Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 June 1875 — IMPOSTURES IN ENGLAND. [ARTICLE]

IMPOSTURES IN ENGLAND.

Impostures more successful in their objects if not more famous than the Tichborne case were being practiced in England during the period when the almost interminable trial of Orton, the Wapping butcher, was going on. From several singular cases which we propose to recount it would appear that superstition and credulity are not less rife among English than among French rustics, and that the latter, in crediting the miracles of our Lady of Lourdes and of, the foodless girl are rivaled by the British yeomanry who become the"victims of quacks and witchery. In the diary of that same Orton, otherwise Tichborne, of whom we have spoken, -was found a somewhat remarkable maxim, a child, no doubt, of the burly claimant’s own brain. It was as follows, couched in rude but pregnant language: “ Some has plenty money no brains; some has plenty brains no money; i think them as has plenty money no brains vas made for them as has plenty brains no money.” It -was a principle upon which this great man himself diligently acted, and which all impostors, before and after him, carry out. Knavery dupes credulity the world over ; nor does the constant exposure of the one have the least effect on opening the eyes of and curing the other. * A curious drama of the knave-eerm-fool sort was enacted at the pleasant sea-side town of Hull, England, not long ago. Mr. Henry Jackson, a person of imposing presence and glittering eye, had served in the British army, and had, after leaving it, held the dignity of drummajor of the Hull Rifle Volunteers. But he had wearied of war and mock war, and had made up his mind that his true mission was rather to eure than create physical ills in man. So he had retired from the drum-majorship, had fitted up a somber and mysterious-looking apartment, and had announced to ailing humanity that, by strange gif ts and stranger medicaments, he was ready to assuage' its pains and forever banish its imperfections. Mr. Henry Jackson was in the height of success and reputation when a lusty young farmer, who was for the moment out of health, hearing of the great healer’s wonderful cures, repaired to him in all childlike confidence. This rural gentleman, however, after passing through an amazing variety of treatment and spending, to no purpose, several hundred pounds, at last awoke to the truth, and had Mr. Henry Jackson indicted at Borough Sessions for obtaining money on false pretenses. The tale unfolded by the duped Dickett, the treatment he underwent, the wonderful medicines he partook of, the golden promises made to him, were a revelation. “ Professor” Jackson had first told him to blow through a tube into a glass of water, whereupon the water turned immediately like milk. The professor seized the rustic by the arm and conjured him to lose no time in saying his prayers, for he would not live over two months. Then began the selling of innumerable bottles of “ Indian remedy,” which gradually made the water turn less milky. Yet poor Dickett was far from being cured, and had yet a hard medical road to travel. First he bought a box of stuff said to have come from India, for which he paid three pounds ten, with five shillings extra for expressage from Calcutta. Then he was told by the professor that the great Indian balsam-merchant of whom he had obtained his medicines had just died, at the good age of 170, and that he (the professor) had been lucky enough to obtain the manna and balsams of the aged patriarch. The manna, Dickett was as-, sured, was that which the Israelites used in the wilderness, and that very little of it would keep a person alive many days. For a box of this Dickett gladly paid £sl. An analysis having been made of this costly and biblical food, it was found to consist of about six pennyworths of citrate of magnesia; the “elixir of life” turned out to be simply so much colored water; while the “precious ointment” was composed of ordinary butter! The curious remedies and imposing presence of Mr. Henry Jackson irresistibly reminds us of other and less prosaic days when the dispensers of wonderful Oriental balsams were wont to ply their mystic profession undisturbed by the minions of the law. There are old people still living who can remember a quaint old fellow who called himself the Palatine,” who used to harangue the crowd eloquently from a box in Covent-Garden Market, with a negro servant arrayed in gorgeous livery by his s\de, standing ready to hand him the balsams and elixirs, which were eagerly demanded by his credulous auditors. Tire fame of the celebrated Joseph Balsamo, immortal, ized in the history of the “Diamond Necklace,” and as Cagliostro in Dumas’ “Diary of a Physician,” is not yet dim. He had gloomy rooms in Knightsbridge, and there dispensed to thousands of the Mayfair fashionables “ the Egyptian pill of life.” It is curious tlfat Balsamo, who plied his trade undisturbed in London, was arrested in Rome, not as a quack, but for spirit-rapping. An imposture of a more romantic sort was recently exposed in one of the London courts. The perpetrator was an elderly gentleman, aged seventy-five, with flossy white hair -and trim side-whis-ers, a very noble and patrician air, dressed with the nicest precision and with a courtly manner which almost compelled respect. He claimed aristocracy pf birth; and, although he had aliases, they were high-sounding ones. His name might be Seymour or it might be Cavendish ; justice might take its choice. This prepossessing personage was charged with inveigling foolish young women into matrimony and swindling them out of whatever money and jewelry of theirs he could lay his hands on. Never was a

