The Express.
London, England, 1864-10-20 00:00:00

BIUTANXIA.

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LONDON, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20.

&ream. oases have during the last few days
been brought before the Police Courts, which show
the mode of working of the fraudulent class of
Employment Offices. One in particular, which
has its head-quarters in Regent-street, sand
announced its business tobetheprocuringof engage-
ments for ladies, has been so thoroughly exposed
that it may be expected to find its business cease
for the present to be lucrative, and these premises
at least will be abandoned. But there is reason
to fear that the system is so common, and has of
late so considerably extended its field of opera-
tions, that it may be useful to glance at the dif-
ferent cases in which this one establishment con-
trived to extort money from its dupes. The basis
of the operation lies always in the prepayment of a
fee by the applicant, the amount of which seems
commonly to have been 55., but which realised
sometimes the sum of three or even of twenty
guineas. In return, the " Office " furnishes the
name of an employer who is supposed to be
in want of a servant, assistant, or governess.
There seem to be three principal methods of man-
aging this branch of the proceedings. Either a
name and address are given which are wholly and
absolutely fictitious ; or though these are real, yet
the fact of there being any vacancy is fictitious; or
though the vacancy has at one time existed, it has
already been filled up. Thus one of the earliest
victims of the Regent-street Office, being in search',
of a place as lady's maid, was directed to write to
"A. 8., Cambridge-street, Hackney-road." No an-
ewer, of course, was received, but the magistrate
was informed by another sufferer, to whom the
same address had been given, that she had gone
personally to inquire at it, and found it to be a
printing-office, where she was told " a person" had
requested that letters for " A. B." might be taken
in. Failingtbelady's maid's place, the applicant was
next sent to Watling-street, where a situation as
attendant in a confectioner's shop was promised.
The Watling-street address proved to be that
of a warehouse, the keeper of which had I
no knowledge of the confectionary business.
On another day the Secretary of the London
Crystal Palace Company, which under that lofty
title keeps a bazaar in Oxford street, attended the
magistrate to complain that young women were
constantly being sent to their establishment by the
same office in application for employment in situa-
tions which were either not vacant, or which had
been long ago filled up. In a higher rank of life
the operators became still more daring. One lady
was called on to deposit 201., in order to secure a
place worth only 401. a year. Fortunately she
was startled at the magnitude of the demand, and
declined the arrangement. Another lady is cer-
tified by Mr. Saimaa:Jr, a surgeon, of Gower-street,
to have spent three guineas in the attempt to get
a governess's place for her daughter, finding
invariably that the address furnished was
either false, or that of a family at present
abroad. We may add to these examples
of the mode of operating, a case which
appears in our columns to-day, in which a
lady having aeon an advertisement offering work
to be done at home on payment of a deposit,
scraped together the sum required only to find
that the promise of work was a delusion, and that
for a guinea deposited she had not been able to get
more than a shilling's worth of employment.
In all these cases the police magistrates, though
sympathising with the defrauded complainants so
far as to send an officer of the court to try to terrify
the plunderers into making redress, declared that
they had no farther power, and naturally under
went the mortification of finding that their impo-
tence was quite well known to the sharpers, and
that the officer of the court was treated with as
much contempt as the victims themselves. In these
circumstances they could only recommend pro-
ceedings in the County Court for recovery of the
money paid, and express a hope that publicity
would abate the nuisance. It is obvious,
however, that these remedies are practi-
cally ineffectual. No one would go to
the County Court to recover 55., or even
three guineas from a set of cheats. Publicity,
though it may make one office too hot for longer
sojourn, does not restore the money already stolen
by false pretences, nor prevent the imposition from
being renewed next day by the same individuals
under different names and at a different address.
It is plain that some sharper, more immediate,
and more personal remedy must be devised. If,
indeed, the fraud was one which only took effect
on the wilfully reckless or foolishly confiding, we
might admit that they must be left to bear the
penalty of their folly, for legislations only en-
tangling and mischievous when it aims to supply
the want of common sense. But it cannot be
said that a person resorting to an Employment
odic.. is necessarily doing a weak and silly act.
There are such offices, of high respectability and
usefulness. But how is a stranger to discover
which of them is honest and which dishonest?
Those who want situations are precisely
those who have fewest means of making