This man was an extraordinary swindler who amassed considerable sums by his frauds. He came of a really good stock, and might have earned fame and fortune had he not been afflicted with incurably low tastes. Paraf was born about 1840 of a respectable family in Alsace; he was highly educated, and became a brilliant and expert chemist. The elder Paraf, his father, was a calico manufacturer, and he gladly placed his son at the head of his print works, where the young man’s knowledge and intelligence were most valuable. But once, while making a tour through Scotland, his funds ran short, and his father would not supply him with more money. So he carried an alleged newly discovered dye to a Glasgow manufacturer, and sold it for several thousand pounds, which sum, passing over to Paris, he quickly squandered in dissipation. The dye was worthless, but Paraf was not wholly an impostor, for, when once more penniless, he joined forces with his old professor in Paris, and together they discovered the famous aniline dyes. Paraf brought this invention to England, patented it, and sold it for a considerable sum. No doubt he would have made a great deal of money had he run straight, but he was an absolute spendthrift, and parted speedily with all he had. When utterly destitute, he stole the patent for another dye from a friend, and sold it to his uncle in Paris for a couple of thousand pounds. With what was left of this sum he started for America, and landed in New York, where he was well received. Of engaging person and frank manners, he gained the friendship and confidence of several capitalists, to one of whom he sold an aniline black dye for £12,000. He now launched out into a career of wild extravagance; he occupied magnificent rooms at a first-class hotel, bathed in sweet-scented waters, and gave sumptuous dinners at Delmonico’s. His money did not last long, and he had recourse to fresh swindles. His next transaction was the sale of an alleged cloverine dye to a damask manufacturer, and he persuaded Governor Sprague, of Rhode Island, to invest £100,000 in a madder dye, which proved a failure. Then he became acquainted with a Frenchman, Monsieur Mourier, who invented oleo-margarine, the process of which Paraf stole from him and fraudulently sold to a New York firm. Mourier established his prior claim to the invention, and the firm had to buy their rights afresh.
After this Paraf found New York too hot for him. He went south to Chili, and promoted a company to extract gold from copper, but found it easier to extract it from other people’s pockets. This latest escapade finished him, for he was pursued and cast into prison, where he died.
TAMMANY FRAUDS.
The fact has often been noticed that crime takes larger developments to-day than heretofore. Schemes are larger, the plunder is greater, the depredator travels over wider areas. He is often cosmopolitan; his transactions include the capitals of Europe, the great cities beyond the Atlantic, in India, and at the Antipodes. The immensity of the hauls made by daring swindlers misusing their powers as the guardians of public funds, was well shown in the Tammany frauds in the ’seventies, when “Boss” Tweed and his accomplices stole millions from the taxpayers of New York. The frauds which they successfully accomplished amounted, it was said, to twenty million dollars. They had an annual income of about that sum to play with, and they ran up as well a city debt of about a hundred million dollars. At that time the municipal administration of New York was abominably bad; the city was wretchedly lighted, badly paved, and the police protection not only imperfect but untrustworthy. The Tammany frauds were exposed, as we know, by an Englishman, Mr. Louis Jennings, the representative of the Times in New York, who, coming by chance upon the fringe of the frauds, pursued his clue, despite many disheartening failures, until he obtained full success. He found that a most elaborate system of fraudulent entry in the city books covered the misappropriation of enormous sums. It was the custom to pay over hundreds of thousands of dollars, for work that was never accomplished, to persons who were either men of straw or had no corporeal existence. Thus £120,000 was charged for carpets in the Court House, and on inspection it was found that this Court House floor was covered with a common matting barely worth £20. In another building the plastering figured at £366,000, and the furniture, which consisted of a few stools and desks, ran up to a million and a half sterling. No wonder that in these glorious times “Boss” Tweed and his merry men became millionaires, having been penniless adventurers before. They kept steam yachts, drove fast trotters, their wives wore priceless diamonds, and they gave princely entertainments in brownstone mansions in Fifth Avenue and Madison Square. When fate at last overtook them, and landed most of them in the State prison, the ample funds at their disposal enabled them still to make life tolerable, and I myself have seen one or two of these most notorious swindlers smoking large cigars and lounging over novels in their snug cells at Sing Sing.
BURTON, ALIAS THE COUNT VON HAVARD.
Compared with these top-sawyers and high-flyers in crime we have little to show on this side of the Atlantic; but I may mention one or two notorious swindlers of these latter days, remarkable in their way for the dexterity and the pertinacity with which they pursue their nefarious trade. Every now and again the police lay their hands on some fine gentleman who is well received in society, like Benson, bearing some borrowed aristocratic name, but who is really an ex-convict repeating the game that originally got him into trouble. There was the man Burton, as he was generally called, who rejoiced in many aliases, such as Temple, Bouverie, Wilmot, St. Maur, Erskine, and many more, and whose career was summarily ended in 1876, when, as Count von Havard, he was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude for obtaining money by fraud. This man’s character may be gathered from the police description of him when he was once more at large. He was described as a native of Virginia, in the United States; was supposed to be a gentleman by birth and education, and spoke English with a slightly foreign accent. The police notice went on to say that he was “an accomplished swindler, an adept in every description of subterfuge and artifice; he tells lies with such a specious resemblance to truth that numerous persons have been deceived by him to their cost. He is highly educated, an excellent linguist, and also skilled in the dead languages, and his good address has obtained him an entrance into the very highest society abroad. By the adroit use of secret information of which he has become possessed he has extorted large sums as blackmail. One of his devices is to enter into a correspondence with relatives of deceased persons, leading them to suppose they are bénéficiaires under wills, and thus obtain money to carry on preliminary inquiries. He frequently makes his claim through a respectable solicitor, whom he first dupes with an account of his brilliant connections and prospects. He represents himself as the son of a foreign nobleman, De Somerset St. Maur Wilmot, and claims relationship with several distinguished persons.”
He was in reality a very old offender, who had done more than one sentence in this country, and had probably known the interior of many foreign prisons. His operations extended throughout Europe, and he had visited the principal health resorts and holiday places of the Continent, such as Biarritz, Homburg, Ostend; and this constant movement to and fro no doubt helped him to elude the police.
