Scarcely a day passes without me being plagued by emails, texts and phone calls, phishing for my bank details.
If I don’t respond instantly, my computer will apparently pick up a virus and die, my accounts will be suspended.
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I’ll miss a parcel if I don’t pay for redelivery.
My credit card has just been presented to pay some exorbitant amount: click this link immediately to stop it.
My daughter is in trouble: “Mum I need help, I’ve lost my phone…”
While the world today seems to be infested with fleecers and con artists – all trying to pull a fast one – in reality, there’s always been plenty of swindling afoot, and West Cork has certainly experienced its “fair” share.
As early as May 5, 1906, the Skibbereen Eagle condemned an “abundance of fraud in every direction and in every department”, and began championing a “fight against fraud”.
BEWARE OF THIS FRAUD, warned the Southern Star, June 20, 1903, as it exposed a scam in which potential victims received a letter from their “missing son”.
Both newspapers ooze with stories about fraud – described variously as: rife, ugly, shocking, disgraceful, cruel, heartless, scandalous, and atrocious.
But they also recognised an almost admirable side, calling it remarkable, successful, profitable, clever, daring, ingenious, and perfect.
Dodgy practice a century ago in West Cork involved market traders giving customers short measures on “light” scales; shopkeepers adulterating food to make it go further; or importing cows from England and claiming they were “Irish cattle”.
One of this newspaper’s earliest correspondents on November 25, 1893, advised readers to “hold tight” to their cash.
Apparently, “numbers of people in the south of Ireland” had been posted a convincing hand-written letter from Spain, by someone claiming to have documents that identified the location of secret treasure buried in their neighbourhood.
If they coughed up a small, temporary, advance payment, it could all be theirs.
More “delusion and fraud” was laid bare by the Southern Star in July 1896, which condemned Bantry town council’s decision to settle for 20 “primitive” oil streetlamps, instead of investing in state-of-the-art gas lighting.
Oil lamps failed to produce a sufficient glow on winter nights to light the Terrace under Convent Hill, nor the road west of the Quay, which lay “buried in more than Cimmerian darkness”, causing many an “unhappy traveller” to tumble into the sea.
At least two dozen oil lamps (but only four new gas lamps) would be needed merely to light the passageway out of Bantry.
The oil lamp – an “antique abomination”, whose “sickly yellow glow” was “out-of-date and ridiculous even in the wilds of Terra del Fuego” – was allegedly installed simply to satisfy local oil merchants and keep ratepayers happy.
Two summers later, on Sunday August 21, 1898, a young man called Cantwell boarded the Cork, Bandon and South Coast Railway excursion train from Clonakilty Junction to Courtmacsherry.
When the guard checked his ticket, he found the date had been deliberately “obliterated”.
But Cantwell hadn’t realised that each ticket was also numbered, and the company could prove that his had been issued on August 7, when he’d made that same journey.
Apparently, “irregularities were taking place frequently” on this line, as passengers took advantage of the newly-appointed English guards.
When caught, many culprits gave false names and addresses.
The Bandon petty sessions court fined Cantwell 10 shillings.
Another young man was brought before a special court at Clonakilty on October 22, 1900, charged with a “serious case of fraud”.
Hitherto of “excellent character”, 27- year-old Cornelius O’Neill, a rural postman, faced six allegations of letter-stealing.
One letter he’d purloined contained a post office savings book; another a promissory note for £75, and £8 in banknotes.
The letters, including the money (all marked notes), were found buried in Kimaloda churchyard.
No attempt had been made to withdraw money from the savings account.
O’Neill had developed a “craving for drink”, and had broken open letters hoping to find money to buy some.
“I don’t know what came over me,” he said. “I am not a rogue… It was all that cursed drink.”
The Cork Winter Assizes found him guilty; but since he’d spent two months in jail already, and had not stolen any money, the judge ruled he should be released.
His wealthy American uncle offered him a fresh start, to pursue “a career of honesty” in another land.
Robert Hobbs from Carhue, near Bandon, likewise dubbed “a respectable man”, was summoned to the Timoleague petty sessions on April 30, 1912 to explain why a sample of milk bought at his creamery, and analysed by Food and Drugs inspectors, contained a third less fat than it should.
The cow was “very old”, and her milk was “weak”, Hobbs retorted.
Resident Magistrate Mr AGW Harrell didn’t believe a word of it: someone had deliberately diluted the milk with water, a “grave” offence, an “absolute and direct fraud”.
Hobbs was fined five shillings.
Among more senior fraudsters was Ellen Hurley from Ballineen.
On November 4,1915, she was charged with presenting her local post office with a forged baptism certificate, supposedly signed by the Rev Fr J Taylor, claiming she was 70 years old, the minimum age to draw an Old Age Pension of five shillings per week.
Seeing as her older sister Rebecca was only 63, this was “absolutely untrue”.
Certainly, no entry could be found for her in the baptism register for 1845.
The Bench deemed hers “a very serious case and a very deliberate one”, and imposed a fine of £2, or one month in jail.
The perpetrators of each of these frauds aimed to profit financially, and believed they stood a good chance of succeeding.
Their deceptions had been largely person-to- person, and were investigated by local forces of law and order.
Offenders were brought before the courts and punished.
Nowadays, fraud has become much more sophisticated, difficult to trace, globalised, anonymous, faceless.
