NEARLY SUCCESSFUL.

Evening Star, Issue 4060, 1 March 1876, Page 2

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 Colonirs. ■ln one of them, however, a clever and very nearly successful swindle, involving some hundred pounds worth of jewellery, is said to ho ye been attempted some short tme since. The modus operands was as follows : A lady of the period entered a firstclass jewellery establishment, and addressed the proprietor thus : “Will you kindly show me some choice and fashionable jewellery. I want to make a large purchaser-some hundreds of pounds’ worth. As a hand 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, te an elegantly dressed and pretty young lady by her side, with oh ! such lovely eyes and faul kssly fitting six and a-hsux lavenders) to whom I intend leaving a fortune of 1..13,000 which has just been left me, and is now lying in a bank.” The baft-for so it afterwards proved—took admirably. SomeLSOO or L6OO werth 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 packedup, and taken away, the two ladies bowing themselves politely out of the shop. A day and then the : propr.etor was heard t© ‘ remark, “ Why on earth do the ladies not call for their jewellery ?” Sti 1 they called not. Suspicion was aroused; shopmen were to be seen running frantically to this and to that part of the city ; inquiry was made at the bank, with the result—“ No account.” Then what about the power of attorney? That, too, a clever ruse, drawn out but never called for; a swind'e, by George ! Where are the ladies? ' The young one.was found at her hotel, and was quiclay made to hand over the “choice and select ” L2OO worth; the old one— clever 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.V In this case evidently the jewellers were.