Chapter XII: Swindles and Hoaxes (3)

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.