A BLACK MUSEUM.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19760, 10 April 1926, Page 13

A BLACK MUSEUM.

MISPLACED INGENUITY. Hike most of my colleagues, I have formed a collection of specimens of misplaced ingenuity on the part of dishonest traders (writes an inspector of weights and measures in the Weekly Scotsman). Here for example, are two weights taken from a marine stores dealer. Each purports to be "Sib, but one weighs considerably less an 1 the other considerably more. The dealer used the light weight when he was selling, the overweight when he was buying. The knife slipped under the goods pan is a favourite device with the dishonest shopkeeper. It is easily adjusted, and us quickly removed at the first hint of danger. This one, with the loaded handle, cost me the sear that I bear on my right hand. Suspecting its presence under a butcher’s scales, I male sure bv stooping and pretending to tie up my boot. The man, however, was alert, and grabbed for the knife just ns I did, and I received a severe cut. Another butcher was not content with one knife, but used four tied together in a bunch—there they are, weighing just on four ounces. There does not nnnonr to be anything wrong with this glass bottle, but it has a very thick bottom-, and bolds a little over three-quarters of a pint in place of the pint it was supnosed to contain. My discovery that such bottles were being used by a dairy firm in a large way of business caused a sensation some years before the war. The most barefaced mill: fraud in my experience, however, is represented by a measure, used by a street vendor in a poor quarter. It has a rent in one side, so that the mill: mu out as !l "”i«- ladled into the jugs brought by customers, who were mostly children sent by their mothers. Mv museum contains several snecimens of the false bottom fraud. A peanut measure is one example, and a circular wooden bushel used by a greengrocer is another. The latter had been duly stamped, the false bottom being inserted later. _ Here is a similar stamped measure which has no false bottom, but, nevertheless, gave short quantity. The trader had removed the bottom and replaced it after cnlting an inch or so off the sides. To guard against this typo of fraud, such vessels arc now stamped near the bottom as well as near the rim, and if either stamp is missing, one knows that the measure has been cut down as des- or from the ton. In contrast, here is an earthenware beer mug, one of a consignment sent to me to lie stamped as pint measures. I bad to turn them down, not -because btey held too little, but because they bold too much, the ‘long pull’ being illegal."