A being of a far different stamp comes next before us; Charles Price, nicknamed Patch, a man who applied talents of no common order to the vilest purposes. He was possessed of courage, penetration, foresight, and presence of mind, and he degraded all these qualities by rendering them subservient to fraud. No man ever was so perfect a master of the art of disguise. Price, who was the son of a clothesman in Monmouth Street, was not out of his boyhood when he began to manifest his skill in cheating. When he was an apprentice, he put on the garb of a gentleman, assumed the name of Bolingbroke, and defrauded his master of a large quantity of goods. So well did he act his part, that his master did not know him, and, when Price returned home, he was ordered to carry the goods to the pretended Mr. Bolingbroke. His dishonest practices were at last detected, and he ran away. For this conduct his father disinherited him.
Price was afterwards a valet, and went the tour of Europe with Sir Francis Blake Delaval. While he was at Copenhagen, he wrote a pamphlet in vindication of the unfortunate Queen Matilda. He was subsequently a brewer, a distiller, an inmate of the King’s Bench for having defrauded the revenue, a lottery office keeper, and a gambler in the Alley. His plausible manners gained for him a wife with a considerable fortune, but he soon dissipated the money. About 1780, he began to forge upon the Bank. To detect him was difficult, for he made his own paper, with the proper water-marks, manufactured his own ink, engraved his own plates, and, as far as possible, was his own negotiator. His career, in spite of every effort to arrest it, was continued for six years; in the course of which time he is said to have assumed no less than forty-five disguises; he was by turns thin, corpulent, active, decrepit, blooming with health, and sinking under disease. At last, in 1786, he was committed to Tothill Fields’ Bridewell, where, to escape the shame of a public execution, he put a period to his existence.
Numerous instances might be adduced of individuals, gifted with abilities far inferior to those of Price, who have levied contributions to an enormous amount upon the credulity of the public. It must suffice to give a specimen of them:—one was Miss Robertson, of Blackheath, who, by representing herself as having had a large estate bequeathed to her, contrived to make a multitude of egregious dupes; another was an adventurer known as “The Fortunate Youth,” who employed a similar pretence, and was equally successful. A third, whose pretension took a higher flight, must not be forgotten. The late Mrs. Serres, who assumed the title of Princess Olive of Cumberland, and pretended also to be descended from a line of Polish princes, has secured for herself a conspicuous place in the annals of imposture.
The most amusing, and perhaps the least noxious, of modern cheats, was a female, who assumed the name of Caraboo. She pretended to be a native of Javasu, in the Indian Ocean, and to have been carried off by pirates, by whom she had been sold to the captain of a brig. Her first appearance was in the spring of 1817, at Almondsbury, in Gloucestershire. Having been ill used on board the ship, she had jumped overboard, she said, swam on shore, and wandered about for six weeks before she came to Almondsbury. The deception was tolerably well sustained for two months; but at the end of that time, she disappeared, probably being aware that she was on the point of being detected. It was found that she was a native of Witheridge, in Devonshire, where her father was a cobbler. Caraboo appears to have taken flight to America.[11] How she fared in that quarter of the world is not known; but, in 1824, she returned to England, and hired apartments in New Bond Street, where she exhibited herself to the public. She seems to have excited little attention, and was soon forgotten.
A very frequent case of imposture has been that of women pretending to have the power of going without food, and to have fasted for two, or three, or more years. Irksome and distressing as such a deceit must be, it has often been carried on, for a short time, so dexterously as to lull the suspicions of those around, who, being thus thrown off their guard, were satisfied that the abstinence, which perhaps was really persevered in for a short time, could be prolonged to any indefinite period.
Margaret Senfrit, the girl of Spires, was believed to have fasted three years. Catherine Binder, after continuing an alleged fast for five years, was separated from her parents, and placed under the care of four women, who affirmed that she had not eaten or drunk any thing for fourteen days, but had washed her mouth with brandy and water, to comfort her head and heart.
A young girl of Unna, who was said to have remained without eating or drinking for six months, was closely watched; the first night after her removal she was caught drinking a large cup of ale.
About 1800, the Osnaburg girl created great speculation. She had fasted, by report, a long time. Doubts arising, she was watched, and escaped the ordeal with her integrity unimpeached; but, a second watching having been undertaken by two medical men, her tricks were soon discovered.
Between 1808 and 1813, considerable interest was excited by various notices, in the newspapers and journals, respecting a woman of the name of Moore, living at Tutbury, in Staffordshire, who, from long illness, and other causes, was reported to have lost all desire for food, and at length acquired the art of living without any nourishment at all. No great alteration was visible in her appearance, her memory was very strong, and her piety extremely edifying. Being backed by medical testimony, the account was received as entitled to some credit; but all doubts were removed by watching the patient for sixteen days and nights, which took place in September 1808. From that time she attracted crowds of visiters from all parts of the country, who witnessed her condition with a sort of religious awe, and seldom quitted her without exercising their generosity towards her. Dr. Henderson visited her in 1812, in company with Mr. Lawrence. She was in bed, with a large Bible before her; she asserted she had tasted no solid food for upwards of five years, and no drink for four, and had no desire for either; and that she had not slept or lain down in bed for more than three. They left her, fully satisfied, from certain circumstances, that the history of her long fasting was a mere fabrication; and Dr. Henderson adduced many arguments to prove the absurdity of the imposture. The greatest wonder in the history was the blind infatuation of those who could for an instant entertain an idea of its truth.
Her dread of the repetition of the watching was a very suspicious circumstance, and seemed to imply that she had narrowly escaped detection; she said, that for nobody in the world would she undergo a repetition; her attendant styled it “a trial for her life.” Yet watching her for a fortnight, though sufficiently irksome, could have had nothing alarming, unless it involved the risk of starvation, which, it was afterwards proved, it did in reality.