THE TIMES HOAXED.

Gisborne Times, Volume X, Issue 1052, 20 November 1903, Page 4

THE TIMES HOAXED.

LONDON, Sept, 20 £ Homer nodded occasionally, and even the Times get victimised by, the practical joKer. Last Saturday, it published a letter signed j Warwick,” and dated irom the Midland Hotel Manchester, in -which the writer said lie had liberated fourteen rattlesnakes at Blarney. Castle, Cork The letter ran “ Sir,—As a matter of record only, I beg to staee that I arribed from America on the Celtic abouL 10 days ago and lauded at Queensland, Ireland, and went to Cork. At Blarney Castle, I liberated fourteen (14) fairly good-sized rattlesnakes (one with six and two with four rattles, balance quite young). Time will tell if St. Patrick’s edict is a myth or not.—Yours for science, C. R, WARWICK,” The Times inveighed against this ■“ dastardly act,” only, to discover -later that it had been 11 had,” The joke, however, has worked finely. The lie had 48 hours' start, (instead of the proverbial 21, and the result is that people all over Ireland are “ seeing things ” and hearing the rattle ol tne serpent also. Were that irrepressible joker, Sir Franke Lockwood, Q.C., still in the land of the living, he .would undoubtedly be suspected of the authorship of .this snake story : , for in its elements it recalls the “ Rev, Tobias Boffin, MAj (Lomion) a ” There never was no sich person,” but Mr Augustine Birrell used the name to point some political moral in a party magazine, and Lockwood ‘-‘did the rest,” Soon the Rev. Tobias became quite a celebrity. He wrote a letter to the papers in which he expressed great re(Sentment at Mr Birrell’s references to him, and then, according to reports, appeared at the Liberal Conference at Leeds, figured among the guests at a dinner given by the Highty Club to Lord Kimberley, and in the first column of a London paper as having oiliciated at a wedding. Meanwhile, Mr Birrell was haunted by the Rev. Tobias, who was continually. calling at the House of Commons and sending for the M.P. on important private business,; Mr Birreli, however, could never pluck up courage enough to interview Mr Boffin. But the clerical spook, was not to be shelved so easily, and pursued

the much-puzzled M.P, during the re•Wjss. One fine day, amongst his ■batch of newspaper cuttings, Mr Birrell found one dealing with a meeting in Yorkshire, at which liis friend “ Thereupon Mr Boffin* M.A, (Lon-

don) came to the front, and expressed in strong language his’regret that Mr Alfred Peace had thought lit to aiiude to Mr Birrell, M.P., as his honorable ‘ friend,’ and a good Liberal. 1-le went on to say, amid considerable interruption, that for his part he would he ashamed to numoor amongst his friends such a man. The Chairman asked Mr Boffin to

postpone his remarks, and to allow Mr Peace to continue. (Cheers and ‘Sit down, Bo bin !’) Amid general disorder, Mr Boffin quitted the platform.” By this time Mr Birrell had come

to entertain feelings akin to

towards the Rev, Thomas Baffin, M.A. (London). Paragraphs dealing with the doings of this non-exis-

tent gentleman continued to find their .way into the press, and as Mr Birrell tells us iu his admirable biography of Lockv/ood during this period it simply rained portraits of Differ, in all Che seven ages of man, from a bad-tempered child to an old and angry man, with hut one object in life—to interview. Mr Birrell. At length the clerical spook was laid by the publication, for private circulation only of a little quarto volume entitled “ The Strange History of Thomas Bollin, M.A., (Lond.), copiously illustrated,” and the author of “ Obiter Dicta ” discovered that he had been the victim of tile jnerryhearted Lockwood*