Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/430

 A Great Gold Robbery.

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A GREAT GOLD ROBBERY. I. THE DISCOVERY.

IN November, 189-, the Times contained ticle, which gave all that has yet been made the following message, which had been known concerning a most ingenious crime. received from the New York correspondent No further losses were reported, and the city, which learns little and forgets everything, of that journal :— "An extraordinary robbery of gold bullion forgot the robbery as soon as the newspapers has been discovered here. Yesterday Messrs. ceased to mention it. The Economist said : Raphael & Montagu, the well-known bullion brokers, received ten cases which had been consigned to them by their agents in London. When the cases were opened it was found that the gold had been removed from one of them and bars of lead substituted. The case ap peared, even to the most minute scrutiny, to have been untampered with, and the seal of the Bank of England, at which institution the gold was purchased and packed, was unbroken. The cases arrived on board the Cunard liner -Gallia,'' and it is at present impossible to say at what point in the route the substitution was made. The loss is said to amount to about £7,000, and this will, of course, be met by the underwriters in London who insured the safe delivery of the valuable consignment."

The publication of this telegram in London caused no little uneasiness. At the time, gold was being shipped to New York nearly every day, and the precautions taken to prevent rob bery were thought to be so stringent that gold was looked upon as the safest to insure of all cargoes. The underwriters rushed from thoughtless confidence into an equally thoughtless panic, and insurance rates were more than doubled. This hit the bullion brokers, who were very angry. The news papers cast from one to another ill-instructed guesses as to how the robbery occurred, without adding to the sum of knowledge, and the interested public hungered for an authori tative statement of facts. After a week or two of silence, this statement came from the Economist, in the form of an admirable ar

"When we read of the recent remarkable gold robbery, two points struck us as being incomprehensible. According to the Times, lead was substituted for gold in one of Messrs. Raphael & Montagu's cases, and the seal of the Bank of England was unbroken. Now gold is, bulk for bulk, nearly twice as heavy as lead —the proportion being roughly nineteen to eleven; how, then, could the base metal be substituted for the precious one without the difference in weight being at once perceived? When we reflected further that cases of gold bullion in course of transport are carefully weighed by every railway and steamship company by which they are carried, and that the weights are compared with those given in the receipts which the companies sign, the matter became the more mysterious, and we grew near to believing that the excellent Times correspondent had some how muddled the affair. In this we did him an injustice. He was as accurate as the telegram would permit. The fact that the bank's seal was unbroken was a severe difficulty to us, though not so great as that of the substitution of lead for gold. One hears of the successful imitation of seals, but it gives one an unpleas ant shock to realize that even the seal of the bank of England is not sacred, that it can be imitated readily and perfectly, and that its imi tation is of quite secondary difficulty where bullion thieves are concerned. We felt that our duty towards the business community of the great City of London compelled us to clear up the circumstances of this robbery to the best of our ability, and we accordingly tele graphed to a valuable correspondent in New York, directing him to supply us with the full