I Malta correspondent of the Times relates a story showing
once more the inexplicable credulity of mankind in matters of finance. A charwoman in the island offered to receive deposits and pay is. a week per pound as interest, or 260 per cent, per annum. She paid regularly for some time, her scheme apparently being to act as pawnbroker, and sell the jewels she received in pledge in order to pay her interest. The heavy profit so attracted depositors, that other women started in the same line of business, and as they also paid for a time, a regular mania set in, Maltese of all classes and all degrees of education rushing to these women to make deposits, until the total amount left with them exceeded 2100,000. The crash, of course, came at last, and everything was found to have disappeared, including the pawned jewellery. The special feature of this case is that the women did not even profess to have any secret for making profitable invest- ments, but simply paid back for a short time, as interest, the money and the value of the jewels they received. They lived in squalor, which probably rather encouraged than alarmed their dupes, Southerners—and, for that matter, Scotchmen—often believing that people who might live well, and do not, are heaping up untold riches. It must be remem- bered, too, that the poor have a permanent delusion as to the interest rich people can obtain. Even in England, they fancy that money is made in this way out of their sixpences by the founders of coal clubs.
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