The Victorian Ancestor of an Internet Scam June 5, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Here is a nineteenth-century version of a modern internet scam.
The gentry who have more brains than money, and less honesty than either, are now, it seems, calling in the services of the telegraph to promote their purposes. A gentleman writes to the Times showing the modus operandi, which appears to be altogether new. The operator having ascertained the private address and full name of someone having business all day in the City, or elsewhere away from home, despatches a telegram to the victim’s wife, directing her to pay a given sum to a messenger who will leave a parcel.
In the modern version you get an email address and send an email: today there is a simple request for money to be sent to x who has just been mugged on the beach in Marbella (Beach gets five or six of these a year from readers who visit some very unusual places in the world and write awful English). In any case, the Victorian version was slightly more complicated.
This order bears the full name of the victim, and also contains an injunction forbidding the opening of the parcel ‘until I return.’ In the case of the gentleman who revealed the swindle, the lady to whom the telegram was addressed fortunately chanced to be absent from home all day, or she would have been very likely to become £4 the poorer.
The trick is now outlined.
The messenger called, it appears, twice, but did not leave the valuable parcel. Of course the whole affair was an attempted swindle, no telegram of the sort having been forwarded by the proposed victim.
The parcel presumably was full of rags or dirt or readers digests. The journalist continues with some wise thoughts.
In many cases it would no doubt succeed, especially if only small sums were asked for. There is something so impressive and important about telegrams in the eyes of those who are not accustomed to receive them constantly that few, few ladies would care to accept the responsibility of declining payment of such drafts. Roy Cor Jou, 22 mar 1878, 7
When email was new there was a similar shocking and shiny quality to everything. It would be interesting to see how the profits of the scammers are falling now that the same three or four tricks have been milked to dry udders. Beach is positive that this trick has been going on for centuries under different forms: can anyone post date it still further: drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com
30 Jun 2016: Filip predates
