CHAPTER V
CLEVER IMPOSTORS AND SWINDLERS
James Thalreuter or the “False Prince”—A notorious swindler—His early life and education—Adopted by the Stromwalters—Pledges their credit and robs their safe—Forges letter from a grand-duke—Squanders money thus obtained in wild dissipation—Makes full confession of his frauds—Sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment—“The Golden Princess,” Henrietta Wilke—Her luxurious mode of living and generosity to the poor—Curiosity as to her origin—Loans borrowed on false pretences—She is arrested—Startling revelations brought to light at her trial—Sentenced to twelve years’ penal servitude—“Prince Lahovary” or George Manolescu—Arrested in Paris at the age of nineteen charged with thirty-seven thefts—His criminal career—Campaign in America under the assumed title of “Prince Lahovary”—Imprisoned for personating the Russian general Kuropatkin—Leonhard Bollert, nicknamed the “attorney general”—A notorious criminal-adventurer who served many terms in different prisons.
The criminal records of Germany contain some rather remarkable instances of swindling and imposture. One of the most curious was that of James Thalreuter, commonly called the “False Prince.” He was the illegitimate son of Lieutenant-Colonel von Rescher and Barbara Thalreuter, the daughter of an exciseman. He was born at Landshut in 1809 and was acknowledged by his father. His mother died the same year and he was taken charge of by Baron von Stromwalter, an intimate friend of his father. The boy James was accepted in the house as a son of the family on equal terms with the Stromwalter children, and the baroness grew extravagantly fond of him. He was a clever, lively lad, full of mischievous ways, and very early he exhibited a fertile and promising genius for lying. The baroness exercised absolute sway in the house, for the family fortune and property was entirely hers. The baron was a mere cypher, a weak and foolish old man, who had no other means than his pension from a civil post.
The lad had been sent to school and was supposed to have gained a good education, but, as a matter of fact, he had learned very little. He wrote poorly and spelled abominably, but he had made good progress at arithmetic, and before he was sixteen possessed a surprising knowledge of financial and commercial affairs. A strongly marked trait was his power of inventing the most varied, ingenious and complicated lies, perfect in their smallest details and worked up with masterly skill. This seemingly inexhaustible talent was aided by a singularly comprehensive and accurate memory. Whenever he returned home from school, he quickly established an extraordinary influence over his fond foster-mother; he felt neither affection nor respect for her, but only esteemed her as the person able to minister to his selfish desires. The baroness, on her part, did everything she could to please him, lavished money upon him freely, and kept nothing secret from him, not even the safe containing her jewels and valuables to which he had always free access. It was testified afterward that he did what he liked with the baroness, sometimes by fair, but more often by foul means. As for the poor old baron, he was treated with supreme contempt, was often addressed in insulting terms before others, and once Thalreuter actually struck him.
The young villain made the most of his situation and took advantage of the old lady’s excessive fondness to pledge her credit and run heavily into debt. He plundered her right and left, carried away many valuable things from the house, and from time to time stole large sums from her bureau, the keys of which he could always obtain. The baroness caught him at last and proceeded to reprimand her foster-son severely, but he easily persuaded her to forgive him, and she went no further than to take better care of her keys. The success which he had so far achieved now inspired him with an ingenious plan for defrauding his foster-parents on a large scale.
