Table, the gentleman having provided a Parcel of Corks, fitted one to the Bottle; then the Conjuror, having darkened the Room as much as was necessary, at last with much squeezing got into the Bottle, which, in a moment the Gentleman corked up, and whipt into his Pocket, and in great haste and seeming confusion, went out of the House, telling the Servants who waited at the door, that their Master had bewitched him, and bid them go in and take care of him. Thus the poor Man being bit himself, in being confined in the Bottle and in a Gentleman’s Pocket, could not be in another Place; for he never advertised he would go into two Bottles at one and the same time. He is still in the Gentleman’s custody, who uncorks him now and then to feed him; but his long Confinement has so damped his Spirits, that instead of singing and dancing, he is perpetually crying and cursing his ill Fate. But though the Town have been disappointed of seeing him go into the Bottle, in a few days they will have the pleasure of seeing him come out of the Bottle; of which timely notice will be given in the daily Papers.
Pamphlets ridiculing the public for its gullibility issued from the press with alarming rapidity, and advertisements of performances equally impossible as the bottle-hoax continued to be inserted in the papers for several weeks after. Among them were the following:--
Lately arrived from Italy,
SIGNOR CAPITELLO JUMPEDO a surprising Dwarf, no taller than a common Tavern Tobacco Pipe: who can perform many wonderful Equilibres on the slack or tight Rope: likewise he will transform his Body in above ten thousand different Shapes and Postures, and after he has diverted the Spectators two hours and a half, he will open his Mouth wide and jump down his own Throat! He being the most wonderfullest Wonder of Wonders, as ever the World wondered at, would be willing to join in performance with that surprising Musician, on Monday next in the Hay market. He is to be spoke with at the Black Raven in Golden Lane, every day from seven till twelve, and from two to all day long.
This was also an emanation caused by the current excitement, and was published January 27, 1749:--
DON JOHN DE NASAQUITINE, sworn Brother and Companion to the Man that was to have jumped into the Bottle at the Little Theatre in the Hay market, on Monday the 16th past; hereby invites all such as were then disappointed to repair to the Theatre aforesaid on Monday the 30th; and that shall be exhibited unto them, which never has heretofore, nor ever will be hereafter seen. All such as shall swear upon the Book of Wisdom that they paid for seeing the Bottle Man will be admitted gratis; the rest at Gotham prices.
And then the public were treated to this, for the purpose of keeping up the interest:--
Lately arrived from Ethiopia,
THE most wonderful and surprising Doctor BENIMBE ZAMMANPOANGO, Oculist and Body Surgeon to Emperor of Monoemungi, who will perform on Sunday next, at the little T---- in the Hay market, the following surprising Operations; viz. 1st, He desires any one of the Spectators only to pull out his own Eyes, which as soon as he has done, the Doctor will shew them to any Lady or Gentleman then present, to convince them there is no Cheat, and then replace them in the Sockets, as perfect and entire as ever. 2dly, He desires any officer or other, to rip up his own Belly, which when he has done, he (without any Equivocation) takes out his Bowels, washes them, and returns them to their place, without the Person’s suffering the least hurt. 3dly, He opens the head of a J---- of P----, takes out his Brains, and exchanges them for those of a Calf; the Brains of a Beau for those of an Ass, and the Heart of a Bully for that of a Sheep: which Operations will render the Persons more sociable and rational Creatures than they ever were in their Lives. And to convince the town that no imposition is intended, he desires no Money until the Performance is over. Boxes, 5 guin. Pit 3. Gallery 2.
N.B.--The famous Oculist will be there, and honest S---- F---- H---- will come if he can. Ladies may come masked, so may Fribbles. The Faculty and Clergy gratis. The Orator would be there, but is engaged.
Money seems to have been at least as plentiful as wit in those days, for, from a lot of other notices bearing on this subject, we take this:--
This is to inform the Public,
THAT notwithstanding the great Abuse that has been put upon the Gentry, there is now in Town a Man, who instead of creeping into a Quart or Pint Bottle, will change himself into a Rattle; which he hopes will please both young and old. If this Person meets with encouragement to this Advertisement, he will then acquaint the Gentry where and when he performs.
Strange as it may seem, and notwithstanding all the expenditure of wit and humour upon the credulity of the times that had been made, one showman still thought there was room left for a further attempt at attracting the public with the tenant of a bottle. Very soon after the great hoax he published the following advertisement, which shows the desire some industrious people have to avail themselves of the general disposition of the time. The faculty of imitation is very largely developed nowadays, as witness what follows as soon as any enterprising theatrical manager makes “a hit,” and so it is pleasant to find that an honest penny was turned in humble imitation of the great bottle swindle:--
To be seen at MR LEADER’S, _the Old Horseshoe, in Wood Street, Cheapside, from Nine till Twelve, and from Four to Seven o’Clock, Lately brought from France_,
A FULL grown MOUSE alive, confined in a small two ounce Phial, the Neck of which is not a quarter of an inch Diameter. This amusing Creature has lived in the Phial three Years and a half without Drink or any Sustenance but Bread only. It cleans out its little Habitation, and hath many other pretty Actions, as surprising as agreeable; but particularly creates wonderful diversion with a Fly, and is allowed to be an extraordinary Curiosity, never before seen in England; at the Expense of 6d. each Person.
Note.--Gentlemen or Ladies who don’t chuse to come, it shall be carried to them, by sending a line to MR LEADER.
Like everything else of its kind, the excitement in connection with the bottle-hoax soon gave way to fresh topics of public interest. The trick has, however, been revived occasionally with more or less effect; and Theodore Hook’s cruel, and not particularly clever, hoax, which made a house in Berners Street notorious and its occupants miserable, was but a phase of the swindle just related; and being so, loses whatever merit it possessed in the eyes of those who will sacrifice anything to a joke, so long, of course, as it is original and does not interfere with their own comfort or convenience. Deprived of its originality, Hook’s exploit stands forth as a trick hardly excusable in a boy, and utterly at variance with the character of a gentleman. Now in the bottle-hoax there was quite a different element; people were invited to the theatre to see that which they must have known was utterly impossible. In obedience to the laws which govern human nature, they readily accepted the invitation, and also, in accordance with the same laws, they resented the affront they considered had been put upon them. A moral might be deduced from this, were it not for the fact, that if any hoax analogous to the bottle-trick were to be advertised to-morrow in a conspicuous manner, the proportion of dupes would be at least as great as it was in 1749. Perhaps greater.
Chapter XIV
QUACKS AND IMPOSTORS.
Quacks have been in existence so long, have received so much of the confidence of the people, and have afforded such capital to satirists and humourists, that they have become almost a necessity of our existence, from a literary as well as from a domestic point of view. They also add considerably to the revenue, if only through the impost upon patent medicines; for though many may be astonished and horrified to hear it, all patent medicines--i.e., all medicines which bear the inland-revenue stamp--are of necessity quack, and although many partisans may endeavour to prove that in the particular case each may select, this is not so, the qualification must fairly be applied, if applied to anything, to all medicines which are supposed to specifically remedy various diseases in various systems, no matter what the peculiarities of either. It can hardly matter whether the inventor of the general remedy be learned doctor or impudent charlatan, the medicine, as soon as ever it assumes specific powers, and is to be administered by or to anybody, is quack, not only in the proper acceptation of the term, but in its original signification. Quacks are, with a few notable exceptions, a very different body now from what they were in the last century, when they killed more than they cured, and when drugs were compounded with a recklessness which seems quite impossible in these moderate days. Just and proper legislation has clipped the wings of the vile impostors who used to trade upon the weaknesses of human nature, and with the exception of those pestiferous practitioners whose advertisements are as noxious as their prescriptions, and who find the fittest possible media for publication, quacks are no longer in existence except as purveyors of patent medicines, pills, ointment, and plasters; and so if there is no cure there is also no kill. Formerly the quack prescribed and compounded, and then he was indeed dangerous, and we cannot better prove this than by means of a remark in the Gentleman’s Magazine of July 1734 about Joshua Ward, an advertisement in reference to whom is to be found in the historical part of this book. The paragraph in the old magazine runs: “There was an extraordinary advertisement in the newspapers this month concerning the great cures in all distempers performed with one medicine, a pill or drop, by Joshua Ward, Esq., lately arrived from Paris, where he had done the like cures. ’Twas said our physicians, particularly Sir Hans Sloane, had found out his secret, but ’twas judged so violent a prescription, that it would be deemed malepractice to apply it as a dose to old and young and in all cases.” And again, in the Obituary in the same periodical for 1736, there is an advertisement bearing on this so-called remedy rather unfavourably. It runs thus:--
Vesey Hart, Esq. of Lincoln’s Inn. About 15 Months ago he took the celebrated Pill, which had at first such violent effects as to throw him into Convulsions and deprive him of his Sight. On recovery he fell into Consumption.
Joshua Ward was rather a celebrity about that time, even among quacks, as the following lines from the Gentleman’s Magazine of July 1734 will show. The heading is--
UNIV. SPEC. ON WARD’S Drops.
