Sweating Gold Coins

1899

This Trick of Swindling is Easily Performed

Sweating a coin is merely robbing it of a portion of its legal weight without in any manner altering its appearance. Manifestly gold coins alone would hardly appeal to the sweater, for silver would hardly pay for the trouble. In countries where paper money in employed, sweating has taken no root. Also in countries like England, where the largest gold coin is a sovereign, the practice would hardly become epidemic.

On the Pacific slope at one time the nefarious business assumed such proportions that the government found it necessary to pass measures against coin sweating, but even then the manifest injustice of arresting a person for merely "passing" such a coin, such person being almost certainly quite innocent, appealed to legislators to such an extent that the law was made only to affect the actual manipulator of the unlawful process. The consequence of this has been that the authorities have had the greatest difficulty in securing convictions against the malefactors, who have debased no end of coins.

The process of robbing a coin of a part of its metal is simple. The goldpiece is merely immersed, or suspended, in aqua regia, a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids, which attacks the metal at once. The manipulator keeps the piece in the bottle only a short time, for a few minutes suffice for the mixture to absorb and hold in solution as much as a dollar's worth of the gold from a $20 piece. The coin is then washed in water and polished with whiting, as otherwise its surface would betray the ordeal through which it had been passed, showing "pockmarks" in great variety.

The process is continued with other coins until the acid is "saturated," when it will absorb no more of the metal. The coins are exchanged for silver or other currency, as only an expert could detect the small subtraction in weight, and the silver is then re-exchanged for more gold, upon which the operator performs his little game in due course. It is only necessary for the villain to boil down his acid to complete evaporation, when the residue in the kettle will be found in the shape of a gleaming button of pure gold, varying in size according to the amount of acid and the charge it carries in solution.

In San Francisco the government secret agents have waged a long and bitter war with sweaters. They have captured many who were guilty enough in all conscience, but against whom no conviction could be obtained for lack of evidence, and they have placed others beyond all worldly temptation for various terms of years.

One of the lone kings of this nefarious business, who finally was obliged to sojourn for a rest in the penitentiary at San Quentin, was named Goodrich. He was an exceedingly modest and retiring man. He occupied an ordinary dwelling and conducted his operations on the roof. After many long weeks of vigil on the part of government detectives he was taken into custody, not redhanded, but at least black fingered by the acid. His apparatus was found most cleverly concealed behind movable bricks in the chimney on top of his house. At the time of his capture a small bottle of greenish fluid was found, and this, upon being carefully reduced in fumes, yielded up a button worth fully $10. A few coins were discovered in the man's pockets and also in his residence. These, to all appearances, were honest coins. Under the microscope they were found to be fairly cross hatched with tiny lines, which had been produced by the process of polishing to remove the traces where the acid had eaten away the metal.

Insidious as this acid thieving may appear, it might be regarded as crude by those who are acquainted with the "tricks that are vain" exercised by the "heathen Chinee." John Chinaman is numerous in California. He gets his long hands on many a golden disk, and with great reluctance does he ever relinquish his grip, He has never learned the "art" of sweating the coins with acid, but he accomplishes his purpose in his characteristically patient manner. He simply places many coins together in a buckskin bag and then proceeds to shake and toss and otherwise agitate that receptacle by the hour or by the week until he has worn off by abrasion $10 or $20 worth of fine dust of gold. The coins wear one another. They present the appearance when at length they emerge from the sack of having been regularly abraded by pocket to pocket circulation, and therefore to all intents and purposes nothing illegal has been done. As a matter of fact, no Chinese has ever been apprehended or put on trial for this work. It is doubtful if the authorities have ever taken cognizance of the practice. Only a few people ever realized what the sly Celestials were at when witnessing the hourly agitation of the coins. It is of course unlawful to bore a hole through a gold coin or to perform any other mutilation, but Mr. Chinaman cannot be said to mutilate the money he wears out so artfully, and therefore he pursues his course serene and unmolested.

There have been clever rogues from time to time who employ a slender tool with which to "gut" a coin. Their method is to make a small incision in the edge of a coin and then patiently dig out the inside, after which they refill the hollow space with baser metal. "High art" like this has become almost obsolete, for the acid business has frequently proved safer and less difficult of performance. Laws will multiply and detectives will wax more and more like Sherlock Holmes, but the makers and administrators of penal regulations will be obliged to arise early in the morning to prevent for all time the effort of man to accumulate his "pile" for "nothing."

