CHAIN LETTERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 May 1938, Page 9

CHAIN LETTERS

BRITISH SCHEME EXPLODED SOME AMAZING FIGURES LONDON, March 29. Millions of typists and £7,187,500,000 were stated at Sunderland yesterday to be necessary for the working of a chain letter scheme to its logical conclusion, says the “Daily Sketch.” The scheme, which held out the prospect of £165 2s for 2s to those who participated was held to be a lottery and fines were imposed. Mr Lionel Wolfe, prosecuting, said that if the chain letter scheme worked unbroken according to figures given on the letter, there would, within 60 days, have been 61,035,156 letters in circulation. To deal with the correspondence involved the promoter would have required a staff of 2,890,625 typists. A lecturer in mathematics gave evidence that, taking the population of the British Isles as 46,000,000 the sum required to carry the scheme to its logical conclusion would be £7,187,500,000. A person receiving the letter, Mr Wolfe explained, found on it a list of five names and addresses. He was instructed to send a shilling postal order to the person first named on the list, and then to send a oneshilling postal order to Mr William France, trading as the Mutual Benefit Publishing Company, in payment for five copies of the letter. He would then remove from the list the name of the person to whom he had sent his shilling and add his own name at the bottom. .

Then he sent out or presented copies of the letter to five of his friends. Eventually, according to the circular the send of letters would receive 3,125 shillings or £156 ss. William France (5), of Birchfieldroad. Sunderland, was fined £5O for using premises for the purpose of a lottery and £25 for distributing tickets and chances in a lottery.

A .woman was fined £3 for aiding and abetting France, and the printers of the tickets used, £2. France was ordered to pay £lO3 costs.