Minority Religions and Fraud In Good

Faith Amanda Van Eck Duymaer Van

Twist
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 Minority Religions and Fraud

Almost as long as organized religions have existed, some have faced charges of fraud
and deception. It is valuable, then, to have a scholarly and readable collection of
chapters that allow us to understand the roots of these charges, and the reasons why
some systems in particular lend themselves to abuse and manipulation. Particularly
intriguing is the question of when a non-provable claim veers from a matter of faith
to an issue of fraud. Impressively broad in its scope, Minority Religions and Fraud
is an innovative and truly useful contribution to the literature on religious studies,
as well as to criminology.
Philip Jenkins, Baylor University, USA

Religion sometimes presents a theatre for deception and chicanery, with the high
drama that can attend these. This book provides a timely correction to the media
image that only several large denominations or congregations currently experience
this phenomenon, and it is a welcome addition to a growing research literature on
the less-than-uplifting aspects of religious practice.
Anson Shupe, Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne, USA

Analysing both fraud and religion as social constructs with different functions
and meanings attributed to them, this book raises issues that are central to
debates about the limits of religious toleration in diverse societies, and the
possible harm (as well as benefits) that religious organizations can visit upon
society and individuals. There has already been a lively debate concerning the
structural context in which abuse, especially sexual abuse, can be perpetrated
within religion. Contributors to the volume proceed from the premise that
similar arguments about ways in which structure and power may be conducive to
abuse can be made about fraud and deception. Both can contribute to abuse, yet
they are often less easily demonstrated and proven, hence less easily prosecuted.
With a focus on minority religions, the book offers a comparative overview
of the concept of religious fraud by bringing together analyses of different
types of fraud or deception (financial, bio-medical, emotional, breach of trust
and consent). Contributors examine whether fraud is necessarily intentional
(or whether that is in the eye of the beholder); certain structures may be more
conducive to fraud; followers willingly participate in it. The volume includes
some chapters focused on non-Western beliefs ( Juju, Occult Economies,
Dharma Lineage), which have travelled to the West and can be found in North
American and European metropolitan areas.
 Ashgate Inform Series on
Minority Religions and
Spiritual Movements
Series Editor: Eileen Barker,
London School of Economics, Chair and Honorary Director of Inform

Advisory Board:
Afe Adogame, University of Edinburgh, UK,
Madawi Al-Rasheed, King’s College, London, UK,
Irena Borowik, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland,
Douglas E. Cowan, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada,
Adam Possamai, University of Western Sydney, Australia,
James T. Richardson, University of Nevada, Reno, USA,
Fenggang Yang, Purdue University, USA

Inform is an independent charity that collects and disseminates accurate, balanced

and up-to-date information about minority religious and spiritual movements.
The Ashgate Inform book series addresses themes related to new religions, many
of which have been the topics of Inform seminars. Books in the series will attract
both an academic and interested general readership, particularly in the areas of
Religious Studies, and the Sociology of Religion and Theology.

Other titles in this series:

Global Religious Movements Across Borders

Sacred Service
Edited by Stephen M. Cherry and Helen Rose Ebaugh

Revisionism and Diversification in New Religious Movements

Edited by Eileen Barker

State Responses to Minority Religions

Edited by David M. Kirkham
Minority Religions and Fraud
In Good Faith

Edited by
Amanda van Eck Duymaer van TwisT
Inform, London, UK
© Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist and the Contributors 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work.

Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company
Wey Court East 110 Cherry Street
Union Road Suite 3-1
Farnham Burlington, VT 05401-3818
Surrey, GU9 7PT USA
England

www.ashgate.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Minority religions and fraud : in good faith / edited by Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist.
pages cm. – (Ashgate inform series on minority religions and spiritual movements)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4724-0911-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4724-0912-6 (ebook) –
ISBN 978-1-4724-0913-3 (epub) 1. Religions. 2. Religious minorities. 3. Cults. 4. Fraud.
5. Deception. I. Van Twist, Amanda van Eck Duymaer, editor.
BL80.3.M56 2014
201’.7–dc23
 2014006141

ISBN 9781472409119 (hbk)

ISBN 9781472409126 (ebk – PDF)
ISBN 9781472409133 (ebk – ePUB)

Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited,

at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD
 Contents

Notes on Contributors   vii

Acknowledgements   xi

Introduction   1
Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist

1 New Religions and Fraud: A Double Constructionist Approach  17

David G. Bromley

2 Minority Religions and Fraud: Preliminary Theories on

Ritual Deception   35
Holly Folk

3 Bona Fide?   53
Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist

4 Between Faith and Fraudulence? Sincerity and Sacrifice in

Prosperity Christianity   73
Simon Coleman

5 Folk Healing, Authenticity and Fraud   91

Stuart McClean and Ronnie Moore

6 Sex-Work and Ceremonies: The Trafficking of Young Nigerian

Women into Britain   113
Hermione Harris

7 Food, Faith and Fraud in Two New Religious Movements   135

Marion S. Goldman
vi Minority Religions and Fraud

8 Miracle Makers and Money Takers: Healers, Prosperity

Preachers and Fraud in Contemporary Tanzania   153
Martin Lindhardt

9 When Fraud is Part of a Spiritual Path: A Tibetan Lama’s Plays

on Reality and Illusion   171
Marion Dapsance

10 Faith Lends Substance? Trickery and Deception within

Religious and Spiritual Movements   187
Michael Coffey

11 The Zen Master and Dharma Transmission: A Seductive

Mythology   203
Stuart Lachs

Index   229
 Notes on Contributors

David G. Bromley is Professor of Religious Studies in the School of World

Studies and Professor of Sociology in the L. Douglas Wilder School of
Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has
written or edited over a dozen books on religious movements. Books published
since 2000 include Cults and New Religions, with Douglas Cowan (Blackwell/
Wiley, 2008); Teaching New Religious Movements (Oxford University Press,
2007); Defining Religion: Critical Approaches to Drawing Boundaries Between
Sacred and Secular, with Arthur Greil (Elsevier Science/JAI Press, 2003); Cults,
Religion and Violence, with J. Gordon Melton (Cambridge University Press,
2001) and Toward Reflexive Ethnography: Participating, Observing, Narrating,
with Lewis Carter (Elsevier Science/JAI Press, 2001). Dr Bromley is former
president of the Association for the Study of Religion, founding editor of the
ASR’s annual series, Religion and the Social Order, and former editor of the Journal
for the Scientific Study of Religion, published by the Society for the Scientific
Study of Religion. He is currently director of the Partnership for Understanding
World Religions and Spirituality, and project director of the World Religions and
Spirituality Project at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Michael Coffey is a London-based conjuror and mind-reader. He specializes

in the deceptive practices of the fraudulent mediums of the nineteenth century,
taking into account both the psychologies employed and the material ruses.