more remarkable career of imposture and pretense betrayed in a court of justice than that of Mr, Seymour, alias Cavendish. He was in truth a very old fox indeed; but as the English adage has it, “The old fox gets fat upon geese, but he comes to the skinner at last;” and the venerable swindler of no less than fiftysix years found a limit to his fourberies at last within the walls of Dartmoor prison It transpired that this patrician-look-ing person was convicted of fraud in France as long ago as the year 1819, when Louis XVIII. was reigning, and but a short four years after Waterloo. He seems to have carried on his operations indiscriminately in all countries; for nine years after he was sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude in Brabant. While residing in Belgium, where he had managed to procure the professorship of languages, in a Jesuit college, a demand for his extradition came from France, and he was sentenced to fifteen years more. But the assurance of the accomplished villain stood him in good stead; and, after being securely lodged in a French jail, he induced the jailer to believe that he was the Duke of Devonshire, and bribed him to let him escape from prison in a woman’s attire. His principal offenses seem to have been swindling under highsounding names, varied by an occasional marriage, which he effected with charming indifference to the fact that he was very much married already. At one time he gave himself out as a son of the Duke of Wellington; and here and there he represented himself as the scion of divers noble families. Twice within the Sast five years he has been convicted in elgium, once for swindling and once for defrauding the proprietor of a Brussels hotel by forged letters of credit. His latest exploit was of a piece With the rest, only rather more flavored by romance; although, for the matter of that, his whole career has been a long romance of craft and crime. It appears that one Anne Elizabeth Pugg advertised, very innocently, for a situation as “alady’s companion.” To this advertisement Mr. Henry Seymour rendered a quick response. He was a gentleman, he said, of wealth and aristocratic family, and was desirous of engaging a housekeeper to preside over his rural villa in Italy. The confiding Miss Pugg easily swallowed the bait. It was so much better an offer than she could have hoped for! She could live in ease, and on a good salary, beneath the sunny skies and in the balmy breezes of the fair Southern land! She met Mr. Seymour, and was delighted with him. He was so gracious, so patrician! The old rascal lavished all his arts upon the trustful young woman; and anon began to touch upon the tenderest of subjects. Miss Pugg was comely, and knew it; after all, Mr. Seymour. had good taste, and was so delightful, so irresistible an old gentleman! He told her that he could lay a splendid fortune at her feet, and that, as he would not probably live long, at his death she might make a marriage with a younger man and have all’ his wealth to enjoy with her second spouse. With Miss Pugg’s maiden aunt he was not less successful. He was prodigal of his blandishments on this lady, and begged her to be the trustee of the magnificent settlement he intended to make upon her niece. He handed her a package of papers purporting to be trust-deeds; they were afterward examined and found to be a bundle of old copies of'the London Times. After a month’s brief and ardent courtship Anne Elizabeth promised blushingly to be his; and soon after they were married, the happy bridegroom signing himself on the register as “ Richard Henry Conway Seymour.” But poor Miss Pugg’s bliss was not long lasting. In the early days of the honeymoon the large fortune vanished into air. Then the bridegroom began to spend the slender earnings which the confiding bride had intrusted to him “ to keep fur her.” He treated her Kindly, however, and never came home tipsy; and she still delighted in his erudite and polished conversation. The poor woman would, perhaps, have clung to him to this day had it not been that, one bright morning, he w r as rather earnestly called for by the police. He had been at some of his old swindling tricks, and was captured before Anne Elizabeth’s own eyes. Then the horrible truth came out that he had another wife, and that there were some reasons to believe that there was an indefinite number of Mrs. Seymours scattered about the globe. At least it was proved that he was married at Southampton in YB6l, to one Alethea Thomas, which Alethea was still alive, mourning her faithless lord.