EGregious Ward, you boast with success sure, That your one drop can all distempers cure: When it in S----n cures ambition’s pain Or ends the Megrims of Sir James’ brain, Of wounded conscience when it heals the smart, And on reflexion glads the statesman’s heart; When it to women palls old M--ar--’s gust, And cools ’fore death the fever of his lust; When F----d it can give of wit a taste, Make Harriot pious or lorima chaste; Make scribbling B--dg-- deviate into sense, Or give to Pope more wit and excellence; Then will I think that your ONE DROP will save Ten thousand dying patients from the grave.
In the Daily Advertiser of June 10, 1736, there is a puff advertisement for Ward, which runs:--
We hear that by the Queen’s appointment, Joshua Ward, Esq; and eight or ten persons, who in extraordinary Cases have receiv’d great benefit by taking his remedies, attended at the Court at Kensington on monday night last, and his patients were examin’d before her Majesty by three eminent surgeons, several persons of quality being present, when her Majesty was graciously pleas’d to order money to be distributed amongst the patients, and congratulated Mr Ward on his great success.
In the Grub Street Journal of June 24 of the same year is an article on the paragraph, in which it is stated that only seven persons attended at the palace, and that these were proved to be impostors who were in collusion with Ward. The Journal is very strong against the quack, and the article concludes with the following lines, which are in fact a summary of what has been said in the criticism upon Ward’s fresh attempt to gull the public:--
Seven wonderful Cures.
One felt his sharp rheumatic pains no more: A Second saw much better than before: Three cur’d of stone, a dire disease much sadder, Who still, ’tis thought, have each a stone in bladder: A Sixth brought gravel bottled up and cork’d, Which Drop and Pill, he say’d, by urine work’d; But Questions, ask’d the Patient, all unravell’d; Much more than whom the Doctor then was gravell’d. The last a little Woman but great glutton, Who at one meal eat two raw legs of mutton: Nor wonder, since within her stomach lay A Wolf, that gap’d for victuals night and day: But when he smelt the Pill, he strait for shelter Run slap into her belly helter skelter.
There is no necessity to take trouble for the purpose of discovering the origin of quacks. It is evident that they “came natural” as soon as ever there was a chance for them, and it is but right to suppose that before quackery became a question of money-making, it had an existence, the outcome of a love people have innately for prescribing and administering to each other, relics of which may still be seen in out-of-the-way parts of the country. Some people imagine that quackery and the belief, still current in various parts of Great Britain, that a seventh son, particularly if the son of a seventh son, possesses medical powers, had originally something to do with each other. That quackery in general was caused by this quaint conceit is not to be supposed, yet the belief in the seventh-son doctrine is well worthy of note. The vulgar mind seems from the earliest ages to have been impressed by the number seven, and there are various ways of accounting for this. Chambers, in his “Book of Days,” says that it is easy to see in what way the Mosaic narrative gave sanctity to this number in connection with the days of the week, and led to usages which influence the social life of all the countries of Europe. “But a sort of mystical goodness or power has attached itself to the number in many other ways. Seven wise men, seven champions of Christendom, seven sleepers, seven-league boots, seven ages of man, seven hills, seven senses, seven planets, seven metals, seven sisters, seven stars, seven wonders of the world--all have had their day of favour; albeit that the number has been awkwardly interfered with by modern discoveries concerning metals, planets, stars, and wonders of the world. Added to the above list is the group of seven sons, especially in relation to the youngest or seventh of the seven; and more especially still if this person happen to be the seventh son of a seventh son. It is now perhaps impossible to discover in what country, or at what time, the notion originated, but a notion there certainly is, chiefly in provincial districts, that a seventh son has something peculiar about him. For the most part, the imputed peculiarity is a healing power, a faculty of curing diseases by the touch, or by some other means. The instances of this belief are numerous enough. There is a rare pamphlet called ‘The Quack Doctor’s Speech,’ published in the time of Charles II. The reckless Earl of Rochester delivered this speech on one occasion, when dressed in character, and mounted on a stage as a charlatan. The speech, amid much that suited that licentious age, but would be frowned down by modern society, contained an enumeration of the doctor’s wonderful qualities, among which was that of being a ‘seventh son of a seventh son,’ and therefore clever as a curer of bodily ills. The matter is only mentioned as affording a sort of proof of the existence of a sort of popular belief. In Cornwall, the peasants and the miners entertain this notion; they believe that a seventh son can cure the king’s evil by the touch. The mode of proceeding usually is to stroke the part affected thrice gently, to blow upon it thrice, to repeat a form of words, and to give a perforated coin, or some other object, to be worn as an amulet. At Bristol, about forty years ago, there was a man who was always called ‘doctor’ simply because he was the seventh son of a seventh son. The family of the Joneses of Muddfi, in Wales, is said to have presented seven sons to each of many successive generations, of whom the seventh son always became a doctor--apparently from a conviction that he had an inherited qualification to start with. In Ireland, the seventh son of a seventh son is believed to possess prophetical as well as healing power. A few years ago a Dublin shopkeeper finding his errand-boy to be generally very dilatory in his duties, inquired into the cause, and found that the boy, being the seventh son of a seventh son, his services were often in requisition among the poorer neighbours, in a way that brought in a good many pieces of silver. Early in the present century there was a man in Hampshire, the seventh son of a seventh son, who was consulted by the villagers as a doctor, and who carried about with him a collection of crutches and sticks, purporting to have once belonged to persons whom he had cured of lameness. Cases are not wanting, also, in which the seventh daughter is placed upon a similar pinnacle of greatness. In Scotland the spaewife or fortune-teller frequently announces herself as the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, to enhance her claims to prophetic power. Even so late as 1851, an inscription was seen on a window in Plymouth, denoting that a certain doctress was the third seventh daughter!--which the world was probably intended to interpret as the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. . . . . France, as well as our own country, has a belief in the seventh-son mystery. The Journal de Loiret, a French provincial newspaper, in 1854 stated that, in Orleans, if a family has seven sons and no daughter, the seventh is called a Marcou, is branded with a fleur-de-lis, and is believed to possess the power of curing the king’s evil. The Marcou breathes on the part affected, or else the patient touches the Marcou’s fleur-de-lis. In the year above named there was a famous Marcou in Orleans named Foulon; he was a cooper by trade, and was known as ‘le beau Marcou.’ Simple peasants used to come to visit him from many leagues in all directions, particularly in Passion-week, when his ministrations were believed to be most efficacious. On the night of Good Friday, from midnight to sunrise, the chance of cure was supposed to be especially good, and on this account four or five hundred persons would assemble. Great disturbances hence arose; and as there was evidence, to all except the silly dupes themselves, that Foulon made use of their superstition to enrich himself, the police succeeded, but not without much opposition, in preventing these assemblages. In some of the states of Germany there used formerly to be a custom for the reigning prince to stand sponsor to a seventh son (no daughter intervening) of any of his subjects. Whether still acted upon is doubtful; but there was an incident lately which bore on the old custom in a curious way. A West-Hartlepool newspaper stated that Mr J. V. Curths, a German, residing in that busy colliery town, became, towards the close of 1857, the father of one of those prodigies--a seventh son. Probably he himself was a Saxe-Gothan by birth; at any rate he wrote to the Prince Consort, reminding him of the old German custom, and soliciting the honour of his Royal Highness’s sponsorship to the child. The Prince was doubtless a little puzzled by this appeal, as he often must have been by the strange appeals made to him. Nevertheless, a reply was sent in the Prince’s name, very complimentary to his countryman, and enclosing a substantial souvenir for the little child; but the newspaper paragraph is not sufficiently clear for us to be certain whether the sponsorship really was assented to, and, if so, how it was performed.” It is not at all likely, proud as the late Prince was of his countrymen, and of Germans generally, that he took upon himself the pains and penalties of sponsorship to this miraculous infant, whose father was doubtless well satisfied with the douceur he received, and never expected even that.
Saffold was an early humbug who depended mainly upon doggerel rhyme for attraction. It is to be hoped that his wares were better than his numbers, or else the deaths of many must have lain heavy on his soul. One of his bills, enumerating his address and claims upon the attention of the public, informs us that of him
The Sick may have Advice for Nothing, And good Medicines cheap, if so they please For to cure any curable Disease. It’s Saffold’s Pills, much better than the Rest, Deservedly have gained the Name of best In curing by the Cause, quite purging out Of Scurvy, Dropsie, Agues, Stone and Gout. The Head, Stomach, Belly and the Reins, they Will cleanse and cure, while you may work or play. His Pills have often, to their Maker’s Praise, Cur’d in all Weathers, yea, in the Dog-Days. In short, no purging Med’cine is made, can Cure more Diseases in Man or Woman, Than his cheap Pills, but three Shillings the Box. Each Box contains Thirty-six Pills I’m sure. As good as e’er were made Scurvy to cure. The half Box eighteen Pills, for eighteen Pence, Tho’ ’t is too cheap, in any Man’s own Sense.
At the foot of the bill, after a lot of puffery, he breaks out into rhyme once more:--
Some envious Men being griev’d may say, What needs Bills thus still be given away? Answer: New People come to London every Day. Believing Solomon’s Advice is right, I will do what I do with all my might. Also, unless an English Proverb lies Practice brings Experience and makes wise. Experimental Knowledge, I protest, In lawful Arts and Science is the best, Instead of Finis Saffold ends with Rest.
