CHAPTER XV.
SWINDLERS OF MORE MODERN TYPE.
Richard Coster—Sheridan, the American Bank Thief—Jack Canter—The Frenchman Allmayer, a typical Nineteenth Century Swindler—Paraf—The Tammany Frauds—Burton alias Count von Havard—Dr. Vivian, a bogus Millionaire Bridegroom—Mock Clergymen: Dr. Berrington; Dr. Keatinge—Harry Benson, a Prince of Swindlers: The Scotland Yard Detectives suborned: Benson’s Adventures after his Release: Commits Suicide in the Tombs Prison—Max Shinburn and his Feats.
IT might be inferred from the previous chapter that mankind has been easily duped in the past, and that a great superstructure of fraud has often been raised upon a rather narrow basis. The swindler to-day certainly works on larger, bolder lines; he is aided by the greater complexity of modern life, he has more openings, and his operations are of a wider, more varied, more interesting description, as will now be seen.
RICHARD COSTER.
In the long list of remarkable swindlers this man, who was perhaps the most accomplished, and long the most successful of all, seldom finds place. He first attracted notice in Bristol as a general agent and bill discounter on a large scale, but nothing very positive is known as to his antecedents except that at one time he drove a carrier’s cart between Oxford and London. He appears to have been industrious and saving, so that he secured sufficient funds to start as a costermonger with a horse and cart of his own. He presently established himself in London, where he acquired a very large acquaintance among people who were afterwards of immense use to him—horse copers, thieves, coiners, and swindlers of all sorts. He was next heard of at Bristol, where, however, his business did not prosper and his reputation was bad. Within the year he was committed to prison on a charge of obtaining goods by false pretences. Immediately after his release he again started, under the name of Coster and Co., but moved back shortly to London.
Here his movements were erratic, and no doubt unavowable. He changed his quarters continually, as well as his way of life. At one time he kept an eating-house, at another he was an outside broker, again he was clerk to a provision merchant. Soon afterwards he was the principal partner in the firm of Coates and Smith, and also of Smith and Martin, general merchants, acting apparently as financial agents. After two or three years he blossomed out on a still larger scale in two places, as Young and Co., in Little Winchester Street, and as Casey and Coster, near Upper Thames Street. During these many changes and chances he did not entirely escape the attentions of the law. In 1825 he was indicted, with a confederate, Frederick Wilson, for a conspiracy to defraud. At the following sessions he was charged with obtaining bills of exchange under false pretences. Coster escaped conviction by paying on the bills which he was supposed to have illegally obtained.
During these operations he attracted the notice of the Society for the Suppression of Swindling, which had its eye constantly upon him, and published his names and aliases and innumerable addresses. It would be tedious to catalogue them all: Hatton Garden, Queen’s Arms Yard, Parliament Street, under the name of Davies and Co., feather-bed manufacturers; as Wright and Co., of Little Winchester Street, engaged in the glove trade, and so on. The secretary to the Society for the Protection of Trade reported in a circular that “Young, Richards and Co., of Upper Thames Street; Young and Co., of Little Winchester Street; Brown and Co., of the same address, are firms belonging to Richard Coster, so often noticed.”
At last, having tried all kinds of business—broker, bullion dealer, coral dealer—he came out finally as a moneylender on a large scale in New Street, Bishopsgate, whence he issued circulars headed “Accommodation” in large type, and supported by the emblems of Freemasonry, into which honourable craft he had entered under a feigned name. The circular was addressed to “merchants, manufacturers, farmers, graziers, tradesmen, and persons of respectability,” at home or abroad, and offered to accept and endorse any bills at any dates, and for any amounts, or they might draw bills on any responsible houses in London which should be regularly accepted from them when presented, provided they enclosed a commission of eightpence in the pound when sending advice of having drawn them. If they could not take up the bills when due, they need only apply afresh (enclosing a fresh commission), when the bills would be renewed, or fresh bills sent which they could discount, and so pay the first set, and continue the same until their own property or produce turned to advantage, and such temporary accommodation was no longer required. “By this mode money to any amount may be raised, according to the circumstances and situation of the borrower, at about seven per cent. He must be a bad merchant,” went on this circular, “who cannot always make from 15 to 20 per cent. of money. Some persons for want of knowing this system of raising money are obliged to sacrifice their property by locking it up in mortgages for one half its value, and spend the other half in paying solicitors’ enormous bills and expenses of mortgage deeds.” All expenses were to be borne by the borrower—postage, bill stamps, and the commission of eightpence in the pound—and must be transmitted before the bills could be accepted. References were also required, but the “strictest secrecy and delicacy” would be observed in using them. The borrower might send money or goods at any time to redeem bills, and the advertiser was ready always to prove his own respectability.
Coster was long able to carry on his trade with great plausibility. He succeeded mainly by reason of the number and variety of the firms of which he was the sole proprietor. His was, indeed, one of the earliest instances of “Long Firm frauds.” When a transaction was to be carried through by Young and Co. of Little Winchester Street, Brown and Co. of Cushion Court answered all inquiries, declaring Young and Co. to be persons of the highest credit. And this system he multiplied almost indefinitely. The bills of exchange were freely accepted, the goods were delivered when ordered without hesitation. Thus Coster secured a consignment of the entire stock of a German wine-grower who was selling off; on another occasion he got a large quantity of Dublin stout into his hands; on a third a cargo of valuable timber. In none of these cases did he pay out one single shilling as purchase money. The innumerable aliases under which he carried on his transactions, and the care he took never to appear in person, saved him from all danger of arrest. He was represented by his agents, all of them creatures of his own, whom he had bound to himself by some strong tie. They dared not call their souls their own, and carried out his instructions implicitly, acting now as principal, now as agent, just as he required. They were mostly decayed tradesmen and persons in straitened circumstances, whom he “sweated” and paid starvation wages—salaries of from ten to twenty shillings per week. One man only he trusted as his right hand, Smith, whose name so frequently figured in the firms he invented, and who was eventually involved in his downfall.