Simon Coleman is Jackman Professor at the Department for the Study of

Religion, University of Toronto. He is co-editor of the journal Religion and
Society: Advances in Research and previously was editor of the Journal of the
Royal Anthropological Institute. His research interests include charismatic
Christianity, the Faith Movement, pilgrimage, and hospital chaplaincy. He has
conducted fieldwork in Sweden, England and Nigeria. Publications include The
Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
and Religion, Identity, and Change: Perspectives on Global Transformations,
editor, with Peter Collins (Ashgate, 2004). A recent piece on economics and
viii Minority Religions and Fraud

the Faith Movement was published as ‘Prosperity Unbound? Debating the

“Sacrificial Economy”’, Research in Economic Anthropology 31: 23–45, 2011.

Marion Dapsance holds a PhD in Anthropology (Ecole Pratique des Hautes

Études – Sorbonne, Paris). She works on Buddhist modernism and other forms
of cultural hybridity and misunderstandings.

Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist is the deputy director of Inform, a non-
profit information centre specializing in minority religious and fringe political
movements, based at the London School of Economics and Political Science
(LSE). Her research on the second generation of sectarian movements and
the impact their segregated childhoods have had, is due to be published with
Oxford University Press. Further publications include an article entitled ‘Beliefs
in Possession’ in The Devil’s Children. From Spirit Possession to Witchcraft: New
Allegations That Affect Children, edited by Inform’s research fellow Emeritus
Professor Jean la Fontaine (2009), and ‘Children in New Religions: Contested
Duties of Care’, Journal of the International Society for the Study of New Religious
Movements 1(2): 25–48 (2010).

Holly Folk is an Associate Professor in the Liberal Studies Department

of Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, where she teaches
comparative religion. A cultural historian, her research focuses on 19th and
20th century dissenting social movements. She is especially interested in new
religious movements, communal societies, and alternative spirituality and
medicine. Folk is working on a book on chiropractic and its populist and vitalist
ideological heritage.

Marion S. Goldman is Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at the

University of Oregon. Her research focuses on new religious movements and
religious violence. Her books include The American Soul Rush: Esalen and the Rise
of Spiritual Privilege (New York University Press, 2012) and Passionate Journeys:
Why Successful Women Joined a Cult (University of Michigan Press, 1999). Her
current work deals with new religious movements and cultural innovation.

Hermione Harris has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the School of

Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) where she is a research associate. She has
worked for many years with ethnic minorities in Britain, and her publications
include The Somali Community in the UK: What we know and how we know it
(ICAR, 2004) and Yoruba in Diaspora: An African Church in London (Palgrave
 Notes on Contributors ix

Macmillan, 2006). She is currently involved in preparing Expert Opinions for

cases involving young Nigerian women trafficked into Europe for prostitution.

Stuart Lachs started Zen practice in 1967 and maintains it to this day. His
research interests are Zen Buddhism and the sociology of religion, and he has
been active in the Columbia University Buddhist Studies Workshop and the
Princeton University Buddhist Studies Workshop. Later, he joined the Oslo
University Buddhist Studies Forum where he has presented three times. He
has presented papers at the annual conferences of the American Academy of
Religion (AAR), the Association of Asian Studies (AAS) and at the International
Association of Buddhist Studies (IABS).

Martin Lindhardt has a PhD in social anthropology from the University

of Aarhus, Denmark, and is an associate professor in cultural sociology at
the University of Southern Denmark. His research and writing focus on
Pentecostalism in Chile and on Charismatic Christianity and witchcraft in
Tanzania. He is the author of Power in Powerlessness, A Study of Pentecostal Life
Worlds in Urban Chile (Brill, 2012) and the editor of Practicing the Faith. The
Ritual Life of Pentecostal Charismatic Christians (Berghahn, 2011).

Stuart McClean has a PhD in social anthropology and is a senior lecturer at the
University of the West of England. Stuart is a fellow of the Royal Anthropological
Institute and book review editor for the international journal Health. Primarily
he is interested in complementary and alternative health practices, the people
who practice them, the ideas and principles underpinning them, and the
individuals who use them. He is co-author (with E. Frost) of Thinking About the
Lifecourse: a Psychosocial Introduction (Palgrave, 2014).

Ronnie Moore has a D.Phil in Social Anthropology and works in Public Health
Medicine at University College Dublin, Ireland. His interests are in folk and
alternative medicines, ethnicity, identity, conflict theory and health. Ronnie is
a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. He is currently PI on a large
European FP7 research project looking at social, cultural and behaviour aspects
of research on pandemics. Ronnie and Stuart McClean are co-editors of Folk
Healing and Health Care Practices in Britain and Ireland (Berghahn, 2010).
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Acknowledgements

There are several individuals who should be thanked for having a part in the
creation of this volume. Professor James Beckford raised the question of a
potential link between affinity fraud and religion, especially when religion
appears in unexpected places – or when it involves endeavours that normally
are not self-evidently religious.1 Professor Eileen Barker, the series editor, fully
supported, as always, the further investigation of this issue and the publication
of new ideas. Both Professors Beckford and Barker have long been exemplary,
and a great influence in the work of Inform, and of its staff. The feedback on
the book proposal received from readers on the series’ editorial board has been
gratefully received and incorporated.
I also thank all staff at Inform for their support, for taking on some extra work
in order to help make this volume happen, and for listening to and commenting
on the ideas and efforts involved: Adviya Khan, Sibyl Macfarlane and Silke
Steidinger. In particular, I thank Sarah Harvey and Suzanne Newcombe for
helping with the editorial red pen, and for feedback on my contributions – for
which I thank Nick Parke as well. I am also indebted to the contributors of this
volume, who I thank for their insights and dedication, and to the editorial team
at Ashgate, Sarah Lloyd and David Shervington.
Finally, but essentially, a large thank you to those who have communicated to
me their frustrations, thoughts, feelings and insights after having been defrauded
by a trusted religious teacher. These include the individuals who bravely allowed
me to use communications in my contribution to this volume, and those who
have contacted Inform and told their stories in an effort to bring fraudulent
behaviour to light and to inform others.