Another of his bills, which were various and plentiful, began thus:--
Dear Friends, let your Disease be what God will, Pray to Him for a Cure, try Saffold’s Skill; Who may be such a healing Instrument, As will cure you to your own Heart’s Content. His Medicines are cheap and truly good. Being full as safe as your daily Food-- Saffold he can do what may be done, by Either Physick or true Astrology. His best Pills, rare Elixir and Powder, Do each Day praise him louder and louder. Dear Countrymen, I pray be you so wise When Men backbite him, believe not their Lies, But go, see him, and believe your own Eyes. Then he will say you are honest and kind. Try before you judge and speak as you find.
At another time the muse informs us, among other things in connection with the great Saffold, that
He knows some who are Knaves in Grain, And have more Gall and Spleen than Brain, Will ill reward his Skill and Pain.
He hath practised Astrology above 15 Years, and hath License to practise Physick, and he thanks God for it, hath great Experience and wonderful Success in both those Arts, giving to doubtful People and by God’s Blessing, cureth the Sick of any Age or Sex or Distemper though given over by Others, and never so bad (if curable); therefore let none despair of a Cure, but try him.
Yet some conceited Fools will ask how he came to be able to do such great Cures, and to foretell such strange Things, and to know how to make such rare and powerful Medicines, as his best Pills, Elixir and Diet Drinks are, and wherefore he doth publish the same in Print? But he will answer such dark Animals thus:
It hath so pleased God, the King of Heaven, Being He to him hath Knowledge given, And in him there can be no greater Sin, Than to hide his Talent in a Napkin. His Candle is Light and he will not under A Bushel put it, let the World wonder: Though he be traduced by such like Tools, As have Knaves’ Hearts, Lackbrains are Fools.
☞ ^I request a favourable Construction upon this Publick way of Practice^ (^And^ as I am a Graduate Physician) should wholly omit to appear in Print, as well in this Disease as I have at all Times in all other Diseases, only in Opposition to the Ignorant, that pretend to Cure, and to prevent the ruine of them that suffer and I see daily throw themselves upon ignorant and outlandish Pretenders and others, to the Patient’s utter ruine of Body and Purse. AND upon this Consideration alone, I was persuaded rather to adventure the censure of some, than conceal that which may be of great use to many.
One other specimen of this artist’s verse and we will let him follow his predecessors. It may be as well to mention that when Saffold left the scene of his labours, “his mantle” was supposed to fall on one John Case, who followed in his footsteps so closely that the lines which had done for one quack were often made to do for the other.
Saffold resolves, as in his Bills exprest, When asked in good Earnest, not in Jest; He can cure when God Almighty pleases, But cannot protect against Diseases. If Men will live intemperate and sin, He cannot help ’t if they be sick agen. This great Truth unto the World he will tell None can cure sooner, who cures half so well.
Dr John Case was a contemporary of Dr Radcliffe, and a noted quack who united the professions of an astrologer and a physician. He took the house in which Lilly had resided, and over his door was a vile distich which was said to have brought him more money than Dryden earned by all his works. Upon his pill-boxes he placed the following curious rhyme:--
Here’s 14 Pills for 3 Pence Enough is every Man’s own Con-sci-ence.
It is almost impossible to find out when quacks were not, and as we have before remarked, as long as there have been advertisements, whether in newspapers or elsewhere, these cunning rogues have been fully awake to their advantages and uses. One effusion, published as a handbill in the time of William and Mary, is noticeable, as, though the advertisers call themselves physicians, there is reason to doubt their right to the title, and to believe that the college was anything but what we now understand by the word. The bill proclaims itself as an
ADVERTISEMENT.
The Physitians of the Colledge, that us’d to consult twice a Week for the benefit of the Sick at the Consultation House, at the Carved Angel and Crown in King-street, near Guildhall, meet now four times a Week; and therefore give Publick Notice, that on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, from two in the afternoon till six, they may be advised by the known Poor, and meaner Families for nothing; and that their Expectations and Demands from the middle Rank shall be moderate: but as for the Rich and Noble, Liberality is inseparable from their Quality and Breeding.
This is, to say the least, peculiar, the quaint use of the word “advised” seeming very strange, while the wind-up shows that whoever and whatever the physicians may have been, they were not likely to lose sight of the main chance. But their notice is feeble compared with another handbill of the same period, which is of the most dogmatic order, and is called
A friendly and seasonable Advertisement concerning the Dog-days, by Nath. Merry, Philo-Chim.
In regard that there are many that perish in and about this City, &c. through an evil custom, arising from a false opinion That it is not safe to take Physick in the Extreams of Heat and Cold or in the Dog days; and some exclude old People, Women with Child and little Children, from the use of Medicine; which is as much as to say, That God hath ordained no Medicine for such Times and such Ages, which would be absurd to imagine, seeing we know there is no Time, Age nor Disease exempted from proper homogenial and effectual Means (with God’s Blessing) only against Death there is no Medicine, the Time of which to us is uncertain. From the aforesaid Mistakes many labour under the tyranny of their Diseases, till the Catastrophe end in Death (before the Time come which they have alotted for their Cure) which might by timely and suitable Remedies be prevented. It’s granted pro confesso that there is a sort of Dogmatical Medicines, that is unfit to be exhibited in those Times, and are not innocent at any Time, being impregnated with venomenous Beams, which by their virulent Hostility invade the vital Œconomy of the Body. But you may have Archeal or Vital medicines, truly adapted for all Times; being divested of their Crudities and heterogene Qualities, by a true Separation of the pure from the impure, and impregnated with Beams of Light, which give their Influences and refreshing Glances upon the vital Faculties, expels Venoms, alters Ferments, co-unites with Nature and re-unites its powers to their due Œconomy, and such Medicines being most natural and most powerful in the most deplorable Diseases being timely taken are most effectual, and are no more to be omitted at any time than foods, and are altogether as safe.
And so on at length, until Nath. Merry divulges the secret that he is the man for the dog-days, and that all others are impostors, which in common with many remarks of the kind, found in most advertisements of the same and other times issued by pretended curers of all known and many unknown disorders, lead us to the belief that however willing quacks have always been to impose upon the credulous themselves, they have been careful enough to expose the presumption of their rivals: a merciful dispensation of providence, which has enabled the statements of one rogue to be balanced, and to a certain extent neutralised, by those of another, and so the remedy is found in the disease when at its worst. Had it not been for the attacks made by empirics upon each other throughout the last century, qualified medical men would have stood a very bad chance, and as it is they seem to have often been obliged to join the ranks of the rascals from sheer inability to get a living without pandering to the popular taste for infallible remedies and things generally unknown to the pharmacopœia. Here is the commencement of an appeal made just prior to the year 1700 by one quack, which consists in a warning against all others of the same profession, and which shows how anxious the writer is for the public benefit, except where his own is immediately concerned:--
A CAUTION TO THE UNWARY.
’Tis generally acknowledged throughout all Europe, that no Nation has been so fortunate in producing such eminent Physicians, as this Kingdom of ours; and ’tis as obvious to every Eye, that no Country was ever pestered with so many ignorant Quacks or Empirics. The Enthusiast in Divinity having no sooner acted his Part, and had his Exit, but on the same Stage, from his Shop (or some worse Place) enters the Enthusiast in Physicks: yesterday a Taylor, Heelmaker, Barber, Serving Man, Rope Dancer, etc., to-day per saltum a learned Doctor, able to instruct Esculapius himself, for he never obliged Mankind yet with a Panacæa, an universal Pill or Powder that could cure all Diseases, which now every Post can direct you to, though it proves only the Hangman’s Remedy for all Diseases by Death. Pudet hæc opprobria dici; for shame, my dear Countrymen, reassume your Reasons, and expose not your Bodies and Purses to the handling of such illiterate Fellows, who never had the Education of a Grammar-School, much less of an University.
Nor be ye so irrational as to imagine anything extraordinary (unless it be Ignorance) in a Pair of outlandish Whiskers, tho’ he’s so impudent to tell you he has been Physician to 3 Emperours and 9 Kings when in his own Country he durst not give Physick to a Cobbler.
Nor be gulled with another sort of Impostor, who allures you to him with CURE WITHOUT MONEY, but when he once has got you into his Clutches, he handles you as unmercifully as he does unskilfully.
Nor be ye imposed on by the Pretence of any Herculean Medicine, that shall with four Doses at 5s. a Dose, cure the most inveterate Complaint, and Distempers not to be eradicated (in the Opinion of the most learned in all Ages) with less than a Renovation of all the Humours in the whole Body.
These and the like Abuses (too numerous here to be mentioned) have induced me to continue this public Way of Information, that you may be honestly dealt with, and perfectly cured, repairing to him, who with God’s Blessing on his Studies and 20 Years successful Practice in this City of London hath attained to the easiest and speediest way of curing.
