“The Biting Machine."
The latest dodge of the Paris vagabond is a biting machine —a steel pincer which, when it closes on a man’s arm, leaves a mark closely resembling that inflicted by a vicious horse.
The modus operandi was for a band of criminals to surround a horse whose driver was temporarily absent. While one pricked the animal and made it savage, the accomplice cried out as in agony. When a crowd had collected he exhibited his arm, winch had previously been operated upon by the biting macchine.
The indignant spectators proceeded to lynch the carter and beat the horse unmercifully. Finally the proprietor of the innocent steed paid the bogus victim anything from ten to twenty pounds as compensation:
But a company for insuring against accident, alarmed by the number of people who claimed indemnity for horse bites, grew suspicious, and the inventors of the biting machine are now in gaol.
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Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 5 October 1901, Page 4
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153“The Biting Machine." Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 5 October 1901, Page 4
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