Two Famous Hoaxes.

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 148, 25 June 1887, Page 3 (Supplement)

Two Famous Hoaxes.

One of the most famous and audacious pieces of mischief ever perpetrated was the " Berners-street Hoax," contrived by Theodore Hook. It originated in this way. Hook was walking down the street one day in 1819 with a companion, and noticing a quiet house, the residence of a respectable shopkeeper's widow, the idea suddenly occurred to him to bet'that in a week lie would make it the most-talked-of houso in all London.

■ The bet was taken, and in the course of the next four or five days Hook had written and sent off a thousand letters conveying orders to tradesmen of every sort, all to be executed on one particular day and a3 nearly as possible at one fixed hour. Everything was thought of, from waggons of coals and potatoes, to books, prints, feathers, ices, jellies, and cranberry tarts. .

Nearly all obeyed the summons. Carts came with upholstery, vans with pianos, sweeps with their brushes, tailors with clothes, pasti-yeooks with wedding-cakes, undertakers with coffins, fishmongers with eels and oysters, and butchers with legs of mutton.

But others were written to and came besides tradespeople. Doctors were there, and surgeons, and lawyers, and to crown all, the Lord Mayor drove up in his state carriage, followed by the Governor of the Bank of England, the Chairman of the East India Company, the Lord Chief-Jus-tice, a Cabinet Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and His Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief. To these learned and illustrious personages the most ingenious reason had been given for requesting their attendance.

Hook and two of his friends occupied a window in the neighbourhood, and the tumult of which they were spectators may well be imagined. In the confusion serious damage was done, glass and china being smashed, baskets of fruit overturned, coach panels driven in, and tho oontents of wine and beer barrels made free of by the asembled crowd.

A fervent hue and cry arose for the detection of the wholesale deceiver, but so carefully had precautions been taken that, inquiry 'proved entirely fruitless. Hook found it convenient, however, to be laid up for a week or two by a severe attack of illness, after which, till the storm blew over, he promoted convalescence by a country torn-. .

This trick gave rise to countless imita-. tions both at home and abroad. An original variation was a cat hoax at Chester, in August, 1815. It had just come to be known that Napolean Bonaparte was about to be conveyed to St. Helena; and one morning a number of handbills were distributed through Chester informing the inhabitants that the island being dreadfully infested with rats, the Government had resolved that it should forthwith be cleared of the obnoxious animals. The advertiser had therefore been deputed to purchase eats and thriving kittens, and lie offered " sixteen shillings for every athletic full-grown tom-cat, ten shillings for every adult female puss, and half-a-crown for every thriving kitten that could swill milk, pursue a ball of thread, or fasten its young fangs in a dying mouse." An address was given—it was that of an empty house —at which the cats were -to be delivered.

The advertisement was responded to by the owners of nearly three thousand cats ; men, women, and children laden with sacks and baskets crowding into the town from all the surrounding country. The scene before the door of the empty house is said to have baffled all description. When the hoax was discovered most of the cats were liberated, and on the following morning no fewer than five hundred dead cats were counted floating down the River Dee.. — " Leisure Hour for March."