Then follows the puff which this disinterested person gives to his own wares and powers, and if it is to be believed, he certainly proves to demonstration that he is as good as the others are bad. The next item we have is a bill of the early eighteenth century, headed by a rude woodcut of a unicorn’s horn. There is no address on it, and it looks as though used while travelling round the country, in which case the High-German’s lodging for the time being would be written or printed on the back, or supplemented in one of the ways usual among itinerant charlatans:--
The High-German, Master of the Waxwork,
Hath an Unicorn’s Horn that was found in the Deserts of Arabia, the Powder whereof does several wonderful Cures, whereof I was advised by several Doctors to Publish the same in Print; the Cures that it has done are as follow:
I have in my Travels, by the Virtues of this Powder, saved the Lives of several Gentlewomen in Child-Bed, which could not be Delivered before they took the Powder.
About October the Fifth, 1702, I was in the Town of Hampton, in the County of Gloucester, at Mr Gardners, at the Sign of the White-Hart, where I heard that one Mrs Webb was in Child-Bed and could not be Delivered, so that Doctor Farr of the said Town, the Midwife and all Women left her off for Dead, upon which I sent my Landlady with a little of this Powder, the Quantity whereof would lie upon a Six-pence, which the Gentlewoman took, and was Delivered in less than a Quarter of an Hour; Doctor Farr has given it under his Hand, and some other Gentlemen of the Town can testify, that this Powder was the saving of her Life (under God).
Likewise this Powder is a certain Cure for the Kings-Evil, when it breaks and runs: The Powder must be put on a Linnen Cloath and applied to the Place, and take as much as will lie on a Six-pence for two Mornings in warm Ale.
The College of Physitians in London, hearing of this Powder, they came to my Lodging, on purpose to see this Horn, and desired me to let them have some Experience to try if it would Expel Poyson, upon which they sent for two Dogs and Poysoned them both, and asked me if I could save one of them, whereupon I took a little Powder of this Horn in a Spoonful of Milk, and gave it to one of them, that which I gave it to was saved, and the other died in their Presence, after which the Doctors offered me a great Sum of Money for this Horn, which I was not willing to part with.
If there are any Gentlewomen desirous to Buy any of this Powder, I Sell it at Reasonable Rates, and it may be kept Ten Years and not lose its Virtue.
FINIS.
In Queen Anne’s time, and during the first years of the Hanoverian succession, quackery does not seem to have impaired its professors’ positions in society, providing they had other claims to consideration, and even the most impudent impostors obtained rank and celebrity under circumstances which hardly seem possible. Listen to the following: “Sir William Read, originally a tailor or a cobbler, became progressively a mountebank and a quack doctor, and gained, in his case, the equivocal honour of knighthood from Queen Anne. He is said to have practised by ‘the light of nature:’ and though he could not read, he could ride in his own chariot, and treat his company with good punch out of a golden bowl. He had an uncommon share of impudence; a few scraps of Latin in his bills made the ignorant suppose him to be wonderfully learned. He did not seek his reputation in small places, but practised at that high seat of learning, Oxford; and in one of his addresses he called upon the Vice-Chancellor, University, and the City, to vouch for his cures--as, indeed, he did upon the people of the three kingdoms. Blindness vanished before him, and he even deigned to practise in other distempers; but he defied all competition as an oculist. Queen Anne and George I. honoured Read with the care of their eyes; from which one would have thought the rulers, like the ruled, as dark intellectually as Taylor’s (his brother quack) coach-horses were corporeally, of which it was said five were blind in consequence of their master having exercised his skill upon them.” Dr Radcliffe mentions this humbug as “Read the mountebank, who has assurance enough to come to our table up-stairs at Garraway’s, swears he’ll stake his coach and six horses, his two blacks, and as many silver trumpets, against a dinner at Pontack’s.” Read died at Rochester, May 24, 1715. After Queen Anne had knighted him and Dr Hannes, the following lines were published:--
The Queen, like Heav’n, shines equally on all, Her favours now without distinction fall: Great Read and slender Hannes, both knighted, show That none their honours shall to merit owe. That Popish doctrine is exploded quite, Or Ralph had been no duke and Read no knight. That none may virtue or their learning plead, This has no grace and that can hardly read.
The Ralph referred to here is the first Duke of Montague, a title that has already appeared conspicuously in these pages. In the matter of the bestowal of titles, especially knighthoods and baronetcies, we have no particular reason to congratulate ourselves now, but we have certainly improved since the days when rank was sold or bestowed upon the most audacious adventurers. So far as merit is concerned, we are, however, much in the same position as we were in the days of Read and Ralph; but ability always was an unmarketable commodity, and now it seems to secure its unhappy possessors the decided enmity of those more favoured beings whose dependence is upon patronage, and not upon personal powers, and who, in humble imitation of the fox of fable, affect to despise any such common thing as cleverness. And unfortunately this observation has a far wider bearing than on the mere bestowal of titles. It refers to things generally, and to the means by which many clever men are deprived of their subsistence, and driven to the wall by the nepotism and friendly feeling so often exercised in favour of the most arrant impostors, or on behalf of those who are just clever enough to conceal their ignorance and inability, to rob others of their ideas, or to foist second-hand notions upon a credulous and misjudging public.
In “A Journey through England,” published in 1723, we get the following picture of a travelling quack of that time: “I cannot leave Winchester without telling you of a pleasant incident that happened there. As I was sitting at the George Inn, I saw a coach with six bay horses, a calash and four, a chaise and four, enter the inn, in a yellow livery turned up with red; four gentlemen on horseback, in blue trimmed with silver; and as yellow is the colour given by the dukes in England, I went out to see what duke it was; but there was no coronet on the coach, only a plain coat-of-arms on each with this motto ‘Argento laborat Faber.’ Upon inquiry I found this great equipage belonged to a mountebank, and his name being Smith, the motto was a pun upon his name. The footmen in yellow were his tumblers and trumpeters, and those in blue his merry-andrew, his apothecary and spokesman. He was dressed in black velvet, and had in his coach a woman that danced on the ropes. He cures all diseases and sells his packets for sixpence apiece. He erected stages in all the market towns twenty miles round; and it is a prodigy how so wise a people as the English are gulled by such pickpockets. But his amusements on the stage are worth the sixpence without the pills. In the morning he is dressed up in a fine brochade nightgown, for his chamber practice, when he gives advice and gets larger fees.”
Although the papers of the early eighteenth century actually teem with the advertisements of quacksalvers, few of the applications to the unwary possess any distinctive features, and those which do are of the grossest possible description. In the Daily Post of July 14, 1736, there is a curious testimonial to the abilities of a City practitioner who advertised very considerably about that period. His advertisements all take the form of recommendations from those who have received benefit at his hands and from his medicines, and the one we have chosen will give a fair idea of the others, which in many cases refer to the disorders of the gentler sex:--
THESE are to certify, that I Richard Sandford, Waterman, dwelling in Horsely-down-street, near the Dipping Pond, have a Son, who for a considerable Time was troubled with a Pain in his Stomach, a Sleepiness and Giddiness, whereupon I calling to Mind that some Years since my Wife’s Mother, betwixt 60 and 70 years of Age, afflicted with a Palsy or Hemeplegia, or loss of the Use of one Side of her Body, had been cured by
Mr. JOHN MOORE, Apothecary,
At the Pestle and Mortar in Laurence-Pountney’s Lane, the first Great Gates on the Left-Hand from Cannon-street,
I applied to him for Relief of my Son, who after having taken a few of his Worm-Powders, they brought from him a WORM (or INSECT) like a Hog-Louse, with Legs and hairy, or a Kind of Down all over it, and very probably more, but he going to a common Vault they were lost; upon which he is amended as to his former Illnesses, and I desire this may be printed for the Good of others.
Witness
RICHARD SANDFORD.
Oct. 6, 1735.
N.B. The said JOHN MOORE’S Worm Medicines and Green-Sickness Powder, are sold at Mrs. Reader’s at the Nine Sugar-Loaves, a Chandler’s Shop in Hungerford-Market, sealed with his Coat of Arms, being a Cross, with the Words, John Moore’s Worm-Powders, &c., inscribed round it: And if any are Sold at any place, except at his own House, without that Seal and Inscription, they are Counterfeits.
He sells Byfield’s Sal Volatile Oliosum, at 6d. per Ounce.
To be had at the said J. Moore’s,
COLUMBARIUM; or, The Pigeon-House: Being an Introduction to a Natural History of Tame Pigeons, giving an Account of the several Species known in England, with the Method of breeding them, their Distempers and Cures.
The two chief Advantages, which a real Acquaintance with Nature brings to our Minds, are first, by instructing our Understandings and gratifying our Curiosities; and next by exciting and cherishing our Devotion.
Boyle’s Experimental Philosophy, p. 3.
Mr Sandford’s ideas on natural history were rather confused, and his powers of description evidently bothered by the astonishing “insect” which had so annoyed his son. What a pity so curious a specimen was not preserved for the benefit of Moore and “the good of others”! There was now a sore battle being fought between the quacks and the regular practitioners, the latter being bound to come forward and defend what they considered to be their rights by all and every means. That they did not disdain the use of advertisements, the following, which had its origin in a small gossiping paragraph, shows. It appears in the Daily Journal of July 22, 1734, but was originally published a few days before, without the two paragraphs after signature:--
WHEREAS in the Papers of Saturday last there was a Paragraph relating to a Dispute that happened at Child’s Coffee-house, between a Doctor and a Surgeon; I think it my Duty to tell the Fact that occasioned this Dispute, truly as it is.
