An Audacious Swindle.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 7076, 23 February 1893, Page 2

An Audacious Swindle.

Horatio Bottomley, who is now in gaol for a financial swindle himself, tells the following story, In early yoqth he served as an office boy to the managing dork of a drunken attorney. This iudinduul lived, to the youth* fal Bottomley’s perplexity, ia groat lower middle-class splendour. Horatio could only suppose the tippling attorney paid him a sumptuous salary, though why he should do so the boy could not imagine. One fine morning, however, two stalwart constables entered the office and conveyed tbo luxurious liver tb Millbunk Prison, It then transpired this financial genius had for years levied and collected a bogus “ county rate *’ upon the guileless and unsuspecting citizens of London. “ It appears,” says Bottomley, “ that once u'pon a time the city bad to pay a county rate, but that it was long ago abolished. My legal colleague, however, came to the conclusion that city people were not quite so particular as suburban householders about their rates and taxes ; and, upon the principle of doing the least harm to the greatest possible number, it occurred to him that he might secure in one foil snoop a princely fortune by relevying the rale upon hisown responsibility, and quietly decamping with whatever he might succeed in collecting before the imposition was discovered- It is a strange sat re noon the astu'eness of the Ci'y th-*t tbo expe iment proved no succes-ful that, instead of making <8 with the first spoil, this daring individual actually took offices for the purposes of his scheme, where the collector attended daily at certain hours, I and from which addiesa the usual demand ! notes and first and second notices and all the ' other documents familiar to tbo ratepayer '

were regularly issued. Of course there was never such a lenie -t collector »ince rates and taxes were invented. Nobody was ever summoned, and neidy citizens never app ied in vain for an extension of lime for payment. And so the game went merrily on from year to year, until at length some accident hap* pened, and the City learned how hugely it had beeu hoaxed. And during the whole period this financial genius was playing the rdle of a simple lawyer’s clerk.”