An ingenious fraud was not long since devised and carried out with a certain impunity by a young woman of Vienna. She pretended to have been struck with a sudden admiration for some one of the gilded youth of the Austrian capital, and so far forgot maidenly reserve as to write and confess her weakness. She chose a well-to-do but easily gullible person—and not one, but dozens, telling them one and all the same story. As she signed herself in full with the aristocratic name of Kinsky, just then borne by a beautiful and wealthy member of that high family, the individuals selected felt themselves on the high road to fortune. The correspondence which followed was of the romantic kind, and it ended in a consent to elope at an early date.
That was, however, impossible until sufficient funds were forthcoming to bribe the servants of the Kinsky mansion—the concierge, the lady’s maid, the footmen, coachman, and so forth. Ample supplies were forthwith despatched to the young lady, who thus realised a very considerable sum. About this time the fraud became known to the police, and the false countess was arrested under the more plebeian name of Marie Lichtner. She seems to have enjoyed the whole joke, which was both profitable and amusing, despite the penalty of imprisonment that overtook her. On one occasion she gave a rendezvous to all her admirers at the opera, and on the same night. They were to appear in correct evening dress, and each was to wear a white camellia in his buttonhole. Marie Lichtner was there, but so also was the true countess, in a box upon the Grand Tier, resplendent in her beauty, and no doubt the false lady had the mingled pleasure and pain of seeing many lovelorn looks addressed to the Kinsky box and its handsome occupant.
BIG BERTHA.
America has produced a rival to Mrs. Gordon-Baillie in Bertha Heyman, sometimes known as “Big Bertha,” sometimes as the “Confidence Queen,” a lady of like smart appearance and engaging manners, who reaped a fine harvest from the simpletons who were only too willing to believe in her. One of her first exploits was to wheedle a thousand dollars out of a palace car conductor when travelling between New York and Chicago. Soon after that, with a confederate calling himself Dr. Cooms, she was arrested for despoiling a commercial traveller from Montreal of several hundred thousand dollars by the confidence game. Her schemes were extraordinarily bold and ingenious, and they were covered by much ostentatious display. It was her plan to lodge at the best hotels, such as the Windsor, the Brunswick, and Hoffman House, New York, the Palmer House in Chicago, or Parker’s in Boston, to have both a lady’s-maid and a man-servant in her train, and to talk at large about her influential friends. Yet she was constantly in trouble, and saw the inside of many gaols and penitentiaries, but she came out ready to begin again with new projects, often on a bolder scale. One of her last feats was in Wall Street operations in stocks and shares. With her specious tongue she persuaded one broker that she was enormously rich, worth at least eight million dollars, and by this means won a great deal of money. The fraud was only discovered when the securities she had deposited were examined and found to be quite worthless. “Big Bertha” was gifted with insight into human nature, and is said to have succeeded in deceiving the shrewdest business people. Of late nothing has been heard of her.
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] “Records of Indian Crime,” ii. 158.
[2] “Medical Jurisprudence of India,” p. 21.