NEARLY SUCCESSFUL,

Dunstan Times, Issue 725, 10 March 1876, Page 3

NEARLY SUCCESSFUL,

There are lady swindlers and gentlemen swindlers. Those of the former class very frequently, and too successfully, try their hand in the jewellery line, but we do not often hear of such swindles being perpetrated in the Colonies. In one of them, however, a clever and very nearly successful swindle, involving some hundred pounds worth of jewellery, is said to ha'e been attempted some short time since. The modus operandi was as follows : A lady of the period entered a first-class jewellery establishment, and addressed the proprietor thus: ‘(Will you kindly show me some choice and fashionable jewellery. I want to make a large purchase—some hundreds of pounds’ worth. As a bond fide of my respectability, this is a power of attorney (producing a solicitor s letter) I am getting drawn up in favor of my adopted daughter here) pointing to an elegantly dressed and pretty young lady by her side, with oh! such lovely eyes and faultlessly fitting six and a-half lavenders) to whom I intend leaving a fortune of L 13,000 which has just been left me, and is now lying in a bank.’ The bait —for so it afterwards proved—took admirably. Some 1500 or L6OO worth of jewellery was selected; then the lady said, and oh, so cunningly, ‘ I will not take the whole now ; put up only a part.’ Some L2OO worth was nicely packed up, and taken away, the two ladies bowing themselves politely out of the shop. A day passed, and then the proprietor was heard to remark, ‘ Why on earth do the ladies not call for their jewellery?’ Still they called not. Suspicion was aroused; shopmen wore seen running frantically to this and to that part oi the city; inquiry was made at the bank, with the result—‘No account.’ Then what about the power of attorney ? That, too, a clever rase, drawn out but never called for; a swindle, by George! Where are the ladies? The young one was found at her hotel, and was quickly made to hand over the ‘ choice and select ’ L2OO worth; the old oneclever dame —is non est. What would Carlyle say? ‘Thirty millions of people, mostly fools. Truth is stranger than fiction. How easily people are sometimes duped.’ In this case evidently the jewellers were.