Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1902-10-02
AN ALLEGED SWlNDLER
South Wallingford Man Had Been Or
derlng a Large Amount Of Goods
Arrested by U. &. Oficials.

Rutland, Oct. &c W. Norton of South
Wallingford, who was arrested last even
ing by Deputy Marshal +. II. Chapman of
this city and Postofilce Inspector t. i.
kincaid of Boston, on complaint of the
latter, charging him with using the Uni
ted states mails for fraudulent purposes,
was taken before United States Commits
sioner James A. Merrill this afternoon at
United States Marshal +. A. Fields Office
in the federal building As District Attor-
ney James l.. Martin of Brattleboro was
not present the hearing was continued un-
I'll next Tuesday afternoon at O'Clock.
Norton was held in 5000 bail. f. NJ.
Butler appeared AS his attorney.
The charge against Norton is based on
Volumnous evidence gathered by a Rut-
land collection agency and attorneys into
whose hands have come for the past few
months many complaints from different
sections of the country that Norton had
secured from them merchandise by fraud
lent means.
Norton's scheme, in effect. is alleged to
have been to order goods from wholesale
houses with no intention of ever payin &
for them. He ran no store or business
house Of any kind in South Walingford
or anywhere else. but his letter heads
gave his victims the impression that he
was the proprietor of something on the
scale of metropolitan department store.
lie had different letter head for every
day of the month and they were all
artistically gotten up. One of them read
like this: IF you wish to sell any prop
erty write to C. w. Norton. wholesale
and retail iohber in painters supplies.
Lumber, clapboards, furniture, bicycles
and city lots for sale and exchange Fine
solitaire diamonds dealt in Diamonds dis
posed of for private parties or exchanged
for other property. Any kind of settings
III,
squares In the upper corners of the sheet
there was further information about Mr..
Norton's paints. Il deal in second hand
mill machinery and engines all in perfect
order" says another letter head; "also
wagons, harnesses, lime. cement, dry
paints, japs and varnish."
Sometimes Norton would write his let
ters on tho backs of circulars or bogus
checking blanks. The circulars usually
advertised diamonds and desirable real
estate. and the checking blanks gave
further color to the bluff about the big
store. In one of the circularS Norton
says: My motto is. Be hustler and
movc with tho times; nothing venturod,
nothing gained; ii business don't come
to thee, hunt it, find it, have It,"
Nortcns letters were all typewrittcr
and they were tricf and to the point The
goods he ordered covered almost every
conceivable thing from jewelry to stock
in corporations and mining companies
Hc got wagons. harnesses. hardware dry
goods. paints, machinery and books. If
the amount of the bill was less than 500
ne never made any prctense of paying it.
but If II was larger he usually enclosed a
customers note" for payment. The Gus
toner was always Ives o. Hoadley of
Middletown Springs. whose paper is re-
ported to he absolutely worthless. Nor
ton never attempted To get goods from
the same firm twice and at first his orders
were so small that no firm ever took the
trouble to prosecute him. Success ap
parently made him boder and his alleged
swndlng operations reached such a mag
nitude that at length some Of the victims
7 gifted the postal authorities and lnspec-
tor kincaid was put on the case After
six weeks work he secured ample evil
dence to warrant NortonS arrest