So excellent an opportunity for that class of foreign swindlers which haunt roulette-tables, and are the pest of second-rate hotels abroad, was of course made use of. Crowds of adventurers, “got up” in furs, and cloaks, and playhouse dresses, with padded breasts and long moustachios, flocked to England, and assuming the title of count, and giving out that their patrimony had been sequestered by the Emperor of Russia, easily obtained a hearing and a footing in many English families, whose heads would not have received one of their own countrymen except with the usual credentials.
John Bull’s partiality for foreigners is one of his well-known weaknesses; and valets, cooks, and couriers in their masters clothes, and sometimes with the titles of that master whom they had seen shot down in battle, found themselves objects of national sympathy and attention. Their success among the fair sex was extraordinary; and many penniless adventurers, with no accomplishments beyond card-sharping, and a foreign hotel waiter’s smattering of continental languages, allied themselves to families of wealth and respectability. All, of course, were not so fortunate; and after some persons had been victimized, a few inquiries made, and the real refugee gentlemen and soldiers had indignantly repudiated any knowledge of the swindlers or their pretensions, the pseudo-Polish exiles were compelled to return to their former occupations. The least able and least fortunate were forced to beg, and adopted exactly the same tactics as the French beggar, except that instead of certificates of birth, and passports, he exhibited false military documents, and told lying tales of regimental services, Russian prisons, and miraculous escapes.
The “destitute Pole” is seldom met with now, and would hardly have demanded a notice if I had not thought it right to show how soon the unsuccessful cheat or swindler drops down into the beggar, and to what a height the “Polish fever” raged some thirty years ago. It would be injustice to a noble nation if I did not inform my reader that but few of the false claimants to British sympathy were Poles at all. They were Russians, Frenchmen, Hungarians, Austrians, Prussians, and Germans of all sorts.
The career of one fellow will serve to show with what little ingenuity the credulous can be imposed on. His real name is lost among his numerous aliases, neither do I know whether he commenced life as a soldier, or as a valet; but I think it probable that he had combined those occupations and been regimental servant to an officer. He came to London in the year 1833 under the name of Count Stanislas Soltiewski, of Ostralenka; possessed of a handsome person and invulnerable audacity, he was soon received into decent society, and in 1837 married a lady of some fortune, squandered her money, and deserted her. He then changed his name to Levieczin, and travelled from town to town, giving political lectures at town-halls, assembly-rooms, and theatres. In 1842 he called himself Doctor Telecki, said he was a native of Smolensk, and set up a practice in Manchester, where he contracted a large amount of debts. From Manchester he eloped with one of his patients, a young lady to whom he was married in 1845, in Dublin, in which place he again endeavoured to practise as a physician. He soon involved himself in difficulties, and quitted Dublin, taking with him funds which had been entrusted to him as treasurer of a charitable institution. He left his second wife, and formed a connexion with another woman, travelled about, giving scientific lectures, and sometimes doing feats of legerdemain. He again married a widow lady who had some four or five hundred pounds, which he spent, after which he deserted her. He then became the scourge and terror of hotel-keepers, and went from tavern to tavern living on every luxury, and, when asked for money, decamping, and leaving behind him nothing but portmanteaus filled with straw and bricks. He returned to England and obtained a situation in a respectable academy as a teacher of French and the guitar. Here he called himself Count Hohenbreitenstein-Boitzenburg.
Under this name he seduced a young lady, whom he persuaded he could not marry on account of her being a Protestant, and of his being a Count of the Holy Roman Empire in the pontifical degree. By threatening exposure he extracted a large sum of money from her friends, with which he returned to London, where he lived for some time by begging letters, and obtaining money on various false pretences. His first wife discovered him, and he was charged with bigamy, but owing to some technical informality was not convicted. He then enlisted in the 87th regiment, from which he shortly after deserted. He became the associate of thieves and the prostitutes who live in the neighbourhood of Waterloo Road. After being several times imprisoned for petty thefts he at length earned a miserable living by conjuring in low public-houses, where he announced himself as the celebrated Polish professor of legerdemain, Count Makvicz.
He died in August, 1852, and, oddly enough, in a garret in Poland Street, Oxford Street.
Of modern Polish swindlers and beggars, the most renowned is Adolphus Czapolinski. This “shabby genteel man of military appearance”—I quote the daily papers,—“has been several times incarcerated, has again offended, and been again imprisoned. His fraudulent practices were first discovered in 1860.” The following is from the Times, of June the 5th of that year:—
“Bow Street.—A military-looking man, who said his name was Lorenzo Noodt, and that he had served as captain in one of our foreign legions during the Crimean war, was brought before Mr. Henry on a charge of attempting to obtain money by false and fraudulent pretences from the Countess of Waldegrave.”
Mr. George Granville Harcourt (the husband of Lady Waldegrave), deposed:
“I saw the prisoner to-day at my house in Carlton Gardens, where he called by my request in reference to a letter which Lady Waldegrave had received from him. It was a letter soliciting charitable contributions, and enclosing three papers. The first purported to be a note from Lady Stafford, enclosing a post-office order for 3l. I know her ladyship’s handwriting, and this is like it, but I cannot say whether it is genuine. The second is apparently a note from Colonel Macdonald, sending him a post-office order for 4l. on the part of the Duke of Cambridge. The third is a note purporting to be written by the secretary of the Duke d’Aumale. This note states that the duke approves this person’s departure for Italy, and desires his secretary to send him 5l. We were persuaded that it could not be genuine, in the first place, as we have the honour of being intimate with the Duke d’Aumale. We perfectly well knew that he would not say to this individual, or to any one else, that he approved his departure for Italy; in the second place, there are mistakes in the French which render it impossible that the duke’s secretary should have written it; in the third place, the name is not that of the secretary, though resembling it. Under all the circumstances, I took an opportunity of asking both the secretary and the Duke d’Aumale whether they had any knowledge of this communication, and they stated that they knew nothing of it. The duke said that it was very disagreeable to him that he should be supposed to be interfering to forward the departure of persons to Italy, which would produce an impression that he was meddling in the affairs of that country. I wrote to the prisoner to call on me, in order to receive back his papers. At first another man called, but on his addressing me in French I said, ‘You are an Italian, not a German. I want to see the captain himself.’ To-day the prisoner called. I showed the papers, and asked him if they were the letters he had received, and if he had received the money referred to in those letters. To both questions he replied in the affirmative. The officer Horsford, with whom I had communicated in the meanwhile, was in the next room. I called him in, and he went up to Captain Noodt, telling him he was his prisoner. He asked why? Horsford replied, for attempting to obtain money by means of a forged letter. He then begged me not to ruin him, and said that the letter was not written by him.”