On Wednesday the 10th of July I sent to Mr. Nourse; when he came I told him I had a Swelling and great Pain in my Leg; he saw it, said it was much inflamed, and that I must be blooded, take some Physick, and that he would send something that was proper to be applied; I was immediately let Blood; and he writ a Purge for me, to be taken the next Day, which I took, and am thereby, I thank God, much better. Afterwards, in the same Conversation, he ask’d me how long I had been ill? my Answer was, ten Days; he reply’d, have you been ill so long, and had no Advice? I then told him, I had, some Days before, been to the Jew Doctor’s House; his Answer was, I suppose you mean Dr. Schamberg, and pray what has he ordered for you? I said, I could not tell; but being desirous that Dr. Nourse should see the Prescription, I sent to the Apothecary’s for it by my Son, who brought it directly into the Room, where there was not anybody but Mr. Nourse and myself; Mr. Nourse looked upon the Bill, and told me I must take none of these Things now; nor the Spaw Water, said I? (for that was Part of the Prescription); his Answer was No, and laid the Bill down upon the Table, without saying anything more. This is the whole Truth, and I’m ready to attest it by an Affidavit.
N.B. When I sent to Mr. Nourse I was determined to apply no more to Dr. Schamberg, he being in a manner a Stranger to me, and I have been much worse every Day, from the Time I began to take his Medicines.
B. J. KNIGHT.
Leadenhall Market, 15 July.
The Propriety of Æsculapius’s Prescription judge of by the Effect.
Q. Whether Steel steep’d in Brandy, and Spa Water, are proper for a Shortness of Breath, or an Inflammation.
After this had been published once or twice, the advertiser, who could hardly have taken so much trouble out of pure gratitude, inserted another notice in the form of an affidavit, containing the foregoing and other particulars, the most important of which is that which discovers her sex. At least we presume that Bridget was a woman’s name in 1734. The difficulties between the doctors and apothecaries--the latter, when not quacks themselves, being their special agents--and the demand made for the far-famed Jesuits’ Bark, are both shown in the following handbill, which is of about the same date as the foregoing:--
WHEREAS it has been of late the Endeavour of several Members of the Physicians College, to reform the Abuses of the Apothecaries, as well in the Prizes as in the Composition of their Medicines, This is to give Notice for the public Good, that a superfine Sort of Jesuits Bark ready powder’d and paper’d into Doses, with or without Directions for the Use of it, is to be had at Dr. Charles Goodal’s at the Coach and Horses, in Physician’s Colledge in Warwick Lane, at 4s. per Ounce, or for a Quantity together at £3 per Pound; for the Reasonableness of which Prizes, (considering the Loss and Trouble in powdering) we appeal to all the Druggists and Apothecaries themselves in Town, and particularly to Mr. Thair, Druggist in Newgate Street, to whom we paid full 9s. per Pound for a considerable Quantity for the Use of our self and our friends.
And for the Excellency and Efficacy of this particular Bark enquire of Dr. Morton in Grey Friars.
I am to be spoken with at Prayers at S. Sepulchre’s every Day, but the Lord’s Day, at Seven in the Morning, and at Home from Eight in the Morning till Ten at Night.
The Poor may have Advice (that is, Nothing) for Nothing.
“Nothing for nothing” is a rate of exchange which is current even to this day, and was very likely known long before the time of this physician, whose effort could hardly have been expected to prove disastrous to the empirics, as he, among other peculiarities, regards what should have been his strong point of dissimilarity from them as “nothing.” Another bill of the same period is noticeable for the explicitness of the address given in it:--
When you are in Baldwin’s Gardens, that you may not mistake, ask for Leopard’s Court, and there at the Sign of the Moon and Stars, you will find the Louvain Doctor from 8 in the Morning till 7 at Night. As you pass by the end of Leopard’s Court you may see the Sign of the Moon and Stars, which, pray, observe, least you mistake: for there are several Pretenders, therefore keep this bill. Baldwin’s Gardens are near Holborn.
Baldwin’s Gardens would hardly be a good address in these times for even the veriest quack. It is now about the foulest specimen extant of that kind of backslum or alley where, a generation back, according to Hood, pigs and Irish were wont to rally. The pigs, except in the form of hocks, “Jerry Lynch” heads, and other portions of bacon, have been removed by Act of Parliament since the poet sang his simple lay of “The Lost Child,” but the Irish have increased and multiplied with an activity unknown to them in other pursuits. The powers of the finest peasantry in the world are undoubted in one particular of philoprogenitiveness under any circumstances, and they seem to exert them to the utmost when least required and most inconvenient--when they are “pigged up” in small rooms and festering courts, and when every fresh birth is an outrage upon the sanatory laws supposed to govern us, and upon their own sense of decency. We are in the habit of hearing most of our domestic and civic misfortunes ascribed to the higher wages and increased leisure of the labouring classes of the present, as compared with those of twenty or thirty years back. Is this the case with regard to the rapid development of inhabitants for Baldwin’s Gardens, Leather Lane, Saffron Hill, and neighbouring purlieus? There may be increased leisure there, but if the wages are higher now than they were, in proportion to the higher price of provisions, they must have suffered worse than starvation in years gone by. So unhealthily crowded--in fact, pestilent--is the neighbourhood we have mentioned, that no number of quacks could have done more to shorten life than the inhabitants now do for themselves. But even these poor wretches are made the groundwork for a new system of quackery--the quackery of the mock philanthropist, who builds model lodging-houses, ostensibly and with much flourishing of trumpets, for the very poor, and then lets them to people who never did dwell in rookeries; to those people who can afford to pay good rents, and so keep up the dividends which are the modern reward of so-called charity.
Notwithstanding the many stirring events of the early part of the last century, there is little or nothing to read in any of the papers. This may be accounted for by the difficulty of obtaining news from distant or even from any parts a hundred and thirty years or so back; but whatever the reason, this is certain, the advertisements are by far the best reading in the journals, daily or weekly. Though the newspapers were to our notions wonderfully small, their editors seem to have had the greatest difficulty in filling the little space they had at command with news, and provincial journals were sometimes put to strange shifts, even the now common work of the liner, that of inventing facts, being then unknown. It is by no means unusual to find a chapter of the Bible put in to fill up the columns; and even as late as 1740 the London and County Journal gratified its readers with the History of the Old and New Testaments, while other papers filled up their front pages with occasional extracts from the histories of England and other countries, or selections from books of travel. Singular as this may seem, it is true. Its truth is perhaps the most singular thing about it.
Among the many specifics of the last century was snuff, which in various forms is advertised as possessing the power not only of curing all bodily but many mental evils. In the General Advertiser for June 21, 1749, there is an advertisement of a snuff which was supposed to cure lunacy. Certainly it has an effect on the ideas with regard to the construction of sentences, as the proprietor himself shows:--
GENTLEMEN,
ONCE more I desire you to remember, I have published my Imperial Snuff, for all Disorders in the Head; and I think I might have gone further, and said, for all Disorders of Body and Mind. It hath set a great many to rights that was never expected, but there is but few, or none, that careth to have it published they were a little out of their Senses, although it be really an Ailment that none can help; but there is present Relief, if not a Cure; but I hope both, as by God’s Assistance it hath been performed already on many. And I think it my Duty to let the World know it, that they may not bear so many miserable Ailments that is capable of curing. I hear it is reported abroad I am dead, and that the World is imposed on; but, thank God, I am alive and put my Dependance on him, that he will give me leave to do some more Service before I go hence. But suppose I was dead, my Snuff is alive, and I hope it will live after I am dead, as it is capable of keeping the World in sprightly Life and Health, which must be allowed to be the greatest Blessing in the World. But what is Riches without that? And what would some have given for some of these Reliefs before it was advertised. But you are all heartily welcome at this Price of Sixpence, at present, but I should be glad of more from the Rich. I do assure you it is sold at this Price in regard to the Poor only.
I am yours, etc.
SAMUEL MAJOR.
In Swedland Court, against the end of Half-Moon-Alley, Bishopsgate Street.
The next gentleman upon the list is Mr Patence, who combined in himself many valuable qualifications, and was according to his own showing a decided benefactor to humanity. In December 1771 we find the following in the Gazetteer:--
MR Patence, Dentist and Dancing Master, No. 8, Bolt Court, Fleet Street, whose Ingenuity in making artificial Teeth, and fixing them without the least Pain, can be attested by several of the Nobility, and hopes to be honoured by the rest of the Great--may depend his Study shall be devoted to the good of every Individual. His whole Sets, with a Fine enamel on, is a Proof of his excelling all Operators. He charges ten Guineas for a whole, five for an upper or under Set, and half-a-Guinea for a single Tooth.--His Rose Powder for preserving the Teeth, is worthy to grace and perfume the chamber of a Prince.--His Medicines for preventing all Infections and sore Throats have been experienced by several.--As for dancing, he leaves that to the multitude of Ladies and Gentlemen whom he has taught, and desires to be rewarded no more than his Merit deserves, nor no less. Public School nights, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday Evenings; Tuesday Evenings set apart for Cotillons only.--N.B. His Rose Dentrifice may be had at Mr Nesbit’s Toy Shop Bishopsgate Street, and at his House, at 2s. 6d. the box.
