METHODS OF HOUSE SWINDLERS

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 678, 5 March 1903, Page 16

METHODS OF HOUSE SWINDLERS

Probably in no business are so many tricks and wiles practiced as in horse dealing. It is safe to affirm that thousands of horses are sold throughout the country every year under false conditions, aiid so skilful have “ fakers ” become that it takes a very clever and. experienced man to detect the doctoring tricks of those who are anxious to sell a bad animal to the best advantage. . Perhaps the commonest of all faking or bishoping, as it is called —a term derived from a man named Bishop, who during the eighteenth century obtained a great reputation for making old horses appeal young —is in relation to a horse s teeth.

At full age a horse has forty teeth, and ; not until the fifth year are they all vis- ; ible. Six months later the “ nippers,” or < front teeth, become marked by a natural cavity, and it is the presence or. absence i of these marks that certifies the animal’s exact age. 1 As the horse gets older these marks wear away, and it is then that the coper or faker sets to work to make fresh cavi- ■ ties as found in a horse of the age he j wishes to represent. The surface of the i teeth is cut out with a steel tool, and the ■ black lining of the groove, which must be i visible, burnt in with nitrate of silver or i some other chemical. In this way . horses which are often over eight or nine years of age are sold as five-year-olds. The age of a horse is often increased as , well as reduced by means of _ faking the i teeth.. A three-year-old will often be ■ transformed into a five-year-anld by ■ means of chiseling out the side milk teeth , with which horses are furnished up -to , their third year, when they are supplanted ; by the permanent ones. The extraction of i the former, of course, brings on the latter j much quicker chan would be the case in > the natural order of things, thus making , | a horse appear much older than it really I ■ is. . ; The faking of broken-winded horses is an • ■ art in itself, so to speak. It is generally j 1 accomplished by means of drugs, arsenic : i being, chiefly used. The coper also pays • strict attention to such- an animal’s diet j I previous to a show’. If during the trial a I i horse is a little short-winded, the owner | will turn furiously upon the groom for i giving his horse too much hay, when m i all probability it has had nothing to eat . or drink for hours. . * The groom will thereupon explain hov , . the animal got loose and ate a bushel or I i oats and half a truss of hay in the night, ! and that he was afraid of losing Ins place lif he said anything about it. This explanation will in. nine cases out of ten ' satisfy the intending purchaser, and re move any doubts which he might, have I had. n . , ,i ■ Doping is a term usually applied to the ■ i trick of making horses appear spirited and I high-steppers by means of drugs and ' chemicals. An animal is often made to i pick up its legs in the quick nervous stylo I of a thoroughbred by having the back ten- ! dons of the leg rubbed with turpentine, ■ ; cow itch and ammonia, which, bums like j ■! fire, .and makes the animal prance with ! pain.—(“ Breeder and Sportsman.”)