Rogues Who Laugh at the Law

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 44, 14 May 1927, Page 8

Rogues Who Laugh at the Law

“An Army of Leeches”

No swindle can be lawful, but there are a surprising- number of sharp practices for which the law fails to provide adequate penalties. Speaking before the Council of Qualified Opticians, the registrar of the company declared that the sight of many people had been permanently injured by self-styled “eyesight specialists,” who travel about the country and practise shameful frauds on their victims, says an English paper. These men sell cheap and worthless spectacles at high prices, and make so much money that one rents a suite of rooms in a Manchester hotel, for which he pays £2,000 a year, and another has bought a racing stud from the proceeds of his business. It is almost impossible to prosecute such swindlers, for at the present time there is no law to prevent any person, however ignorant, from carrying on business as an optician. Dress design thieves are constantly busy stealing exclusive designs from the wholesale manufacturers. A good dress designer costs his firm a salary of at least £2,000 a year, but it is extremely difficult to protect designs from the poacher. A clever man can carry away an idea in his head after seeing a model once, and have it duplicated the same day. Some are smart enough to combine two distinct styles and turn them out in one model. The patent laws are not framed to catch this type of swindler. Fake Family Trees During last summer we had 220,000 visitors from the United States in England, and among the army of leeches that preyed upon them not the least successful was the pedigree faker. His method is to hunt up some ancient family of the same name as the client, and supply their pedigree as his. The College of Heralds is constantly asked to check family trees which are obvious fakes, but it is difficult—indeed, almost impossible—to prove any case against the faker. At country race meetings a horse is often backed by telegram with starting-price bookmakers in London. The messages are handed in at the last moment, so that the bookmaker is unable to transmit the money put on to his agent at the course, and thus shorten the odds. In order to delay the delivery of telegrams to S.P. bookmakers an owner has been known to block the wires by flooding them with bogus messages and though this is obviously sharp practice, it is difficult to deal with legally. Madam Shylock’s Wiles Moneylenders of the lower type have many means for evading the law. In one instance a woman combined the business of fishmonger with that of lending money to working-class folk. One of her conditions was that anyone who borrowed a shilling must at the same time buy a shilling’s worth of fish, thus owing the moneylender two shillings. The value of the fish never, however, exceeded ninepence.