The conjunction of practices seems somewhat odd, and, as many may think, rather ominous--for the patients. But Mr Patence evidently flourished, and found plenty money to spend in advertisements. He promises much, but his strong point is secrecy. Advice is as usual offered gratis, which was a fair charge for it, considering that the applicant was sure to be advised to buy some of the nostrums purveyed by Patence. By his skill he repeatedly offers to stand or fall, and about the date we have given he publishes the following as evidence of it. It will be noticed that the address has been shifted, possibly on account of increased business:--
No. 3 Ludgate Hill.
THIS Week a Lady applied to Mr. Patence, No. 3 Ludgate Hill, who had her Jaw-Bone broke by having a Tooth extracted, by another Lady, with a sound front Tooth in her Hand, and two others just ready to drop from their Sockets, by having four wretched artificial ones set in by another: her Teeth are all loose. By Tincture, a Gentleman with Teeth set in as brown as a Walnut, that never answered any End; and several other Persons in different Cases. Mr. Patence therefore begs leave to add, that it is not his Intent to take away or lessen the Merit of any one particular Person; but how shocking it is to see Ladies and Gentlemen imposed on, a good set of Teeth ruined, and left at Leisure to lament the Loss in Pain, by Pretenders; for, of all Things artificial Teeth badly set in, is the most destructive of the good next them: but if performed in that masterly Manner that human Nature requires, they are a Preservation, and will answer the End which a humane Man would wish for, or a skilful Dentist desire.--Advice given daily in Cases ordinary, and extraordinary. No Cure no Pay.
After this Patence goes on merrily telling us now that his “works, cures, and operations confirm his supremacy over every dentist in this kingdom; also physicians, curing man, woman, and child, when not one of them can give relief;” and then that he sells “teeth comprised of six different enamels, warranted never to turn black.” Teeth were, however, but small things in his practice, as he guarantees to replace “fallen noses” and challenges all known and unknown diseases, being, as he states, “mechanically accurated and anatomically perfect in the human structure.” To say less, he tells us, would be “doing an act unjust to himself, his patients, and his Maker, whose gifts are disposed of to whom he pleases.” In the Morning Post of 1775 he publishes the following, having in the meantime once again changed his residence:--
To the Nobility, Gentry, and Others.
PATENCE, Surgeon by Birth, and Dentist, having had ten Years Practice, performs every Operation on the Teeth, Gums, &c., with superior Skill, and whose Cures are not excelled or even equalled by any Dentist whatever. And as a Confirmation of the same, please to observe the following:--
October 5. A Gentleman who had lost all his Teeth, his Gums ulcerated and scorbutic, in five Days made a perfect Cure, fixed him in a whole set of natural Teeth, without Springs or any Fastening.
October 16. A Lady whose Jaw was fractured by a Barber, her Teeth loose, her Gums ulcerated, attended with a running Matter, and an inflammation in her Cheeks, with a callous Swelling, cured without poulticing or cutting.
October 20. A Lady that had lost all her upper Teeth by using Powders and Tinctures that are advertised to cure Everything, her Mouth ulcerated, and her Breath nauseous, is now delicately Clean, and replaced the Teeth with those that never change their Colour.
Sunday, October 29. Perfectly relieved a Person that had lost both Palate and Speech; when he drank or eat it came out at his Nostrils, and had been in that state three Years; he had applied to Surgeons and several Hospitals, who deemed him incurable, and told him, one and all, he could have no Relief; he now speaks articulate, eats and drinks with Pleasure, which if any one should doubt, he can refer them to the Man. These, with upwards of three thousand Operations and Cures, have been accomplished by your humble Servant,
M. PATENCE.
At No. 403, in the Strand, near Southampton Street, London. Where the Teeth, though ever so foul, are made delicately white in six Minutes, and Medicines given for their preservation, for half a Guinea, any hour after ten in the Morning. Advice gratis, and profound Secrecy if required.
☞ Envy may snarl, but superior Abilities assists the Afflicted.
There must be something very ambitious about a man who, not satisfied with being dentist and dancing-master, assumes the title of “surgeon by birth.” It is noticeable that though Patence was born a surgeon, he did not discover it till he had been at dentistry and dancing for some years.[37] But in 1775 and thereabouts quacks were not very particular as to their statements. In September 1776 the Morning Post contains a very lengthy advertisement, put forth by one Lattese, a Piedmontese, who states that he has “by a long course of experiments discovered the wonderful secret of procreating either sex at the joint option of the parents. Should their desire be to have a girl, the success cannot be warranted with absolute certainty, though the chances will be highly in favour of such an event; but should they concur in their wishes to have a son, they may rely that by strictly conforming to a few easy and natural directions, they will positively have a boy.” Mr Lattese is so satisfied with the result of his experience that he is satisfied to await the result, and, no satisfaction, no pay. However much we may have advanced in some directions since the days of Patence and Lattese--though we now have railroads, steamboats, tramways, electric telegraphs, a penny post, vote by ballot, asphalt pavement, and good-templarism--it must be admitted that we have, in grasping at mere bubbles, lost many true arts. Among those unfortunately forgotten must, we are sorry to assume, be ranked those of breeding boys at will and surgeons à discretion.
It is curious how anxious many of the quacks are that they shall not be confounded with their rivals, and their addresses are often given with wonderful exactness. Of this we will add another example, which, though some years later than the one about Baldwin’s Gardens, is in no way less distinct. It would seem, from many references in old newspapers, that the term Maypole was used for a certain portion of the Strand long after the shaft itself had been removed:--
In the Strand, over against the Maypole, on the left Hand coming from Temple-Bar, at the Sign of the Golden Cross, between a Sword Cuttlers and a Milliner’s Shop, the Sign of the Sugar Loaf and Barber’s Pole, within four Doors of the Mitre Tavern: Where you may see a large Red coloured Lanthorn, with Eleven Candles in it; and a white Sign written upon with red Letters DUTCH DOCTOR, ^Licensed by his most Excellent Majesty^: and a long Entry with a Hatch and a Knocker on it. Where you may come in privately, and speak with him, and need not be ashamed, he having not any in his House but himself and his Family.
The sign of the Sugar-loaf and Barber’s Pole must have been unique even in the days of signboards, when incongruity was an advantage. Signs remind us of a noted quack of last century, Van Butchell, who painted a wonderful inscription over the front of his house. He was a great advertiser, too, and his effusions are found in most of the papers. When his wife died he had her embalmed, and used to let his patients see the body. He made her very useful as a means of publicity, one of his notices--in the St James’s Chronicle for October 1776--running thus:--
VAN BUTCHELL (not willing to be unpleasantly circumstanced, and wishing to convince some good Minds they have been misinformed) acquaints the Curious no Stranger can see his embalmed Wife, unless (by a Friend or personally) introduced to himself, any Day between Nine and One, Sundays excepted.
Van Butchell, though he lost no opportunity of looking after the main chance, had a mad way of conducting his business, which caused people to regard him as quite out of the ordinary level of charlatans, and his eccentricities in time got him a reputation for both cleverness and conscientiousness. He lived in Mount Street, and on his house and part of the next the following strange inscription was painted:--
BY HIS MAJESTY’S Thus, said sneaking Jack, ROYAL speaking like himself, I’ll be first; if I get my Money, I don’t care who suffers. LETTERS PATENT, MARTIN VAN BUTCHELL’S NEW INVENTED
With caustic care--and old Phim.
SPRING BANDS AND FASTENINGS
Sometimes in six days, and always in ten--the Fistula in Ano.
FOR THE APPAREL AND FURNITURE July 6. OF Licensed to deal in Perfumery, i.e. HUMAN BEINGS Hydrophobia cured in thirty days. AND BRUTE CREATURES. Made of Milk and Honey.
His next-door neighbour, however, thinking proper to rebuild part of his front, obliterated half of the notice, which, as remarked, ran across both houses. At one time Van Butchell had a famous dun horse, and having some dispute with the stable-keeper, it was detained by the latter to pay for his keep, and was at length sold at Tattersall’s, where, from the character given him by Van Butchell, he brought a good price. This affair was the occasion of a lawsuit, and caused the Doctor to add in small gold letters as quoted, nearly at the top of his notice, the words, “Thus said sneaking Jack,” &c. Of Van Butchell’s literary and advertising talents, the reader will be best able to form a conclusion after a perusal of the following specimen, taken from various newspapers at various times:--
Causes of Crim. Con. Also Barreness--And the King’s Evil: Advice--new--Guinea; come from Ten till One: for I go to none. The Anatomist and Sympathizer who never poisons--nor sheds human blood: Balm is always good.
Corresponding--Lads--Remember Judas:--And the year 80! Last Monday morning at Seven o’clock, Doctor Merryman, of Queen Street, Mayfair, presented Elizabeth, the wife of Martin van Butchell with her Fifth fine Boy, at his House in Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, and--they--all--are--well. Post Masters General for Ten Thousand Pounds (--We mean Gentlemen’s--Not a Penny less--) I will soon construct--Such Mail-Coach--Perch Bolts, as shall never break!