1
Beckford, J. (2010). ‘Constructing Religion in Unexpected Places: Phishers of Men
and Women’, Implicit Religion, 13(1): 71–83.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Introduction
Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist

Toleration of religious diversity has become an important pillar of contemporary

society, but as religions become more innovative and diverse, more questions are
raised. What are the lines between legitimate faith and illegitimate exploitation
of an individual’s credulity? For example, how can we distinguish between
spiritual encouragement and emotional manipulation, between charging for
religious services and extortion, between a sage and a charlatan? How, when
dealing with religion in contemporary society, can we identify religious fraud?
Can we be certain that we are not persecuting misunderstood conventions?
Finally, is it possible to find the right balance between regulation and freedom
of religion?
Over the years, Inform has been involved in a couple of court cases where a
religious leader was charged on criminal charges.1 In those cases, professionals
involved in the case would speak in disparaging terms about the associated
beliefs and ask us questions along the lines of ‘Do you think the leader believes
this himself ?’, and occasionally make incredulous statements along the lines of
‘I cannot believe the followers fell for this.’ Invariably, the religious leaders in
question were seen as fraudsters who did not believe themselves the message
they were ‘peddling’, and the followers as victims who should have known better.
This is a simplistic binary representation that may fit a minority of scenarios.
Perhaps these assumptions are a better ‘fit’ for those groups where the weight of
evidence against them is such that allegations do eventually go to court.
But of course things are never simple. In most cases, ‘fraudsters’ and ‘victims’
in the contemporary religious scene cannot be unambiguously categorized.
When fraud and religion come together, there are inevitably questions about
1
Inform is an independent charity that was founded in 1988 by Professor Eileen Barker
with the support of the British Home Office and the mainstream Churches. It is based at the
London School of Economics. The primary aim of Inform is to help people by providing
them with information that is as accurate, balanced, and up-to-date as possible about
alternative religious, spiritual and esoteric movements. See http://inform.ac/ (accessed 14
March 2014).
2 Minority Religions and Fraud

causality. Is a particular religion inherently fraudulent, a cover for fraud, a

motivator in fraud, invoked in fraud, or simply incidental context? Issues of right
and wrong become muddled when alleged supernatural forces and subjective
hopes and expectations enter the equation, along with novel and unfamiliar
religious beliefs, practices, and forms of association. This volume will examine
these problems by focusing on the concept of fraud.
Mechanisms used to facilitate fraud can be found ubiquitously in religious
contexts, for example, power differences, hierarchical structures, access to
fellow believers, and a context of faith, affinity and trust. Despite this, none
of the UK main fraud information sources mentions religion in conjunction
with fraud (although the Serious Fraud Office does, in their fraud taxonomy,
mention ‘abuse of position of trust’ under ‘fraud against the individual’). The
UK Fraud Advisory Panel, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police,
published a booklet to alert people to fraud, which includes a page about
psychic and clairvoyant scams.2 But the emphasis here is on ‘scammers’, rather
than on the beliefs and the larger group and/or context. Yet beliefs can be used
for exploitative purposes (van Eck Duymaer van Twist 2010: 4). Furthermore,
religions and the organizational forms they take can form a smokescreen for
authorities (the victim chose to get involved, the deception was not intentional,
this is about race, gender, nationality, culture, or other issues).
The issues raised in this volume are central to vibrant academic debates on
the limits of religious toleration in diverse societies, and contemporary debates
about the possible harm (as well as benefits) that religious organizations can
inflict upon society and individuals. Anson Shupe, a leading criminologist, has
written several books on abuse in religion, focusing mainly on clergy malfeasance
and child abuse within churches (1995, 1998, 2007a, 2007b). He has done
much to analyse the structural context in which abuse can be perpetrated within
religion. This volume will proceed from the premise that similar arguments
about ways in which structure and power may be conducive to abuse can also be
made for fraud. It will offer a comparative overview of the concept of religious
fraud by combining papers about different types of fraud (financial, biomedical,
emotional, breach of trust and consent). And it will focus on minority religions,
beliefs and/or practices, that is, lifestyles that are considered outside of the
mainstream. In doing so, specific questions are addressed, including whether
such social structures, cultures and/or fringe religious beliefs particular to
minority and/or marginal communities may be more likely to enable fraud.

2
http://www.met.police.uk/docs/little_book_scam.pdf (accessed 14 March 2014).
 Introduction 3

What is Fraud?

For the purposes of this volume, fraud is understood as intentional deception

made for personal gain or to damage another or others.3 But this raises a number
of questions, including whether we can always know whether fraud is intentional,
whether deception was the main objective, and whether all fraudsters are equally
visible. For example, are those who have already been stigmatized in some way
more likely to be accused of fraud?
Fraud is a general term for an assortment of deceitful practices such as trickery,
breach of confidence, dishonest advantage, and many other ways of conceptualizing
a hierarchy of manufactured advantage. It is a well-documented problem in
society: fraud was estimated to cost the UK economy £38.4 billion during 2010 –
this amounts to £765 for every adult.4 According to research, insider-enabled
fraud, perpetrated by a trusted member of staff, occurs in every sector.5
Fraud generally is under-reported. In the case of insider-enabled fraud, it
can be difficult for organizations to accept that a trusted member of staff has
defrauded them, and they prefer to deal with it internally. In some cases, this
means that the organizations may not act, or merely act to move the perpetrator
elsewhere within the organization with a warning.6 This begs the question
whether in some cases organizations or institutions may wonder whether they
may have been complicit or responsible in some way. And why is fraud generally
under-reported? Do victims wonder whether they may have been complicit or
responsible in some way? Is there an element of embarrassment?
The range of fraudulent acts has several levels. Fraud is a crime in criminal
and civil law, but there are deceptions and confidence tricks that don’t necessarily
always attract the attentions of the authorities. Also, there are nuances and
subjective interpretations that can show some deceptions in a different light.
For example, hoaxes (deliberately fabricated falsehoods) are often considered
lesser evils. A good hoax is one that is somewhat believable, at least to some
people, and that would be almost impossible to disprove. Hence, it relies

