THE ALBION INSURANCE CASE.
PPENAL servitude has at last, after a career of fourteen ran, overtaken the ingenious managers of the Albion Insurance Office. For ten days Sir Henry Hawkins and a very patient jury have been investigating at the Old Bailey one of the simplest and most perfect systems of fraud that the present generation has had the good fortune to see revealed in a Court of justice. In point of aoope, safety, and success, it can bear triumphant comparison with any of the recent achieve- ments of fraudulent ingenuity. That, happily for society, it should have landed, even at the eleventh hour, its pro- moters in penal servitude or in gaol has been entirely accidental ; the men, and not the system, failed, after years of prosperous fraud, to meet the exigencies of the occasion ; they mismanaged an awkward victim, and suffered him to drag them into a. civil Court for the sake of £56. The swindling organi- sation known as the "Long Firm," though it has carried on for years, and still actively pursues, in spite of calamity, a com- mercial piracy, to which thousands of traders fall an easy prey, has one inherent and fatal vice that must always place it low in the scale of frand,—detection is available, and within a brief period. The confraternity of sham merchants have to lead a restless, nomadic life, are never Safe for more than a few months under the same name or in the same town, and periodically, without fail, a batch of from ten to twenty are caught, convicted, and despatched into penal servitude. The merit of the system is its vitality, for it flourishes in spite of penal servitude, and its ranks are deci- mated only to be immediately refilled. The Turf frauds were little more than an elaborate practical joke, which nothing but the humorous ingenuity of Burr and the crafty sagacity of Benson could have instituted or maintained; bribing the Detec- tives was the rude though daring device upon which their whole career depended.
The Forged Leases fraud approaches nearest to the Albion Insurance swindle, but it was always exposed to some acci- dental discovery that could, as was actually the ease, explode in an• instant the whole train of deceit ; it was profitable on a gigantic stale, but was proportionately perilous. The design of the Albion, besides being susceptible of the widest extension throughout the country, was so simple and straightforward in its mode of operation, so free from serious risk or difficulty, that there was really nothing but the deadening effect of success upon the minds of its Directors to prevent their pursuing it as long as a regular and very substantial income yielded any attractions. The fraud, indeed, was marvellously like legitimate business. The connection between loans and life-policies is a matter of every-day experience ; to insure OW'S life is a popular piece of thrift, and a solid and substantial gain in every one's eyes ; that a proposal for a loan should fall through, owing to in- adequate security, is a very common-place occurrence, even after the " preliminary fees" have been duly paid. What victim could imagine that the payment of the pre- mium to the Albion, to which the money-lender invited him as the preliminary to a loan, -was the gist of the entire transaction, and that the demand for impossible " col- lateral " securities was the invariable mode of choking off his application for an advance I A very great effort of mind was needed to conceive the idea that the loan office was a sham, that the insurance office was a sham, and that their connection, instead of being fortuitous, was a swindle, which depended on theircombination. The victim had paid a premium, it is true, and some few guineas for" legal expenses," but in hand he had a policy which was not absolutely worthless, for no less than 32,000 was paid sinee 18133 to claimants on policies thatfell in. It was almost impossible for him to realise that he had been the-victim of a cruel and heartless fraud Many of the victims were beyond doubt quite as fraudulent as their deceivers ; even if they fully appreciated the course of the proceedings, they oould not make a decent fight against what had all the appearance of being a very justifiable and reasonable precaution on the part of the money-lenders. Honest people in temporary difficulties go to a money-lender fully impressed with the belief that he is a disreputable person, who will extort as much as he can out of them for their accommodation ; to refuse the accommodation after extracting fees from them would not strike them as more than ordinarily dishonest, even if the possession of a policy which they had been induced to take did not go far to satisfy their minds that the profit was not all on one side. That in the space of fourteen years, starting with a capital of £200, the Directors of the Albion should have drawn from the public no less a sum than £79,000, can, under the circumstances, surprise no one. Whether the British public will hearken to the moral of the case is very problematic. There is one quarter, however, where the fate that has overtaken men of the character and condition of Northcott and Thompson may teach a timely lesson. There is too much reason to believe that there are Insurance Offices, less shadowy than the Albion, in which, to some not inconsiderable extent, the bait of an advance is held out to insurers, only to be withdrawn when an assurance is actually effected and a premium paid. The conviction of Northoott and Thompson may suggest prudence to those who have adopted this dubious mode of competing against their wealthier rivals, more probably perhaps than to those who, under the pres- sure of misfortune, are blinded to considerations of caution by their eagerness to obtain at all hazards the temporary relief they need. The Legal Department of the Treasury has of late gone far to meet the necessity of a Public Prosecutor; it • has never devoted its resources to a better purpose than to bring- ing to tardy justice the perpetrators of a fraud as heartless as it was successful. They had long preyed with impunity upon the needy, and the fraud would have still gone on, had it not been for the pertinacity of the Rev. Mr. Jex-Blake. Public gratitude is due to him, to the Treasury authorities, and last, but not least, to the devoted jury who, detained for ten days from their business, sat out upwards of thirty witnesses, eight speeches of counsel, and an eight hours' summing-up from the Judge, escaping at nine o'clock at night on a Saturday, with, as their sole reward, a certificate exempting them from serving again at the Old Bailey for the present sessions.
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