THE BLACKMAILER

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 245, 9 October 1908, Page 4

THE BLACKMAILER

HOW Hl'Sll-.MOXEY IS EXTKACTEI BY THE "JOHNNIE IX THE KNOW."

You may take, il from me," said a well-known criminal investigator \i> the writer, " tliat there is a vast amount of blackmail levied ipiietly ami successfully <m —well, not exactly willing victims, but 011 people who prefer to pay hush-money rather than face the music. Sometimes they are quite innocent persons, who are. nevertheless, interested in the suppression of certain facts; Imt ■very often they are people who look upon the matter from a purely business point of view, ami decide ..that it is cheaper to pay reasonable blackmail—if you can ever applf the word "reasonable" to such dastardly extortion—than to submit to the far. greater cost of exposure. "Ono instance from the City of Loik don," continued' my informant, "wi'l prove to you that blackmailers sometimes have other tish to fry than the undetected criminal and the man wiih a shady past. A large City establishment, on being rebuilt some years ago, was discovered by an assistant-surveyor to have been built out. three inches beyond the building line established by the authorities. Only three inches, mind you; but iu such a case an inch is as bad as a yard, since it would be within the power of the authorities to order •the demolition of the whole front of the premises—a matter costing many thousands of pounds. "In these circumstances, you will understand, the owner of the premises readily agreed to pay the assistantsurveyor a sum of money to secure his silence. He deemed that the end of it; but he should have known that the blackmailer's appetite grows with what it feeds on. "At last the. blackmailer's demands became intolerable. The owner approached the authorities with a frank explanation of the facts, and eventually the matter was satisfactorily compromised, the only person to suffer being •the assistant-surveyor, who forfeited a good living, and the sure project of a substantial pension. < "Now, you would hardly believe that a man could be successfully blackmailed because of a change of name. Vet I know of such a case; and, curiously enough, the mail's name had been changed quite innocently, for purely commercial reasons, and not with any idea of blotting out a criminal record or a disgraceful memory. Still, there were reasons, you understand, ami for years that man paid for silence, at the rate of three hundred a year, by nominally engaging the blackmailer to perform certain secretarial duties, 'which he never did perform. " In such cases, even though the police may learn the facts, tliey are quite 1 powerless to move unless complaint is made to them. There is no Act. on the ! Statute-Book to protect a fool from his folly: and surely there is no folly 1 so culpable as the payment of money to 1 a blackmailer.

'• It is the first payment that tells, fur alter that the power of resistance is gone. Hwell remember the ease of J».. •a City man, who was mixed up—though (juite innocently—in a forgery case with which I had to deal. Although guiltless, this man paid a substantial sum to liavo 'his 'name kept out of the case, little dreaming that the man to whom he paid it had no power whatever to screen or protect him, since the full facts were already in the possession of the police. •"However, it so happened the polire left him out of the ease altogether, and 15., thinking lie owed his immunity t> tin*, blackmailer, midily paid him a further sum of money on the strength of his promise to leave the country. Of course he did not leave- men of hU kimi never do—and. for all I know. J*, may Mill be in the clutches of ilic 'kind friend' who came forward to save him from a peril that did not exist! "The. journalistic form of blackmail is almost a lost art. but it was rampant among the third-rate financial journals some ten or twenty years ago- especially during the 4 Kaflir ' boom. 'J'heli the editor, who was also the advertisement manager ■-of the financial gut levrag would betake- himself to the promoter of the company, with two articles neatly typewritten one a violent and scurrilous '"exposure. 5 of the company, and the other a fulsome and laudatory 'write up' of the same.

"Which olio of those articles would vmi like to in!' lie would ask, with exquisite ciiiulour. And if the promoter chose the laudatory notice —wJiicli lie generally ilid- it was an understood tiling that lie should order, at tin l same lime, a generous amount of advertising *paee, at a most exorbitant tariff.

tOnce caught in tlik? toils of Mm blackmailer;' proceeded my Scotland Yard acquaintance, "a man is apt to do exceedingly foolish tilings to free himself. Not lon# since, a mail in such a WW. I resorted to an advertising private detective, who \va?> making a special appeal to persons wlu> were ' financially embarrassed, or snlVering from threats i»r exposure or legal procedure.' That pom* lonl jumped out of the frying-pan into llie iire. The private detective contrived somehow i<> Idull' Ihe bhl'-l;-mailer out "f any further jicivHitiou of his victim, hut. in so doiim. lie became possessed of all the facts ol the case, and promptly proceeded 1o rXlort hush-money on hi* own account!"