3
This is a widely accepted general definition; see http://www.actionfraud.org.uk/
what-is-fraud (accessed 14 March 2014).
4
According to the National Fraud Authority’s Annual Fraud Indicator, fraud cost the
private sector £12 billion, the public sector £21.2 billion, the charity sector £1.3 billion, and
individuals £4 billion in 2010; see https://www.fraudadvisorypanel.org/fraud-facts-and-
figures.php (accessed 14 March 2014).
5
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/agencies-public-bodies/nfa/annual-
fraud-indicator/annual-fraud-indicator-2012?view=Binary (accessed 14 March 2014).
6
Ibid.
4 Minority Religions and Fraud

strongly on what people would like to believe, or would like to be true. This
is why many hoaxes rely on strongly held beliefs, for the same reasons frauds
and deceptions do. Often a hoax is not intended to be fraudulent in the sense
that the perpetrator does not necessarily benefit from it. However, hoaxes can
be varied, and intricate, ranging from forged Yeti or Loch Ness photos (or the
real deal, some would insist) to, as some argue, the creation of the Book of
Mormon – the sacred text of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
The authenticity and historical and archaeological veracity of the latter has been
questioned within scientific communities, yet it is considered a sacred scripture
by followers of a still-growing church. The point is that it is not necessarily about
whether it is true or not. Genuine beliefs are frequently difficult to prove wrong
because the believers want to believe. Perhaps, in some cases, the perpetrators
want to believe as well. This is where fraud and deception move away from being
clearly defined crimes, as the line distinguishing fraud from not-fraud can be
crowded by accidental deceptions, white lies, deliberate hoaxes, cons and other
tricks. Furthermore, the victims become active parts of the interaction, as their
beliefs and ideas and expectations are a necessary part of the whole operation.
In a discussion on the difference between different kinds of authority, Mark
Oppenheimer wrote:

Spiritual authority is that second kind of authority. It depends not on miracles or

mystical figures or discoveries of secret books, but merely on our willingness to
believe, against evidence if need be, that those things were real. The virgin birth,
the Buddha, Joseph Smith’s golden plates that became the Book of Mormon—to
build spiritual tradition, it does not matter if the people were real or if the events
happened. It matters that we keep assenting to the stories. (Oppenheimer 2013)

Fraud and Religion

Good faith and its opposite, bad faith, imports a subjective state of mind, the
former motivated by ‘honesty of purpose’ and the latter by ill-will.7

Fraud agencies generally do not discuss religious fraud, aside from clairvoyance
scams.8 Yet there have been many instances of fraud within institutionalized
7
http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/B/BadFaith.aspx (accessed 14 March
2014).
8
See, for example, http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/fraud-az-clairvoyant-scams
(accessed 14 March 2014).
 Introduction 5

religions. Anson Shupe has argued that scholars, including those in his own field,
have ignored organized religion as a major source of white-collar and corporate
crime (Shupe 2007). According to estimates, $34 billion was stolen through
ecclesiastical crime around the world in 2011, and an estimate for 2013 is
$37 billion.9
What is referred to as ‘ecclesiastical crime’, as well as so-called pyramid
and Ponzi schemes within religious communities, are essentially variations on
affinity fraud – they rely on people with shared interests and affinities, who feel
part of a particular community. An alternative term is clergy misfeasance, one
current definition of which is ‘the exploitation and abuse of a religious group’s
believers by trusted elites and leaders of that religion’ (Cohen 2002).10 Such
violations happen throughout society, but Shupe argues that the combination
of an institution and an ideology can combine to determine who has the
privilege to be dominant and who must defer. Sociologically, he argues, churches
are hierarchies of unequal power (Shupe 1998: 2). Hence, this type of fraud
represents a breach of fiduciary responsibility, based on trust, a social relationship
in which clients invest resources, authority, or responsibility in an expert to act
on their behalf (and calculate the risk) for some future return (ibid.: 626, where
he cites Shapiro 1987). In Shupe’s words, ‘In the secular world the return may be
high interest and dividends; in the sacred realm it may be healing, good karma,
or salvation’ (1998: 4).
As with white-collar crime, clergy malfeasance involves persuasion and
guile, and often the process is open to ambiguity – it is not entirely clear that
whatever is happening is fraudulent. This is either because victims are often not
aware that fraud has taken place or that their contributions were used for other
purposes, or they may see the process in a favourable light because of the context
in which it occurs. In Spoils of the Kingdom, Shupe states, ‘Power, authority and
public reputation, balanced by obedience, faith, and trust, are the sociological
archetypes of clergy malfeasance. They form the organizational and emotional
elements of the opportunity structures provided by religions’ (2007a: 120).
9
According to the International Bulletin of Missionary Research ( January 2011: 29)
and https://sites.google.com/site/petrapeople/ (accessed 14 March 2014).
10
Shupe has, in his work on the subject, focused on malfeasance in Christian Churches
– but has found it throughout the Christian denominations and minority groups. Shupe
defines clergy malfeasance as the exploitation and abuse of a religious group’s believers by
trusted elites and leaders of that religion (1998: 1). Criminologist Peter Iadicola, in Shupe’s
1998 edited volume, compares clergy malfeasance to white-collar crime; he explains that
white-collar crime initially was defined by sociologist Edwin Sutherland in 1939 as ‘a crime
committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation’
(in Iadicola 1998: 214).
6 Minority Religions and Fraud

Some Examples

The community of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) has lost a collective
$1.4 billion over the past few years in affinity fraud schemes.11 Affinity fraud
typically exploits trusted networks of ‘in-groups’ for fraud. In this case, Mormons
were targeted by fellow Mormons who exploited the network, the sense of
trust, and the common culture of the LDS community. A sense of common
understanding and heritage, combined with attractive promises, can persuade
people to let their guards down more easily than they may otherwise. In another
example, Menachem Youlus, a Jewish bookstore owner in Baltimore, Maryland,
USA, created a charity that, he claimed, rescued Holocaust-era Torahs, and
sold what turned out to be forgeries at significant cost to interested parties.
The prosecutor (state attorney) reportedly stated that Youlous had ‘exploited
the profound emotions attached to one of the most painful chapters in world
history — the Holocaust — in order to make a profit’.12
If a person is not only seen as being part of a trusted community, but also seen
with, or somehow connected with, trusted individuals, this may increase their
perceived trustworthiness – the person has essentially been endorsed. Especially
if a group consider themselves to be socially marginalized, the implicit trust of
another member of this group is greater. Hence affinity fraud is a particularly
effective scam in minority groups with a documented history of oppression,
such as the African-American community. In Pastoral Misconduct: the American
Black Church Examined, Anson Shupe and Janelle M. Eliasson-Nannini argue
that the history and traditions of black pastoral leadership, coupled with the
close identity of many black congregants with their pastor, congregation, and
ethnic subculture, creates opportunity structures that facilitate predatory
behaviour (2012). Familiarity and mutual identity frequently lead victims to
drop their normal levels of wariness.
Pastor Eddie Long and Joel Osteen, both renowned and respected figures
in American evangelical circles, introduced to their congregations a successful
entrepreneur, Ephren Taylor, who presented himself as a self-made millionaire
and preached on biblical financial principles. After services, he would approach
individual members of the congregation and offer them financial advice,

