Flooded With Bogus Money

New York, 1895

Local storekeepers and saloon men at Hicksville are much exercised over the flooding of the town with counterfeit coin. The coin is of the denominations of dollars, half dollars and quarters. Nearly every business man in town has been imposed upon.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Feb. 8, 1895, p. 4.

A Counterfeiter Arrested

New York, 1895

A gang of counterfeiters swooped down upon College Point Sunday afternoon and made an attempt to flood the place with counterfeit coins. One of the gang, Stanislaus Brijinski, who claims to have his residence in Hitchcock park, Flushing, was arrested while in the act of passing counterfeit money in the saloon of John Dorn. Brijinski had three accomplices, all of whom escaped.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Jan. 25, 1895, p. 1.

Gold Is Shaken From Coins

1910

New York Detectives Unearth a Clever Swindle In the Maiden Lane Jewelry District

New York. — Secret service agents who have been at work in the Maiden Lane jewelry district, have discovered coin stripping by which gold is obtained and sold, the coins being put back into circulation apparently as good as ever. The new process consists in placing the coins in a burlap bag, which is shaken vigorously.

Thus tiny flakes of metal are knocked off the coins and cling to the bag, which is then burned, the gold melting into wee ingots.

The treasury department at Washington has been getting back of late large quantities of gold coins, which seemed more scratched and battered than ordinary.

Under the microscope it became evident that these coins had been handled with strange violence. Special agents were sent here to investigate and soon uncovered the industry of shaking the coins in burlap bags.

A Use for Grasshoppers

Editorial observations, 1910

A Colorado farmer has gathered 125 bushels of grasshoppers, which he intends to dry, so that they may be used for chicken feed next winter. Since a use has been found for grasshoppers we may expect future crops of them to be failures.

A new comet has been discovered. There ought to be a stop put to this. If the former one brought about all the trouble which has been going on the earth since, we can spare any more of these heavenly mischief makers for some time to come. And those who are looking for trouble and read their answer in the stars should be legally enjoined, at least until the world has had time to catch its breath.

Look over your small change carefully; there are several counterfeit five-dollar bills in circulation.

Owing to the fact that their wives are away for the summer a good many men are almost forgetting how to button waists up the back.

Cincinnati surgeons are to amputate a citizen's six-inch nose. To use a Pittsburgh word, the gentleman really is "nobby."

No picnic can claim to have been destroyed by rainy weather this season.

Tracing a Counterfeit

1899

The tracing of counterfeit bills back to the person responsible for their issue is a curious and exciting employment. The experts assigned by the government to this work are among the most skillful members of the secret service. The protection of the currency depends in large measure upon their efficiency, and the pains they take are almost infinite. A curious story told by a government employee in the New Orleans Times-Democrat illustrates the difficulties which they meet and overcome.

One day a bank clerk in Cincinnati detected a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill in the deposit of a small retail grocer. I was sent for, and undertook the case.

I found that the grocer received the bill from a shoe-dealer, who had it from a dentist, who had it from somebody else, and so on, until I finally traced it to an invalid woman who had used it to pay her physician. When questioned, she said the money had been sent to her by her brother, who lived in New Orleans.

I looked up her brother's pedigree, and was certain that he was my man. He had a bad record, was the proprietor of a dive, and was just the sort of person to be a confederate of counterfeiters. I came to New Orleans with the handcuffs in my pocket, but I was a little premature.

The man proved to my complete satisfaction that he had received the money as rent for a small house he owned in Pittsburg. That was discouraging, but I couldn't give up after going so far, and took the next train for Pittsburg.

The tenant of the house turned out to be a travelling oculist, who spent most of his time on the road. He was then away in the West, but I saw him on his return, and he at once recognized the bill. It had been given him by a patient in Cincinnati, the very point from which I had started.

The patient was a boss carpenter. I dot his address from the oculist and made a bee-line for the city. I had a premonition that something was going to happen, and I wasn't disappointed.

The carpenter was an honest old fellow, and told me without hesitation that he had received the bill from Mr. —— for repairing his barn. Mr. —— was the small grocer in whose bank deposit the counterfeit had turned up. I flew to his store as fast as a cab could carry me, and found it closed. He had left town.

Afterward it was shown beyond question that he was the regular agent of a gang. His shop was a mere blind. That the bill which he gave the carpenter should get back again into his own till after travelling all over the continent was one of those miracles of chance for which there is no explanation. — Youth's Companion.

She Swallowed 1,446 Pieces of Hardware

1911

Editorial Quips on the News

A post-mortem examination of a Missouri lady who had a mania for heavy diet resulted in the discovery of 1,446 separate articles of hardware in her little inside. If there is any truth in theosophy the lady was either a goat or an ostrich in her previous existence. (See note below and photo here. Click the photo for bigger version.)

A New York woman says she lost her respect for her husband when she caught him with five aces in his hand. She is perfectly right. A man who allows himself to be caught that way deserves no respect.

If that Buffalo man who would not give up a counterfeit bill to an agent of the government were to get the full penalty of $100 and a year's imprisonment he might think he had committed some real crime.

We have it from a Germany economist that American women will soon be forced to labor on farms like men. Here we have an outlet for the surplus energy of those fair damsels who seek "careers" in preference to husbands.

Most of those who tell about rearing a family and saving money on $1,000 a year do not have to and hence are better able to theorize in the abstract.

A florist in New Jersey turns his hennery into a summer garden with all sorts of flowers and is getting eggs of delicate flavor and various tints, violet, rose and carnation flavors being in the lead. A hen garden of this kind might be a handsome and useful addition to the combination clubhouse for the Ananias members and the nature fakers.

Note: The item about the Missouri lady with a mania for a heavy diet recalls someone who must have been another Missouri lady with the same problem, who I heard about while touring the psychiatric museum at St. Joseph, Missouri. At this site there's a small photo of the items, said to be more than 1,400, which were taken from the patient in 1929. Since I'm pretty sure my article is from 1911, and it specifically says "post-mortem," obviously this would have to be a different Missouri lady. The photo at the top is a photo I took of all the screws and things they said she had ingested. If you're ever in the area of St. Joseph, the museum is worth going to! Just don't let them keep you, which was what I was legitimately most afraid of.