Substitutes Mustard for Electricity

1900

A street faker in Kenton, Kansas, had a thriving business selling electric belts until someone examined one of them. Then it was found that beneath a strip of gauze was a layer of dry mustard. When the wearer perspired a little the mustard was moistened and set up a burning sensation and the deluded victim believed a current of electricity was passing through him. Before all this was discovered, however, the faker had smelled danger and was on his way to another gullible neighborhood.


Debts Make Life Bitter

Ex-King Milan finds it more difficult every day to borrow money. His debts and his difficulties make his life very bitter. He has arrived at that stage of his continental career when he is looked on with suspicion and is placed on the ominous black list of Carlsbad's business people, who warn all their friends against "a certain Milan, formerly king of Servia," and announce that no goods should be sold to him except on a cash basis. — James Gordon, in Chicago Record.

Navajo Indians Take 'Bath' Without Water

1914

Through Necessity, They Have Adopted Unique Plan for Bodily Cleanliness

It has already been indicated that the great desideratum of the Navajo country is water. A perennial water famine is not conducive to habits of bodily cleanliness; and a real bath in real water is something that the average Navajo knows nothing of. Nevertheless, these Bedouins of the Southwest realize that a thorough cleansing of the body is necessary, and have invented a method of accomplishing that end that is well adapted to the land of thirst in which they dwell. This is the sweat bath.

A miniature hogan is built of sticks of wood, and banked up with earth until it is air-tight, with the exception of an opening large enough to admit the body. A fire is built outside, in which large stones are heated red hot. Then these are placed in the sweat house, in a position in which the "bather" will be unlikely to come in contact with them. Then the candidate for a bath crawls in, keeping his head in the open air. One or more heavy blankets are placed over the opening and tightly around the neck of the occupant of the sweat house, to prevent the escape of the heated air.

The Indians remain in the sweat house for several hours, perspiring with incredible freedom. When they emerge they dry themselves by rubbing with the hot sand of the desert. As a cleansing agent, the sweat bath would be hard to beat, although it is a rather heroic substitute for the tub bath of civilization. Nevertheless, it opens the pores of the skin, promotes circulation, and has much to recommend it in preference to the practice of the members of some other tribes, of never taking a bath at all. — Christian Herald.

Decatur Doctor Caught Digging Up Negro Cadaver

Illinois, 1879

BODY SNATCHING.

A Decatur Doctor After a Negro Cadaver

His Operations Brought to a Sudden Conclusion.

The Decaturites are all worked up over a body snatching affair that occurred last Friday night. A prominent Decatur physician is implicated in the affair, and if he shows up the Decatur folks promise him an anti-cordial reception.

It seems that the above mentioned physician wanted to increase his knowledge of the human frame, and with this end in view he climbed the fence of a Decatur graveyard, having in his possession those necessary grave-robbing instruments, a pick and shovel. Strange to say this son of Esculapius seems to have a horror for the Caucasians. The reason of this is not known, but it is thought that Caucasian "stiffs" do not "pan out" as well as those of other races, therefore he concluded to get a "subject" of the African persuasion.

Having arrived at this conclusion he wended his way toward the "last resting place" of a recently "planted" negro. As soon as the grave was reached he unslung his pick and immediately began to delve into the newly made grave. He worked away with a will, and he was just stooping to raise the lid of the coffin when the deep stillness of the night was broken by the loud report of what seemed to him about seventeen cannons. The bullets flew past his cranium and buried themselves in the earth a few feet beyond him. The perspiration started in great beads to his forehead, and dropping his pick and shovel he precipitately fled. Scaling the graveyard fence, he took a short cut for his stable. Arriving there he immediately hitched his horse to a buggy, and in less time than it takes to "blow up a safe" he was driving across the country at a "Sleepy Tom" gait, and no tidings of his whereabouts have been received up to this writing.

The names of all parties are reserved, as it is thought that there will be further developments made.

—Fort Wayne Sentinel, Fort Wayne, IN, Aug. 19, 1879, p. 4.