GREAT "AMERICAN HEIR" SWINDLE.

Evening Post, Volume XLVII, Issue 82, 7 April 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

GREAT "AMERICAN HEIR" SWINDLE.

A PICTURESQUE CAREER. The "American heir," like his parallels in other countries, appears to have invincible credulity and inexhaustible gullibility. The clever man who lives by receiving his hard cash and giving him in exchange shadowy hopes of vast estates and ancestrals domains sooner or later finds his ways to gaol ; but the business is apparently so easy and so inexhaustible that he has successors. We wish it were possible to think that the person now consigned to a felon's prison at Memphis, Tennessee, is the last of this class of swindlers. His real name is said to be Frederick Howlett, though he has had many aliases. We regret to say that he claims, and apparently with good reason, to be an Englishman. He has had a picturesque career. After leaving school he entered the mercantile marine, and after several voyages enlisted in the American Navy in J 873, from which he deserted a few months later. He next displayed his abilities as a school teacher in South Carolina' studied law, was elected a magistrate, and had to leave the town to escape a threatened trial for extortion. After an elopement and some other discreditable episodes he became a lay preacher, then returned to his old profession as teacher and lawyer. He was next appointed pastor of a church and professor of a college, but neither the congregation nor the regents were satiated with "Dr." Howard — the name he happened to be using at the time — and he started a new church in which to air his views, and a new paper in which to criticise the college he no longer adorned. But the paper involved him in controversy with the editor of the Forked Deer Blade, who, with a keenness worthy of the title, investigated Howard's career. The result was an action for libel, in which Howard claimed 50,009 dollars, and was awarded one cent. He had buttressed his case with a number of documents which were rejected by the Court as rorgeries. The case with which he had produced affidavits from imaginary persons in Calcutta, Manchester, and elsewhere probably suggested the line of business tc which he now chiefly devoted himself. He established a •'European Claim Agency" in the name of E. Ross, of New York. This was afterwards transferred to Lon don, where clients were informed that Kosswasdead, but that the claims had been taken over by William Lord Moore. He had his victims in thirty-seven States of the Union, and to all these correspondents there were held out glowing anticipations of the wealth waiting to be distributed, and which could be placed in their hands after certain formalities. But legal formalities are everywhere expensive, but there were fees to be paid as well as remuneration for the labour of the claim agent. In July, ] 892, the victims were gravely told that he had secured two million

dollars more than he expected, and that an agent of the British Court of Chancery would shortly proceed to New York and issue of " possession papers." Accordingly, the claimants received a formidable, official-look-ing document, with the New York j postmark on the envelope, acj knowledging their claims, but dej manding payment of 35 dollars each as the legacy tax levied by the United States. The supposed es- ' tales were said to be in England, Ireland, Walbs, and Germany, as the names of the applicants might suggest. Some of the claimants parted with their little all in raising the money for these fees and taxes. Mr. Howard also constituted himself " the President of the Gulf and. Tennessee Railway," sold stock of this imaginary corporation to English applicants, aud utilised the imj pressive stationery in furtherance of 1 additional claims frauds. These I transactions became more numerous ! and notorious. Public and official warnings were given both in this country and in tne United States, but credulity is both blind and deaf. Howard, after a long trial, in which a hundred witnesses were examined, has been convicted, and is now in gaol, whence he threatens an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. It will be well if the publicity given to his swindling reduces the number of those who imagine themselves to be the defrauded heirs of thousands of broad acres and millions of good money. Certainly the story of the "European Claim Agency," and of the doings of the President of the Gulf and Tennessee Railway, might well "give pause" to the most Optimistic of American heirs. — Manchester Guardian.