One of the most beautiful hoaxes ever perpetrated was one for which Swift was responsible. He caused a broad-sheet to be printed and circulated which purported to be the “last dying speech” of one Elliston, a street robber, in which the condemned thief was made to say: “Now as I am a dying man, I have done something which may be of use to the public. I have left with an honest man—the only honest man I was ever acquainted with—the names of all my wicked brethren, the places of their abode, with a short account of the chief crimes they have committed, in many of which I have been their accomplice, and heard the rest from their own mouths. I have likewise set down names of those we call our setters, of the wicked houses we frequent, and all of those who receive and buy our stolen goods. I have solemnly charged this honest man, and have received his promise upon oath, that whenever he hears of any rogue to be tried for robbery or housebreaking, he will look into his list, and if he finds the name there of the thief concerned, to send the whole paper to the Government. Of this I here give my companions fair and public warning, and hope they will take it.” So successful, we are told, was the Dean’s ruse that, for many years afterwards, street robberies were almost unknown.
H. HOAXED BURGLARS
The above ingenious device recalls another occasion when some gentlemen who made burglary their profession, and who had been paying a midnight visit to the house of a Hull tradesman were sadly “sold.” They found the cash-box lying handy, and, to their delight, weighty; so heavy indeed that they did not stay to help themselves to anything further. Next morning the cash-box was found not far from the shop and its contents in an ash-pit close by. After all the trouble they had taken, to say nothing of the risks they had run, the burglars found their prize consisted only of a lump of lead, and that their intended victim had been too artful for them.
I. BOGUS SAUSAGES
As an example of how a dishonest penny may be turned the following incident would be hard to beat.
Two weary porters at the King’s Cross terminus of the Great Northern Railway were thinking about going home, when a breathless, simple-looking countryman rushed up to them with anxious enquiries for a certain train. It had gone. He was crushed. “Whatever was he to do? He had been sent up from Cambridge with a big hamper of those sausages for which the University town is celebrated—a very special order. Was there no other train?” “No.” The poor fellow seemed overwhelmed. “As it is too late to find another market,” he complained, “the whole lot will be lost.” Then a happy thought seemed to strike him as more of the railway men gathered round, and he inquired ingratiatingly, “Would you care to buy the sausages; if you would, you could have them for fourpence a pound? If I keep them, they will probably go bad before I can dispose of them.” The idea took—“Real Cambridge Sausages” at fourpence a pound was not to be sneezed at. The dainties, neatly packed in pounds, went like the proverbial hot cakes. Shouldering the empty basket, and bidding his customers a kindly goodnight, the yokel set off to find a humble lodging for the night. Grateful smiles greeted the purchasers when they got home. Frying pans were got out and the sausages were popped in, and never was such a sizzling heard in the railway houses—or rather never should such a sizzling have been heard. But somehow they didn’t sizzle. “They are uncommon dry; seem to have no fat in ’em,” said the puzzled cook. They were dry, very dry, for closer investigation showed that the “prime Cambridge” were nothing but skins stuffed with dry bread! The railway staff of King’s Cross were long anxious to meet that simple countryman from Cambridge.
J. THE MOON HOAX
One of the most stupendous hoaxes, and one foisted on the credulity of the public with the most complete success, was the famous Moon Hoax which was published in the pages of the New York Sun in 1835. It purported to be an account of the great astronomical discoveries of Sir John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope, through the medium of a mighty telescope, a single lens of which weighed nearly seven tons. It was stated to be reproduced from the Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science, though as a matter of fact, the Journal had then been defunct some years. In graphic language, and with a wealth of picturesque detail, the wonders of the Moon as revealed to the great astronomer and his assistants were set forth. A great inland sea was observed, and “fairer shores never angel coasted on a tour of pleasure.” The beach was “of brilliant white sand, girt with wild castellated rocks apparently of green marble, varied at chasms, occurring every two hundred feet, with grotesque blocks of chalk or gypsum, and feathered and festooned at the summit with the clustering foliage of unknown trees.” There were hills of amethysts “of a diluted claret colour”; mountains fringed with virgin gold; herds of brown quadrupeds resembling diminutive bison fitted with a sort of “hairy veil” to protect their eyes from the extremes of light and darkness; strange monsters—a combination of unicorn and goat; pelicans, cranes, strange amphibious creatures, and a remarkable biped beaver. The last was said to resemble the beaver of the earth excepting that it had no tail and walked only upon its two feet. It carried its young in its arms like a human-being, and its huts were constructed better and higher than those of many savage tribes; and, from the smoke, there was no doubt it was acquainted with the use of fire. Another remarkable animal observed, was described as having an amazingly long neck, a head like a sheep, bearing two spiral horns, a body like a deer, but with its fore-legs disproportionately long as also its tail which was very bushy and of a snowy whiteness, curling high over its rump and hanging two or three feet by its side.
But even these marvels fade into insignificance compared with the discovery of the lunarian men “four feet in height, covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-coloured hair, with wings composed of a thin membrane.” “In general symmetry they were infinitely superior to the orang-outang”—which statement could hardly have been regarded as complimentary; and, though described as “doubtless innocent and happy creatures,” the praise was rather discounted by the mention that some of their amusements would “but ill comport with our terrestrial notions of decorum.” In the “Vale of the Triads,” with beautiful temples built of polished sapphire, a superior race of the punariant were found, “eminently happy and even polite,” eating gourds and red cucumbers; and further afield yet another race of the vespertilio-homo, or man-bat, were seen through the wonderful telescope of “infinitely greater personal beauty ... scarcely less lovely than the general representation of angels.”
Such were a few of the marvels told of in the Moon story; and, though one may laugh at them as they stand, shorn of their clever verbiage and quasi-scientific detail, at the time of publication they were seriously accepted, for the popular mind, even among the educated classes, was then imbued with the fanciful anticipators of vast lunar discoveries heralded in the astronomical writings of Thomas Dick, LL.D., of the Union College of New York. Scarcely anything could have been brought forward too extravagant for the general credulity on the subject then prevailing; and this well-timed satire, “out-heroding Herod” in its imaginative creations, supplied to satiety the morbid appetite for scientific wonders then raging. By its plausible display of scientific erudition it successfully duped, with few exceptions, the whole civilised world.