INSURANCE FRAUDS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 829, 30 September 1870, Page 3

INSURANCE FRAUDS.

Onf of the most glaring attempts at insurance frauds which ever challenged public attention, has come Lord Mayor during the month. It is no wonder that the worthy presiding magistrate interrupted the agent for the prosecution by asking if he were really reading from his instructions, or from Punch. We refer to fin. Henry White, who was charged with unlawfully publishing a false prospectus, with intention to deceive sundry creditors of the "Manchester Insurance and Banking Company." This is a concern which dates only from 1868, #nd which not only borrowed its name from a respectable institution, favorable known as the " Manchester Insurance Office," but actually bad the audacity to .open premises in the same locality, or in other words right opposite the older and infinitely sounder establishment, which shad long domiciled itself in Cheapside. The antecedents of the defendant are significant enough. Twice declared a bankrupt in other spheres of business, he was also an inmate of Warwick Gaol, aud subsequently suffered eighteen months' imprisonment elsewhere. Yet the deeper he sank, paradoxically as it may appear, the higher he rose, till he culminated in making himself a board of directors, a trustee, indeed acted in a Protean capacity for the creation of his own magnificent enterprise. This adventurer introduced a novelty into such undertakings. " The policy-holders were to have a share of the profits, and the dividends were to be distributed every six months." Never was the gullibility of the public better exemplified. His victims unfortunately are numbered by hundreds rather than by units. Applications for policies flowed in in an incessant stream, and premiums were paid over in the most implicit good faith. Now the bubble has burst. The insurers have been deluded. The business boasting agents ** all over the world," was represented solely by the defendant ;>nd two subordinates, who were perhaps innocent of any complicity in the nefarious plot. According to the statement of the prosecuting counsel the transactions jn a bona fide sense were nil. Even the rent of the temporary offices cannot be recovered, the only assets within the four walls consisting of a table and a chair, which are under a distress warrant, At the two examinations evidence was adduced as to the extent to wliich overcon fidiug policy-holders had sacrificed themselves, and on a third preliminary investigation, the Jeremy Diddler who had the daring ingenuity to set all this in;>ck machinery (for benefiting his simpler fellow-creatures) in motion has been properly relegated to Newgate, where he now awaits the arbitration of his fate as # speculator in " fleecing the lambs." It is to be regretted that these almost literally comprise the greater number of the flocks —the majority being helpless females aud orphan Trade Journal, July 1.