11
See, for example, http://www.reviewjournal.com/john-l-smith/thieves-temple?
ref=259 and http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/joannabrooks/3333/mormons
_now_losing_billions_to_affinity_fraud/?comments=view&cID=13365&pID=13356
(accessed 9 April 2013).
12
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/rabbi-menachem-youlus-admits-torah-
scam-faces-jail-article-1.1016263 (accessed 9 April 2013).
 Introduction 7

promising big returns on investments. As a preacher’s son, he knew the language

to reach the congregations to which he was introduced.13 Taylor is accused of
a variety of violations, including operating a pyramid scheme involving $11
million, primarily aimed at socially conscious investors within African-American
congregations.14 But some victims are suing their bishop, Eddie Long, as well,
arguing that he abused his position and ‘coerced’ his parishioners into investing
in Taylor’s fund.15 The feel-good factor involved in Taylor’s ruse, investing in
socially conscious projects, was attractive to his particular congregations. This
is reminiscent of the Foundation for New Era Philanthropy, a pyramid scheme
that initially focused on non-profit organizations and Christian charities, but
later expanded to include some public organizations.16
Beliefs that people hold can be harnessed for good purposes, but also for
exploitative purposes (van Eck Duymaer van Twist 2010: 4). The Greater
Ministries International Church (GMI) took in a reported half-billion dollars
from tens of thousands of believers over several congregations throughout
the US. Many of the investors were fundamentalist Christians, including
Mennonites in rural Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia. They were told their
money would double; investors were quoted Luke 6:38: ‘Give, and it shall be

13
See, for example, http://www.economist.com/node/21543526 (accessed 14
March 2014).
14
See, for example, http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2012/2012-62.htm and
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/ephren-taylor-youngest-ceo-faces-
lawsuits-over-ponzi-schemes_n_1125187.html (accessed 9 April 2013).Pyramid schemes,
sometimes called ‘Ponzi schemes’ are frauds based on an unsustainable business model
that involves promising participants payment or services, primarily for enrolling other
people into the scheme, rather than supplying any real investment or sale of products or s
ervices to the public (http://www.fbi.gov/scams-safety/fraud/fraud#pyramid) (accessed 1
November 2013).
15
See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/ephren-taylor-youngest-ceo-
faces-lawsuits-over-ponzi-schemes_n_1125187.html (accessed 9 April 2013).
16
It operated in the area around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, affecting 1,100
individuals and charities, including more than 180 evangelical groups, colleges, and
seminaries. John G. Bennett, a Christian businessman, invited his friends to become
beneficiary donors, promising that secret donors would match any contribution paid, which
would double their contributions. Bennett had some famous philanthropists as friends,
and people assumed these were the secret donors. Bennett was charged in 1996 in an 82
count indictment, found guilty, and sentenced to 12 years in prison. See http://www.fbi.
gov/philadelphia/about-us/history/famous-cases/famous-cases-foundation-for-new-era-
philanthropy (accessed 9 April 2013).
8 Minority Religions and Fraud

given unto you.’17 GMI’s leaders, Gerald and Betty Payne, insisted in court that
their actions were guided by the Holy Spirit. They were sentenced to 27 (Gerald)
and 12 (Betty) years.
The notion that your money will double by God’s will is a powerful motivation
for those who believe. Faith, after all, is the main force behind both placebos and
nocebos. This may explain some issues for the victims of fraud or deception;
there are ways in which they can be manipulated. But what do we know about
the perpetrators? Are they always swindlers? When fraud or deception happens
within the context of religious beliefs, among the faithful, the distinction
between ‘good faith’ and ‘bad faith’ is not always easy to establish.
What if the perpetrator believes in something that turns out to be a scam?
The religious group may be ‘genuine’ (whatever that means), but suffer from a
negative public image, because of how they are perceived rather than the nature
of their beliefs/practices. There may be situations, as Beckford has argued (1985:
293), where religious groups insist they are spiritually authentic while their
opponents cry ‘charlatan’. Also, a leader may use small deceptions in order to lead
people to the ‘truth’ in the spirit of ‘the ends justify the means.’ Are the actions
then really motivated by ‘ill will’ alone?
One of the original religious movements founded on teachings of the
Ascended Masters, I AM Activity, founded in the early 1930s by Guy Ballard
(1878–1939) and his wife Edna (1886–1971), brought us a seminal fraud case
within a small religious movement. The movement, influenced by Theosophy,
had up to a million followers in 1938 (Barrett 1996: 191). Having reportedly
encountered Saint Germain, the Ascended Master, while hiking on Mount
Shasta, Guy Ballard began publishing the messages of Saint Germain and other
Ascended Masters, and trained others to spread the messages across the USA.
I AM became a predecessor of several New Age movements, and is itself still
active on a smaller scale.
In 1942, Mrs Ballard and her son were charged with 18 counts of mail fraud
– namely the ‘false and fraudulent representations, pretences and promises’
contained in the material sent through the mail, through which they were
charged to have fraudulently collected over $43 million from their followers.
The materials contained the messages from Ascended Masters as reportedly
given to the Ballards, the divine messengers, which included claims of healing
otherwise incurable illnesses. The indictment in essence charged Mrs Ballard

17
See http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/Crimes/InPerson/MajorPerson/affinity.
htm and http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/october1/15.21.html (accessed 9
April 2013).
 Introduction 9

and her son with knowingly offering false representations through the US Mail
for fraudulent purposes.
The presiding judge advised the jury that some of the teachings may seem
improbable, but that whether these statements are true or not is neither the
concern of the court, nor the jury. The cardinal question, he argued, is whether
the defendants ‘honestly and in good faith believe those things’:

The question of the defendants’ good faith is the cardinal question in this case.
You are not to be concerned with the religious belief of the defendants, or any of
them. The jury will be called upon to pass on the question of whether or not the
defendants honestly and in good faith believed the representations which are set
forth in the indictment, and honestly and in good faith believed that the benefits
which they represented would flow from their belief to those who embraced and
followed their teachings, or whether these representations were mere pretenses
without honest belief on the part of the defendants or any of them, and, were the
representations made for the purpose of procuring money, and were the mails
used for this purpose.18

The jury found them guilty, but later the conviction was overturned on the
grounds that the judge should not have excluded the credibility of the beliefs
from consideration. Yet later again, the decision and conviction were affirmed
(and later again overturned after it was found that women had been wrongfully
excluded from the jury).19 In the end, the court ruled that the teachings of the
I AM movement were immaterial, because content of religious convictions
cannot be judged as either correct or incorrect. It also ruled that it was proper
for the jury to base its decision on the sincerity of the Ballard’s beliefs – hence
they could believe whatever they wanted as long as they believed it in good faith.
Some judges dissented from the legal strategy. Justice Jackson argued that
the judiciary should not be examining people’s faith. Hence he disagreed with
the judge ruling that on the one hand the court should not try whether the
statements were untrue, but that, on the other hand, it could inquire whether
the defendants knew them to be untrue. He asked, ‘How can the Government

18
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=322&invol=78
(accessed 1 November 2013).
19
http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/329/187/case.html (accessed 1
November 2013).
10 Minority Religions and Fraud

prove these persons knew something to be false which it cannot prove to

be false?’20
There have been, without a doubt, clear cases of intentional fraud – and religious
groups can on occasion form evocatively enabling frames for this. But there have
also been accusations of fraud where the intentions were ambiguous, where the
perpetrator may have been a believer, or both a believer and a fraud. Whether
someone genuinely believes something is difficult to establish. Furthermore,
in some interactions, any results cannot be easily proven to be the result of the
methods/means involved. Take, for example, what some people refer to as pseudo-
medicine, or alternative healing: how can a healer prove, taking placebo effects
and other correlations into consideration, that the client was healed because of the
healer’s interventions? And, how can the client prove that they were not healed
due to the healer’s lack of skills and/or metaphysical contacts? The healer may
just argue that the client was not healed because they didn’t believe enough in the
metaphysical elements involved in the prescribed cure.21
Deliberate deception is not necessarily straightforward, as one cannot always
prove that the deception was deliberate. And not all deception is inevitably
completely deceptive; deception, beguilement, mystification and subterfuge are
ambiguous acts that may involve truths as well as half-truths, omissions, or other
sleights of hand. This is especially the case when faith, beliefs and/or alleged
supernatural elements are involved, all of which can be quite unpredictable,
inconsistent and temperamental. The final goal on offer is always a very desirable
one, such as good health, riches, happiness or even salvation – hence the means
are often seen to justify the ends. This is easily justified and rationalized (perhaps
with a bit of subterfuge).
Deceptive or even fraudulent acts involve violations of expectations,
but expectations can always be miscommunicated and/or misunderstood.
Furthermore, expectations are personal, and subjective. As Beckford has argued,
‘ … it is our expectations that define what counts as unexpected’ (2010: 72). In
some cases we also suffer from self-deception – perhaps a wilful blindness in
the building of our expectations. This, in turn, can also be exploited, as grifters
rely on human characteristics (such as greed, (dis)honesty, vanity, compassion,
credulity) as part of their act. Hence it is rarely a one-way act, rather a game of
give-and-take, a two-way street.

20
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=322&invol=78
(accessed 14 March 2014).
21
As religions in general tend to emphasize the importance of faith over proof, legal
arguments around religious beliefs are bound to be problematic.
 Introduction 11

This Volume

In this volume, there are, naturally, descriptive analyses of cases of fraud.

However, many of the chapters also question the concept of fraud itself – its use
and its function highlighting the often subjective nature. Quite a few chapters
question the motivations behind accusations of fraud and the contexts in which
accusations have been made. The analysis hasn’t ended there, several chapters
also provide introspective reflections on the process of research. Throughout the
chapters in this volume, some themes have emerged.

The Social Status of Minority Religions

Many of the chapters comment on the social status of the religious movements
involved in issues of fraud; often they are seen as significantly different to
the ‘majority’ culture. This makes for an increased likelihood of them being
misunderstood, as well as an increased likelihood of them being faulted – they are
visible and different. Bromley, who analyses the characteristics of both religious
movements and society that may lead to attributions of fraud, emphasizes that
new religious groups by their very nature challenge existing cultural and social
logic, and as a result create more discord as they mobilize. Hence they make
themselves vulnerable to allegations that they make false representations – and
their social status makes them more likely to be accused. This sentiment is also
discussed by Coffey (in a chapter about the role of trickery and deception in
magic and religion), who argues that targeting the fake psychics and spiritualists
seems to be more than a little like shooting fish in a barrel, and we should perhaps
be asking ourselves some deeper questions about why their trade has persisted
throughout history. Coleman, who discusses Prosperity Christianity, argues
that fraud engenders epistemological as well as motivational questions, hence
we should be aware of the function of accusations of fraud in our society. He
argues that the label of ‘fraud’ on a religion can be considered as the witchcraft
accusations of our time, revealing how moral frameworks are frequently
constructed around and in protection of local systems of authority and law, but
also how believers and their opponents, ‘cults’ and ‘anti-cults’ (Beckford 1985: 7),
co-create religious controversy – and themselves – through their interactions
(this volume, p. 77).
McClean and Moore, in their chapter about folk healing, question on what
basis things are defined as either trustworthy or fraudulent. They ask whether
ideas of authenticity and credibility are perhaps not more subjective than we,
as a society, perceive them to be. In comparison to the global dominance of
12 Minority Religions and Fraud

bio-medicine, folk healing is stigmatized and consequently questions about

fraud are never far. This idea becomes more pertinent when considered in
conjunction with Lindhardt’s chapter entitled ‘Miracle Makers and Money
Takers’, where he describes how complex changes in social circumstances
(such as commercialization of religion) have contributed to the emergence
of a culture of distrust of providers of spiritual products and services. With
increasing diversification, the moral reputation of some providers has been put
into question.
The marginal status of groups and communities interacts with the legitimacy
they are given. New and alternative groups are least likely to be part of accepted
safety and regulation structures, and more likely to be operating outside of
these structures or as part of a self-regulating network. Folk, in mapping out
an approach in analysing and understanding what she refers to as ‘ritual fakery’,
argues that ritual fakery happens throughout the world religions as well as in
new religions, but that sectarian patterns of leadership can certainly provide an
edge to ritual deception.