Tender--hearted--Man--User of the Knife,--Would’st thou cut thy Wife? (--Unless two[38] were by?--Fearing she might die?--) Is--not--Blood--the Life? If the Empress of Russia--the Emperor of Germany--the King of Prussia--an Immaculate,--or the Pope of Rome--were sorely smitten--with bad Fistulæ and tormenting Piles--visited Martin to be made quite whole:--Without Confinement--Fomentation--Risk--Infection--Poultice-- Caustic--or Cutting:--bringing two per Cent. of Five Years Profit.--☞ Less is not his fee. Nor would he suffer a third person to be in the room. Not wanting help,--he won’t be hinder’d; by half-willed spies; slavish informers: nor sad alarmists. All his patients live: and--Jehovah--praise.
To the Editor--of a Morning Paper--Ego--Secundus.--Of God every man--hath his proper gift: glory be to him--that of mine is healing:--(Not miraculous,--nor by Satan’s aid:)--being vigilant--while gay lads gamed at the Tennis Court--I found it in schools anatomical--Fistulæ and Piles--best my genius fit--Very broad is art--narrow human wit: tho’ man was complete (--As he ought to be with an hairy chin.)--Lovely women hate fops effeminate.--Time approaches when among certain men--in another age--beards--will--be--the--rage!
To many I refer--for my character: each will have the grace--to write out his case; soon as he is well--an history tell: for the public good;--so save human blood: as--all--true--folk--shou’d. Sharkish people may--keep themselves away--Those that use men ill--I never can heal; being forbidden--to cast pearls to pigs; lest--they--turn--and--tear. Wisdom makes dainty: patients come to me, with heavy guineas--between ten and one: but--I--go--to--none.
Mender of mankind; in a manly way.
Fistulæ--Patients--Fee--is--according--to ability! let those--who have much give--without grudging!--(heavy guineas--down: I don’t like paper;--unless--from the Bank of good Old England)--Plain folk--do comply--very readily: so shall--the gaudy:--or keep their complaints! Many--are in want of food;--and raiment, for large families. Such--will be made whole--just so speedily as the most wealthy; that’s “one right of man,” and he shall have it; while God grants me health!--(Philosophers--say--Mankind--are equal:--and pure religion--kindly--promotes--good.)--Lofty ones--read this;--then pause a little: down your dust--must lay; promises--won’t do; I can’t go away--to receive some pay from other people!
British Christian Lads. (“Behold--now is the day--of salvation.” Get understanding:--as the highest gain.--) Cease looking boyish:--become quite manly!--(Girls are fond of hair:--it is natural.)--Let your beards grow long: that ye may be strong:--in mind--and in body: as were great grand dads: centuries ago; when John did not owe--a single penny: more--than--he--could--pay.
Phi--lo--so--fie--sirs.--“Heaven gives a will:--then directs the way.” Honor your maker:--And “Be swift to hear: slow--to--speak:--or--wrath.” Leave off _de_forming:--each--himself--_re_form: wear--the--marks--of--men--In-con-tes-ti-ble! Jesus--did not shave:--for He--knew better. Had it been proper--our chins should be bare, would hair--be put there:--by wise Jehovah?--Who--made--all--things--good.
Sympathising--Minds!--“Blessed are they that consider the poor.” Princes--Dukes--Lords--Knights--Esquires--Ladies--“Or the Lord knows who,” are hapless mortals!--Many do need me--to give them comfort! Am not I--the first--healer--(at this Day)--of bad Fistulæ?--(with--an handsome Beard)--like Hippocrates! The combing--I sell--one guinea--each hair:--(of use--to the Fair, that want fine children:--I can--tell them how;--it--is a secret--) Some--are quite--auburn;--others--silver white:--full--half quarter--long, growing--(day and night)--only--fifteen--months! Ye must hither come,--(As I go to none)--and bring--one per cent. of five years’ profit:--that’s my settled fee; it--shall be return’d if I do not cure--(in a little time)--the worst Fistulæ: let who will--have failed! Lie telling--is bad:--sotting--makes folk sad! see--(Ananias)--Beginning Acts v. Pot-I-cary--bow--thy--frizz’d--mealy pate! “Despisers,--behold--wonder--and perish!” “God--gives grace to man! Glory--be to God! He--doth all things well!”
Fistulæ--and--Piles, by the help of God--we eradicate, Having wit enough to heal those complaints, my small fee must be--twelve heavy guineas: large six score thousand: We mean 2 pr cent. on five years profit--put it in rouleaus of an hundred each.--Come from ten till one:--for--I--go--to--none.
No one, after reading these extracts, will be inclined to doubt that Van Butchell was an original. His notoriety was such that many used to visit his house, not so much for the purpose of receiving advice as to see and converse with him. The success which he and contemporary quacks made led to the tax on “patent medicines,” which was imposed in 1783, and has now for over ninety years been a fruitful source of revenue. Of Van Butchell’s contemporaries, one of the most worthy of note was Katerfelto, of whom Cowper speaks in “The Task”--
And Katerfelto, with his hair an end At his own wonders, wondering for his bread.
Katerfelto was a foreigner who had “seen service,” and according to his own showing was both brave and learned. A notice of him which appears in an article on quacks says: “In a pamphlet on quackery, published at Kingston-upon-Hull, in 1805, it is stated that Dr Katerfelto practised on the people of London in the influenza of 1782; that he added to his nostrums the fascinations of hocus-pocus; and that with the services of some extraordinary black cats he astonished the vulgar. In 1790, or 1791, he visited the city of Durham, accompanied by his wife and daughter. His travelling equipage consisted of an old rumbling coach, drawn by a pair of sorry hacks; and his two black servants wore green liveries with red collars. They were sent round the town, blowing trumpets and delivering bills of their master’s performances. These were--in the daytime, a microscope; in the evening, electrical experiments, in which the black cats--‘the doctor’s devils’--played their parts in yielding electric sparks; tricks of legerdemain concluded the entertainments. He was a tall, thin man, dressed in a black gown and square cap; he is said to have been originally a soldier in the Prussian service. In one of his advertisements he states that he was a colonel in the ‘Death’s Head’ regiment of hussars, a terrific prognostic of his ultimate profession. He had many mishaps in his conjuring career; once he sent up a fire balloon, which, falling upon a hay-stack, set it on fire, and it was consumed, when Katerfelto was sued for its value, and was sent to prison in default of payment. And not long before his death, he was committed by the Mayor of Shrewsbury to the House of Correction in that city as a vagrant and impostor. Katerfelto mixed up with his quackery some real science, and by the aid of the solar microscope astonished the world with insect wonders. In one of his advertisements in the Morning Post, of July 1782, he says that, by its aid, the insects on the hedges will be seen larger than ever, and those insects which caused the late influenza will be seen as large as a bird; and in a drop of water the size of a pin’s head there will be seen above 50,000 insects; the same in beer, milk, vinegar, blood, flour, cheese, etc., etc., and there will be seen many surprising indifferent vegetables, and above 200 other dead objects. He obtained good prices for his show:--‘The admittance to see these wonderful works of Providence is only--front seats, three shillings; second seats, two shillings; and back seats, one shilling only, from eight o’clock in the morning till six in the afternoon, at No. 22 Piccadilly.’ He fully understood the advantages of puffing, and one of his advertisements commences with a story of ‘a gentleman of the faculty belonging to Oxford University, who, finding it likely to prove a fine day, set out for London purposely to see those great wonders which are advertised so much by that famous philosopher, Mr Katerfelto;’ that the said gentleman declared, ‘if he had come three hundred miles on purpose, the knowledge he had then received would amply reward him; and that he should not wonder that some of the nobility should come from the remotest part of Scotland to hear Mr Katerfelto, as the people of that country in particular are always searching after knowledge.’ He elsewhere declares himself ‘the greatest philosopher in this kingdom since Sir Isaac Newton.’ ‘And Mr Katerfelto, as a divine and moral philosopher, begs leave to say that all persons on earth live in darkness, if they are able to see, but will not see his wonderful exhibition.’” Katerfelto, who had been in trouble both in his own country and in France, showed an aptitude for distinguishing himself in a similar way here, not only in the ways we have already quoted, but with regard to impositions practised on the confiding. He obtained £2000 from a Captain Paterson, but had to return it. This he afterwards referred to as instance of his generosity and love of honesty, and his admiration for this country is shown by his avowed desire to stay in it, “though unpensioned, notwithstanding the many offers from the Queen of France, the request of his friend and correspondent Dr Franklin, and the positive commands of his liege lord the King of Prussia.”