Sucli a character as this is certainly worthy of being called, as Coleridge says, “ a psychological study.” He was evidently aman ofliberal education and fine social accomplishments. He had a clear head and active intellect, capable of cunningly combining intricate schemes, and carrying them out with cool precision and skill. Of the ordinary vices of the adventurous villain he seems to have been quite free. He never ate or drank to excess; was not, as far as could be learned, an habitue of Baden or Monaco, or of any other of the great gambling centers; his language was always scrupulously proper and elegant; his attire was faultless; his manners were at once gracious and dignified. He seems to have pursued a career of conscienceless fraud for a period of nearly sixty years for the mere cool love of mischief; and, at threescore and fifteen, found delight in duping a young woman for the sake of the few pounds she had been able to collect by hard and honest labor. Were he to write, as he could do with ability, his adventures during that long half-century, what a tale it would be! A not less remarkable personage than the venerable and seductive Seymour was a woman who was charged at the Surrey Sessions, not long ago, with the same offense of obtaining money under false pretenses. Margaret Anne Dellair was, it may seem, no ordinary or vulgar swinger. “ She does not appear,” says a writer, describing her trial, “ to have lived the life ot the dashing, the aristocratic, or the peripatetic impostor. We

hear of no West-End tradesman victimized in articles of jewelry, point-lace or dressing-cases; ot no carriage-builders deluded out of broughams ; no harnessmakers fleeced of side-saddles and goldmounted riding-whips; no wine-merchant cozened into executing orders for claret and champagne. Mrs. Dellair was not one of those beings who drive wellmatched piebald ponies in the park, who give diners a la Russe, terminating with unlimited 100, or who pass off fictitious checks on the keepers of expensive restaurants. There was nothing showy, noisy or obtrusive about her operations. She touched the harp of chicanery very gently, and played the ‘ Rogue’s March’ in the minor key. She shunned the light, and dwelt apart in a corner, and in the center of a most neatly-constructed little web, which she fondly hoped would elude the observation or escape the besom of justice. She pursued her evil avocation as steadily, quietly and methodically as if it l»d been a thoroughly honest and legitimme employment.” Mrs. Dellair was not beautiful, but she had an air of intense respectability. She wore a pair of gold spectacles—which are in themselves a sort of diploma. She dressed with matronly primness; there was even a sort of chapel-going austerity about her appearance and her serene, resigned manner. Her mode of proceeding was brief and simple enough. She would insert an advertisement in the papers to the effect that “ ladies in town and country wishing for remunerative employment in lace, church needle-work, etc., might apply to M. D., Fern Cottage, West Croydon.” Applicants were requested to send a stamped envelope for the return letter, and they would receive full proof of the lady’s respectability. Idle young ladies of small means, maiden ladies who had “ seen better days” and wished to earn an honest though it might be a humble living, eagerly caught at a bait so tempting. Letters showered in upon M. D. Fern Cottage, West Croydon, was fairly besieged, thrice a day, by burdened postmen. To all these missives M. D.— Margaret Dellair—returned a printed circular, in which the work to be furnished was set forth in glowing detail. There was braiding, there was pointlace, there was tatting, there was church needle-work, there was Berlin wool. The ladies who undertook these pleasant tasks were to receive at least a shilling an hour—a “ sweet boon” to many an intelligent British spinster. There was but one condition to be fulfilled before ladies could be admitted to share in these delightful toils and spoils. M. D. required that each applicant should pay one guinea “ for registration fee, materials and instruction;” and half the sum would be returned when the work ceased. Postoffice orders were to be sent to Margaret Dellair, Fern Cottage, West Croydon. Some wrote and sent the postoffice orders. M. D.’s business waxed great apace. One young lady received, in acknowledgment of her guinea, ten toilet-mats,. with materials for braiding them. She returned them to Fern Cottage, but no payment or receipt was returned. After many weeks Mrs. Dellair wrote that she had been ill, but there was no mention of remuneration. Finally, some ladies, overpowered by curiosity, made a pilgrimage to West Croydon. There was Fern Cottage, nestled in the woods. There was Mrs. Dellair, serene, Signified, unpretentious, but full of engrossing engagements. At last several pugnacious dupes determined that the fraud should not go on. Mrs. Dellair, gold spectacles and all, Was put into the dock and tried. It appeared that in six months she had cashed no less than 400 postoffice orders. Her ■** references” one and all took the stand and declared that they had never before heard of her. The police came forward and showed that Margaret Dellair’s husband was already serving out a sentence of jpenal servitude lor fraud, and now she herself was sentenced to undergo the same punishment for a period of seven years.— Appleton's Journal. ,