Personal Commitment

Several chapters comment on the significance of personal perspective and

the importance of feeling part of a community and the narrative of meaning
and purpose to life. How they come to define the process has an important
role to play. In these chapters, cries of ‘fraud’ come from those who have been
disappointed in their expectations, and have come to redefine their experiences
in light of their disappointment. Both Goldman and Van Eck Duymaer van
Twist discuss that such a so-called ‘change of heart’ may very well depend on
the social structure. Goldman, who presents different perspectives on fraud
in minority religions, suggests that as members redefine their histories, some
question whether what seemed like a good idea, but later appeared to have led
to undesirable consequences, was really freely chosen. From this perspective,
what later seems like fraud, may actually not be the result of manipulation or
purposeful exploitation perpetrated by leadership. Previous acquiescence may
have been based on the suspension of disbelief, or wishful thinking. Goldman’s
research suggests that those who leave are likely to interpret their past more
negatively. Those who remain with the group are more likely to continue to see
it in a positive light, as a necessary stage, any problematic aspects justified by
positive results. As Goldman writes, faith may negate dissent, while scepticism
may encourage it (this volume, p. 149).
 Introduction 13

Van Eck Duymaer van Twist describes that interpretations of ‘what happened’
may suffer from their own forms of sleight of hand, as history is stylized, and
personal or social narratives of denial infiltrate. The social environment around
an individual influences what conclusions participants make with the benefit
of hindsight. Perhaps it is not only our expectations that define what counts
as unexpected, as Beckford wrote, but also the defining and contextualizing of
the experiences that follow these expectations (2010: 72). In Marion Dapsance’s
chapter, a case study analysing the spiritual path of some devotees in Rigpa, a
Tibetan Buddhist group, this issue comes to light as she describes women who
have found difficulty in defining the nature of their relationship with their guru.
From her ethnographic research, she has found that although unusual ‘crazy
wisdom’ teachings were contextualized, ritualized and explained in group-
contexts, the more intimate and private relationships some former members
have reported with the leader were not ritualized and contextualized in this
way – hence they became more complicated to define and understand within
the overall experience of the spiritual life in Rigpa.

But is it really fraud?

Harris raises the question of whether the perpetrators believe in what they are
doing, and whether it can be considered fraud if they are acting in ‘good faith’. In
her research, juju and curses were used in criminal cases of human trafficking. For
the victims, beliefs that they were affected by juju and curses helped to control
them. But what did these rituals represent to the perpetrators? Are the threats
used cynically to control the victims, did the traffickers themselves fully believe
in the power of juju (perhaps being afflicted by a curse themselves), or were the
curses commissioned to bring the traffickers better luck and fortune? The wider
question here is: does the definition of fraud depend on purposeful or conscious
deception? This question is raised by many of the contributors, including
Folk, McClean and Moore, and Van Eck Duymaer van Twist. For example, in
the context of healing practices, McClean and Moore describe how medicine
men may ‘add on’ to their ritual specialties. This is also discussed by Folk in her
chapter. Both chapters raise the point that this in itself is not evidence that they
do not believe in what they are doing; this does not make it a conscious or wilful
deception. Or does it?
Lachs, in his chapter about Dharma transmission in Zen Buddhism, also
considers deception to be a complex issue – he analyses this issue as both an
insider and a scholar. He argues that deception implies intentionality, which
cannot always be clearly established. For example, one could see Zen’s history
14 Minority Religions and Fraud

as mythology established over a thousand years. If a leader relies on the

reification of such a mythologized lineage for authority, is this an intentional
misrepresentation to mislead for personal gain? Furthermore, if this is half of a
pas de deux where the other half is filled with particular expectations, should these
not also be investigated? The issue of how exactly the weight of responsibility
is distributed in a pas de deux is also raised in the chapters by Folk, Goldman,
Van Eck Duymaer van Twist, and Coffey, among others. As Coffey, a conjurer,
writes, ‘The majority of people who attend a mind reading show already have
pre-existing notions about hypnosis, influence, suggestion, which they wish to
have confirmed. Their expectations colour and shape their belief, which in turn
determines what they perceive’ (this volume, p. 193).
He discusses the work of magicians (as well as, in passing, psychics and
spiritualists), and observes that, in cases of accusations of fraud, it appears to
him that the small fish are accused of acts that the large fish in the pond manage
to get away with unquestioned. If conscious manipulation of beliefs amounts
to fraud, should we not hold advertising and marketing agencies more to
account? Coffey suggests we should ascertain why we, as humans, so readily
put our faith, freedom and material rewards in the hands of individuals and/
or groups without thorough checking, testing and investigation. Folk reminds
us of the long history of anthropologists grappling with the problem of ritual
fakery, who have detected stagecraft in the rituals of many cultures. In her words,
‘Anthropology problematizes the axis of belief and non-belief, by presenting a
cascade of evidence of audiences aware of ritual fabrications, and of performing
perpetrators who seem to believe in their misrepresentations’ (this volume,
p. 38). As Coleman argues, patterns of religious commitment, engagement and
practice are complex, contradictory, situationally-based and ambiguous (this
volume, p. 87). The authors grapple with these complex, ambiguous and often
controversial issues from their own perspectives, and in their own way, combine
to produce a volume that I hope will challenge assumptions, shed some new
light, raise many new questions, and draw attention to patterns and trends in a
field where there are no straightforward answers.
This volume is one within a series with Ashgate and Inform. The Ashgate-
Inform book series addresses themes related to new religions, many of which have
been the topics of seminars, or planned future seminars, organized by Inform.
 Introduction 15