In the early part of the year 1825 he began to let fall mysterious hints that it was altogether a mistake to suppose that he had been born in a humble station; that, on the contrary, he was really the son of a royal personage, the Duke of B., who, having lost one son by poison, had secretly entrusted this second son to Colonel von Reseller,—a special favourite,—who was to pass for his father and bring him up, preserving the most inviolable secrecy. Incredible as it may appear, the Stromwalters were gulled by this manifestly fraudulent story. They had known the young Thalreuter from his youth, had seen and possessed the certificate of his birth, and were fully aware of all the circumstances attending it. Yet they were easily imposed upon and dazzled by the grandeur of this tremendous fiction, backed up by the production of letters from the grand-duke, which in themselves were plain evidence of the fraud. Possibly Thalreuter had inherited his indifferent calligraphy from his illustrious parent, for the twenty letters purporting to come from his royal highness were illegible scrawls, poor in composition and wretched in style; but this very circumstance supplied the impostor with an excuse for retaining them and reading them aloud. They were couched in terms of deep gratitude for the foster-parents’ care, and a large return in cash and honour was promised as a reward for their services. The grand-duke did not limit himself to empty promises; he sent through Thalreuter a costly present of six strings of fine pearls of great value, very acceptable to the Stromwalters, who, thanks to the extravagance of their foster-son, the pretended prince, were much pinched for money. The pearls were pledged for a fictitious value, Thalreuter declaring that his grand-ducal father would be greatly offended if he heard they had been submitted to formal examination. The impostor studiously suppressed the fact that he had bought the pearls at two shillings per string at a toy shop with money which he had stolen. He had obtained a pair of sham earrings at the same shop. Any story was good enough to fool the simpleton Stromwalters; he exhibited the miniature one day of an officer in uniform, blazing with orders, as that of the grand-duke, and on another day showed them sketches of the estates that were to be bestowed upon the worthy couple. Again, he pretended that his highness had called in state in a carriage and four to pay a ceremonious visit when they were absent; and another time claimed that the royal chamberlain had invited the baron to share a bottle with him at the Swan Inn, but was called away by urgent business before the baron arrived.
This shameless deception profited Thalreuter greatly. As a prince in disguise, he was treated with much indulgence and liberally supplied with the means of extravagance. He now invented a fresh lie, that of a proposed match between the son, Lieutenant von Stromwalter, and the heiress of a rich and noble family, the Von Wallers, and the whole intrigue was carried forward even as far as betrothal without bringing the parties together, secrecy being essential to the very last, as Thalreuter explained to the old people. But he produced letters—of his own manufacture—from the grand-duke and various people of rank at court, all of them congratulating the Stromwalters on the approaching most desirable marriage. The ultimate aim of the fraud was at last shown when Thalreuter forged a letter calling upon the baroness to pay a sum of 10,000 florins into the military fund as a guarantee that her son was able to support a wife. The generous grand-duke had offered to advance a large part of this money, but at least 2,700 florins must come from the Stromwalters, and they actually handed the cash to Thalreuter, who rapidly squandered it in dissipation of the most reckless kind.
Were it not that all the facts in this marvellous imposture are vouched for by the legal proceedings afterward instituted, it would be difficult to credit the amazing credulity, amounting to imbecility, displayed by the Stromwalters. Thalreuter played his game with extraordinary boldness, and continually traded on the name of the son in support of his preposterous fictions. He invented the story of a seditious plot, in which the lieutenant was embroiled and for which he was arrested, only to extract a sum of one thousand florins for obtaining his release from prison.
The next fraud was a trumped-up tale that the lieutenant was in serious pecuniary difficulties and that, unless cleared, the marriage must be broken off; the result was a further advance by the baroness, who sold off a quantity of her furniture to obtain cash. Then it appeared that the lieutenant was involved in a dishonourable intrigue and could only be extricated by paying blackmail; he must make presents to his fiancée and the jeweller’s bill must be settled; a house for the young couple must be furnished, and hence the abstraction of many articles from the home of the old Stromwalters, all of which were pawned by Thalreuter.
Strange to say, relations were never opened up with the Von Wallers; stranger still, no direct communications were opened with the son. And it would seem perfectly incredible that his parents did not write to him on the subject of his coming marriage, of his arrest, or of his embarrassments and necessary expenditure. They did write, as a matter of fact, but Thalreuter intercepted all the letters and continued his thefts and embezzlements unchecked and undiscovered. He made a clean sweep of everything; emptied the house, dissipated the property, obtained the baroness’s signature to bills and drafts by false pretences, and ruined her utterly.