Mention of the Queen of France reminds us of another impostor, perhaps the greatest in his way that ever lived, Joseph Balsamo. As, however, he had little or nothing to do with advertising, and as he has already afforded work for many able and vigorous pens, we will be content to quote a few lines from Carlyle regarding the arch-quack’s description and personal appearance: “The quack of quacks, the most perfect scoundrel that in these latter ages has marked the world’s history, we have found in the Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, pupil of the sage Althotas, foster child of the Scherif of Mecca, probably son of the last king of Trebizonde; named also Acharat, and unfortunate child of nature; by profession healer of diseases, abolisher of wrinkles, friend of the poor and impotent, grand-master of the Egyptian mason-lodge of high science, spirit-summoner, gold-cook, grand cophta, prophet, priest, and thaumaturgic moralist and swindler; really a liar of the first magnitude, thorough-paced in all provinces of lying, what one may call the king of liars. . . . One of the most authentic documents preserved of Joseph Balsamo is the picture of his visage. An effigy once universally diffused in oil paint, aquatint, marble, stucco, and perhaps gingerbread, decorating millions of apartments. Fittest of visitors, worthy to be worn by the quack of quacks! A most portentous face of scoundrelism: a fat, snub, abominable face; dew-lapped, flat-nosed, greasy, full of greediness, sensuality, ox-like obstinacy; a forehead impudent, refusing to be ashamed; and then two eyes turned up seraphically languishing, as if in divine contemplation and adoration; a touch of quiz, too; on the whole, perhaps the most perfect quack-face produced by the eighteenth century.” The subject of this flattering portrait was born in 1743, and died in the fortress of St Leo, Rome, after an imprisonment of six years, aged fifty-two.
The system of showing on oneself the effect of one’s own specifics has had many admirers and practisers. A Mrs Harden, in Newman Street, Oxford Street, used to advertise some years ago a hair-dye, the effect of which was to be seen on her own hair at her private residence, or at ladies’ own residences if preferred. In a similar manner a quack in the time of King Charles II. commenced his handbill with this statement: “Salvator Winter, an Italian of the city of Naples, aged 98 years, yet by the blessing of God, finds himself in health and as strong as any one of fifty, as to the sensitive part. Which first he attributes to God, and then to his Elixir Vitæ, which he always carries in his pocket adayes, and at night under his pillow. And when he finds himself distempered he taketh a spoonful or two, according as need requireth.” He then goes on to state that people should call and see its effect on him, and purchase so as to ensure health.
A most original, unique, and successful humbug, quite worthy of mention here, though not a dealer in medicines, was the late Monsieur Mangin of Paris. While passing through the public streets, there was nothing in his personal appearance to distinguish him from any ordinary gentleman. He drove a pair of bay horses, attached to an open carriage with two seats, the back one always occupied by his valet. Sometimes he would take up his stand in the Champs Elysées; at other times near the column in the Place Vendôme; but usually he was seen in the afternoon in the Place de la Bastille, or the Place de la Madeleine. On Sundays his favourite locality was the Place de la Bourse. Mangin was a well-formed, stately-looking individual, with a most self-satisfied countenance, which seemed to say, “I am master here; and all that my auditors have to do is, to listen and obey.” Arriving at his destined stopping-place, his carriage halted. His servant handed him a case from which he took several large portraits of himself, which he hung prominently upon the sides of his carriage, and also placed in front of him a vase filled with medals bearing his likeness on one side, and a description of the blacklead pencils in which he traded on the other. He then leisurely commenced a change of costume. His round hat was replaced by a magnificent burnished helmet, mounted with rich plumes of various brilliant colours. His overcoat was laid aside, and he donned in its stead a costly velvet tunic with gold fringes. He then drew a pair of polished steel gauntlets upon his hands, covered his breast with a brilliant cuirass, and placed a richly-mounted sword at his side. His servant watched him closely, and upon receiving a sign from his master he too put on his official costume, which consisted of a velvet robe and a helmet. The servant then struck up a tune on the richly-toned organ which always formed a part of Mangin’s apparatus. The grotesque appearance of these individuals, and the music, soon drew together an admiring crowd. Then the charlatan stood up. His manner was calm, dignified, imposing, indeed, almost solemn, for his face was as serious as that of the chief mourner at a funeral. His sharp, intelligent eye scrutinised the throng which was pressing around his carriage, until it rested apparently upon some particular individual, then he gave a start; then, with a dark, angry expression, as if the sight was repulsive, he abruptly dropped the visor of his helmet and thus covered his face from the gaze of the anxious crowd. Thus far he had not spoken a word. At last the prelude ended, and the comedy commenced. Stepping forward again to the front of the carriage, he exclaimed--“Gentlemen, you look astonished! You seem to wonder and ask yourselves, who is this modern Quixote? What mean this costume of bygone centuries--this golden chariot--these richly-caparisoned steeds? What is the name, what the purpose of this curious knight-errant? Gentlemen, I will condescend to answer your queries. I am Monsieur Mangin, the great charlatan of France! Yes, gentlemen, I am a charlatan--a mountebank; it is my profession, not from choice, but from necessity. You, gentlemen, created that necessity! You would not patronise true, unpretending, honest merit, but you are attracted by my glittering casque, my sweeping crest, my waving plumes. You are captivated by din and glitter, and therein lies my strength. Years ago I hired a modest shop in the Rue Rivoli, but I could not sell pencils enough to pay my rent, whereas, by assuming this disguise--it is nothing else--I have succeeded in attracting general attention, and in selling literally millions of my pencils; and I assure you, there is at this moment scarcely an artist in France or in Great Britain who does not know that I manufacture by far the best blacklead pencils ever seen.” And Mangin so far differed from other mountebanks in the fact that his wares were everywhere said to be superior to any others.
Speaking of Mangin reminds us of another French itinerant who forms the central figure of a rather amusing story. In July 1817 a man of imposing figure, wearing a large sabre and immense moustache, arrived at one of the principal inns of a provincial city in France, with a female of agreeable shape and enchanting mien. He alighted at the moment the dinner was being served up at the table d’hôte. His martial appearance and bearing caused all the guests to rise with respect; they felt assured he must be a lieutenant-general or a major-general at least. A new governor was expected in the province about this time, and everybody believed that it was he who had arrived incognito. The officer of gens d’armes gave him the place of honour, the comptroller of the customs and the receiver of taxes sat each by the side of madame, and exerted their wit and gallantry to the utmost. All the tit-bits, all the most exquisite wines, were placed before the fortunate couple. At length the party broke up, and every one ran to report through the city that M. le Gouverneur had arrived. But, oh, what was their surprise, when the next day his Excellency, clad in a scarlet coat, and his august companion, dressed out in a gown glittering with tinsel, mounted a small open calash, and preceded by some musicians, went about the squares and public ways selling Swiss tea and balm of Mecca! Imagine the fury of the guests! They complained to the maire, and demanded that the audacious quack should be compelled to lay aside the characteristic mark of the brave. The prudent magistrate assembled the common council; and those respectable persons, after a long deliberation, considering that nothing in the charter forbad a citizen to let his beard grow on his upper lip, dismissed the complaint altogether. The same evening the supposed governor gave a serenade to the offended diners, and the next day took his leave, and continued his journey amid the acclamations of the populace.
It would be interesting to know what quack--for a quack it certainly must have been--was first responsible for the belief that a child’s caul would save a man from drowning. The origin of this fiction is, however, hidden under the dust of ages. It is customary for people who assume what they wish to believe, to state that the superstition went out when education came in; but that such is not the case a perusal of the advertisement sheets of current journals will show. Here is a rather curious specimen of a generation ago:--
A CHILD’S CAUL to be disposed of, particularly recommended to persons going to the Continent on pleasure or business, officers in his Majesty’s navy, merchants trading to the East and West Indies, and all other parts of the globe, being exposed to the dangers of the seas, having the caul in their possession their life will most assuredly always be preserved. Address by letter only, prepaid, to Mr W., Temple Chambers, Falcon Court, Fleet Street.
It must be admitted that the demand for these extremely portable life-preservers has quite gone so far as advertisements are concerned, all that we have seen of modern years being in reference to cauls that the owners wished to part with. When these preventives were fully believed in, an ancient mariner must have been as much surprised as afraid when he went down to the bottom. Captain Marryat tells a rather funny story of a pair of canvas inexpressibles that refused to sink because they had a caul in one of the pockets; and in the days of Howe, Collingwood, and Nelson, a rare trade was driven in cauls, real and imitation, which then fetched fancy prices.
The motives will be apparent which prevent our entering on the merits and demerits of quacks and quack medicines of the present day. Some of the latter are doubtless concocted with skill, and, under peculiar circumstances, are productive of much good, while others are quite the reverse in all particulars. Into this subject we cannot go, as we have no wish to advertise any one nostrum at the expense of another, or to subject ourselves to the expense and unpleasantness which too often attends on outspokenness. We shall rest content with the facts that the most impudent empirics confine themselves to “certain diseases” and hole-and-corner advertisements, and that analytical chemists and comparatively recent legislation have provided for us remedies for any excess on the part of the patent-medicine manufacturers, any one of whom a single false step would irretrievably ruin. Besides, the curious need look no further than the current newspapers for any quantity of average specimens.
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Graham and his Celestial Bed are worthy of a chapter to themselves, especially as we have already run to such length on the subject of quacks and quackery.
[37] After all Patence was only an imitator in this particular. In the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1735, there is a reference to the “Unborn Doctor of Moorfields,” who flourished very early in the eighteenth century. This man upon being asked to explain his mysterious title, replied, “Why, I wasn’t born a doctor, was I?”
[38] This refers to the regular mode of eminent Surgeons, who seldom cut for Fistulæ or Piles, but in the presence of their assistants: because some patients have died under the operation, and others some days after.