From Something New by P.G. Wodehouse (published 1915)
Okay, I give up. What sort of scam are these guys trying to pull? And is anyone still trying it, or has it gone out of fashion?
That should have been in GQ, someone please alert a moderator.
Well, if this were today, I would assume it was an offer to pay young men for sex. The mention of minors makes it kind of fishy.
I suspect that the same business is going on today: they are money-lenders, who lend to those with poor credit history at high interest rates. Not really a scam, unless the interest rate is extortionate relative to the risks implied by the poor credit.
But they didn’t want to deal with minors. I think the key to that is, the rule that minors can’t be sued for breach of contract, except for the purchase of necessities. It looks like the standard kind of easy credit scheme, which always turns out to have a million loopholes, and costing the sucker a fortune. Note, too, that all of these gentlemen are Scotsmen – the joke being that nobody should be stupid enough to believe that a Scot will give you a break financially. Given the time Wodehouse was wrilting, though, I’m a little surprised that there isn’t anybody named Finkelstein or Shapiro. Jokes about cheap Jews and Scotsmen were pretty common back in the day.
This sounds exactly like the Nigerian scam to me. When the time came to get the money, the sucker would need to put up some of his own money to get the deal done, and at that point that scammer vanishes.
Minors probably couldn’t sign bank documents or make deposits.
My guess would be the really bad loans idea. The Nigerian scam (or indeed, almost any other: Most scams are powered by the greed of the victim) would be a possibility, except that I think that at that time, that one was usually framed in terms of a Spaniard trying to escape political persecution, not an established Scot.
Yep, moneylenders. Key points to note:
i.e. unsecured by anything other than your signature
Struggling to keep up with your payments, need some money to tide you over till payday, or wanting to make a special purchase? Don’t worry, simply call 1-800-DEEPER-IN-DEBT. Same old same old.
I think it highly unlikely these were all actual full-on scams for the simple reason that newspaper advertisements cost money to place. The odd one or two might have been, but spamming newspapers with fraudulent adverts is the exception rather than the rule.
Done.
Moving thread from Cafe Society to General Questions.