THE MATRIMONIAL SWINDLER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 293, 5 December 1908, Page 3

THE MATRIMONIAL SWINDLER.

It would be a dreadful shock to any girl if sh(! were to find out that the burning epistles of love she keeps securely looked in it drawer were not t ! ie natural eilusions of an ardent sweetheart's brain, but were simply copied from " dummy" letters which, if you know the ropes, can be bought by the thousand.

Yet this pitiful experience fell to the lot of Marie Bodenstein, a German, lady, whose only comforting reflection was that she saw the man who had deceived her and ruined her by romancing sent into penal servitude for three years by Sir Ralph Littler, K.C., at the Middlesex Sessions.

His name was Oscar Goldberger, and whilst in reality an hotel kitchen-porter, ho posed as a German nobleman of wealth, anxious to marry Miss Bode:istein, from whom, by false and fraudulent representations, he obtained over £soo—the total savings of an industrious lifetime.

Goldberger, it was proved, won the affection of his victim—and incidentally her money—not by his personality, but by his amazing love-letters. Finer specimens of the epistolary art have never been read in a similar case. They teemed with passionate adoration, quotations from the classics, religious phrase.-,, vivid word-painting, and drew some affecting pictures of the home upon which "a loving wife alone can put the consecration of sweet happiness and beatific peace and sprinkle the spice of fervent love into everything." Large numbers of similar letters, as already stated, won Miss Bodcnstein's heart, and some excuse may be found for her credulity in the fact that many another woman would have felt perfectly safe in entrusting her money to a man of such nobility of thought an 1 loftiness of ideals as an individual who could pen such words. But, amazing as it may seem, Go',dbergcr never composed a single one of those burning messages of love which won for him world-wide fame as a letter-writer. He copied them from printed "dummy" or stock letters, which a firm on the Continent prints iu several languages.

The originator oi the "dummy" letI ter was a far-seeing individual who saw I money in his idea. He was aware that | many of the swindlers who grow fat on the credulity of flattered females were men without any literary attainments. Realising, too, that love-letters played, a vastly important part in the ruining of women by romancing, he conceived the idea of supplying " dummies" so great in number as to justify him guaranteeing one of them to fit any imaginable case. It only remained lor the proprietor of the bogus agency to pose as the future husband—who, of course, never had any existence in fa.it —until until he bad obtained his victim s money and won his way into her affections by his passionate letters, copied from the ever-faithful "dummy." Now and then, the plausible " dumm."' will account for the mythical husband's sudden loss of fortune and his reason for asking, with very great diffident-.-, for a loan or an advance on fictitious securities until such time as his financial affairs shall have resumed their normal aspect. And should the prospective victim grow a little weary of being wooed by letters and t-xpress a desire to see hei husband-to-be in the flesh, a "dummy" photograph, with a plausible lying excuse to account for his inability to keep an appointment usually does the trick. When the swindler has taken all lie can from his victim, another "dummy" breaks on" the negotiations, and a further one promises the return of the money obtained. But this never comes oil', and the swindler'is allowed to pursue his reign of roguery because nine-.y-nine women out of a hundred dread the publicity too much to prosecute,