The next is of a considerably later time, being under date 1818, and comes from a different quarter of the globe. It refers to a raffle for women, and was published in a daily paper of Calcutta:—
FEMALES RAFFLED FOR.—Be it known, that Six Fair Pretty Young LADIES, with two sweet and engaging CHILDREN, lately imported from Europe, having roses of health blooming on their cheeks, and joy sparkling in their eyes, possessing amiable tempers and highly accomplished, whom the most indifferent cannot behold without expressions of rapture, are to be raffled for, next door to the British Gallery. Scheme: Twelve Tickets, at 12 rupees each; the highest of the three throws, doubtless, takes the most fascinating, &c. &c.
Modern improvements have, after all, somewhat benefited the world. Who would dream nowadays of such a scheme having been publicly advertised in a British dominion less than sixty years since? And this was not by any means the latest of such speculations either, yet it will be news to many that, even at the date given, such transactions were openly conducted. The next, also from Calcutta, is half-a-dozen years later, and treats of quite another vanity of the owners of the soil:—
NOTICE.—Mr W. M‘Cleish begs to state to his friends and the public that he has received by the most recent arrivals the Prettiest Waistcoat Pieces that were ever seen: really it would be worth any gentleman’s while even to look at them. It surpasses his weak understanding, how man who is born of a woman and full of trouble, could invent such pretty things.
It strikes him forcibly that the patterns and texture must have been undoubtedly invented by some wise philosopher.
Ladies, although my shop’s small, I pray you won’t fear,
I turned out my pelisses, the first of the land sure may wear;
If they are not well finished, or the best of trimmings—
I will undertake to eat backs, breasts, sleeves, and linings.
No. 39, Cossitollah, Jan. 4, 1824.
Australia offers us, by means of the Sydney Gazette of August 1825, an advertisement worth perusal:—
MRS BROWN respectfully thanks the community of thieves for relieving her from the fatigues and wearisomeness of keeping a chandler’s shop, by taking the following goods off her hands; viz.—35 yards of shirting, 12 do. of muslin, 40 do. of calico, and various articles, as the auctioneer terms it, “too many to mention in an advertisement.” But the gentlemen in their despatch of business forgot that they had taken along with them an infant’s paraphernalia, two dozen of clouts, so elegantly termed by washerwomen. If the professors of felony do not give a dinner to their pals, and convert them into d’oyleys for finger glasses, Mrs Brown will thank them to return them, as they would not be so unmagnanimous and deficient of honour to keep such bagatelles from a poor mother and four children. This is to apprize the receivers of stolen property, that she will sooner or later have the pleasure of seeing their necks stretched, and that they will receive a tight cravat under the gallows by their beloved friend Jack Ketch. As the old saying is “The better the day the better the deed,” the fraternity performed their operations on Sunday night last.
17, Philip Street.