References

Barrett, D.V. (1996). Sects, Cults and Alternative Religions: A World Survey and
Sourcebook. London: Blandford.
Beckford, J.A. (1985). Cult Controversies. Societal Responses to New Religious
Movements. London: Tavistock.
— (2010). ‘Constructing Religion in Unexpected Places: Phishers of Men and
Women’, Implicit Religion 13(1): 71–83.
Cohen, M.H. (2002). ‘Healing at the Borderland of Medicine and Religion:
Regulating Potential Abuse of Authority by Spiritual Healers’, Journal of
Law and Religion, 18(2) (2002–03): 373–426.
Iadicola, P. (1998). ‘Criminology’s Contributions to the Study of Religious
Crime’, in Wolves Within the Fold: Religious Leadership and Abuses of Power,
ed. Anson Shupe. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Oppenheimer, M. (2013).‘ The Zen Buddhist Who Preyed on His Upper East
Side Students’, New Republic, 15 November http://www.newrepublic.com/
article/115613/zen-buddhist-sex-controversies-america-excerpt (accessed
14 March 2014).
Shupe, A. (1995). In the Name of All That’s Holy: A Theory of Clergy Malfeasance.
Westport, CT: Praeger.
—, ed. (1998). Wolves within the Fold: Religious Leadership and Abuses of Power.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
— (2007a). Rogue Clerics: The Social Problem of Clergy Deviance. New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
— (2007b). Spoils of the Kingdom: Clergy Misconduct and Religious Community.
Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
— and Janelle M. Eliasson-Nannini (2012). Pastoral Misconduct: The American
Black Church Examined. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Van Eck Dumymaer van Twist, A. (2010). ‘Children in New Religions:
Contested Duties of Care’, International Journal for the Study of New
Religions, 1(2): 183–206.
This page has been left blank intentionally
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 “This unintelligible jargon is out of place here, Mr Dominie; and if
you can show no better reasons for raising such an abominable
falsehood, in representing me as an incendiary and murderer, I shall
procure you a lodging in the house of correction.”
“Why, sir, the long and the short of the matter is this:—I only
asked at that fellow there—that logarithm of stupidity—if he had
heard aught of a ghost having been seen about Wineholm Place. I
added nothing farther, either positive or negative. Now, do you insist
on my reasons for asking such a question?”
“I insist on having them.”
“Then what will you say, sir, when I inform you, and declare my
readiness to depone to the truth of it, that I saw the ghost myself?
Yes, sir, that I saw the ghost of your late worthy father-in-law myself,
sir; and though I said no such thing to that decimal fraction, yet it
told me, sir,—yes, the spirit of your father-in-law told me, sir, that
you are a murderer.”
“Lord, now, what think ye o’ that?” quoth the smith. “Ye had better
hae letten him alane; for, ’od, ye ken, he’s the deevil of a body as ever
was made. He just beats the world!”
The doctor grew as pale as death, but whether from fear or rage, it
was hard to say.
“Why, sir,” said he, “you are mad! stark, raving mad; therefore, for
your own credit, and for the peace and comfort of my wife and
myself, and our credit among our retainers, you must unsay every
word that you have now said.”
“I’ll just as soon say that the parabola and the ellipsis are the
same,” said the dominie; “or that the diameter is not the longest line
that can be drawn in the circle. And now, sir, since you have forced
me to divulge what I was much in doubt about, I have a great mind to
have the old laird’s grave opened to-night, and have the body
inspected before witnesses.”
“If you dare disturb the sanctuary of the grave,” said the doctor
vehemently, “or with your unhallowed hands touch the remains of
my venerable and revered predecessor, it had been better for you,
and all who make the attempt, that you never had been born. If not
then for my sake, for the sake of my wife, the sole daughter of the
man to whom you have all been obliged, let this abominable and
malicious calumny go no farther, but put it down; I pray of you to put
it down, as you would value your own advantage.”
“I have seen him, and spoke with him—that I aver,” said the
dominie. “And shall I tell you what he said to me?”
“No, no! I’ll hear no more of such absolute and disgusting
nonsense,” said the doctor.
“Then, since it hath come to this, I will declare it in the face of the
whole world, and pursue it to the last,” said the dominie, “ridiculous
as it is, and I confess that it is even so. I have seen your father-in-law
within the last twenty-four hours; at least a being in his form and
habiliments, and having his aspect and voice. And he told me that he
believed you were a very great scoundrel, and that you had helped
him off the stage of time in a great haste, for fear of the operation of a
will, which he had just executed, very much to your prejudice. I was
somewhat aghast, but ventured to remark, that he must surely have
been sensible whether you murdered him or not, and in what way.
He replied that he was not very certain, for at the time you put him
down, he was much in his customary way of nights—very drunk; but
that he greatly suspected you had hanged him, for ever since he had
died, he had been troubled with a severe crick in his neck. Having
seen my late worthy patron’s body deposited in the coffin, and
afterwards consigned to the grave, these things overcame me, and a
kind of mist came over my senses; but I heard him saying as he
withdrew, what a pity it was that my nerves could not stand this
disclosure! Now, for my own satisfaction, I am resolved that, to-
morrow, I shall raise the village, with the two ministers at the head of
the multitude, and have the body, and particularly the neck of the
deceased, minutely inspected.”
“If you do so, I shall make one of the number,” said the doctor.
“But I am resolved that, in the first place, every means shall be tried
to prevent a scene of madness and absurdity so disgraceful to a well-
regulated village and a sober community.”
“There is but one direct line that can be followed, and any other
would either form an acute or obtuse angle,” said the dominie;
“therefore I am resolved to proceed right forward, on mathematical
principles;” and away he went, skipping on his crutch, to arouse the
villagers to the scrutiny.
 The smith remained behind, concerting with the doctor how to
controvert the dominie’s profound scheme of unshrouding the dead;
and certainly the smith’s plan, viewed professionally, was not amiss
—
“O, ye ken, sir, we maun just gie him another heat, and try to
saften him to reason, for he’s just as stubborn as Muirkirk airn. He
beats the world for that.”
While the two were in confabulation, Johnston, the old house
servant, came in, and said to the doctor—
“Sir, your servants are going to leave the house, every one, this
night, if you cannot fall on some means to divert them from it. The
old laird is, it seems, risen again, and come back among them, and
they are all in the utmost consternation. Indeed, they are quite out of
their reason. He appeared in the stable to Broadcast, who has been
these two hours dead with terror, but is now recovered, and telling
such a tale downstairs as never was heard from the mouth of man.”
“Send him up here,” said the doctor. “I will silence him. What does
the ignorant clown mean by joining in this unnatural clamour?”
John came up, with his broad bonnet in his hand, shut the door
with hesitation, and then felt thrice with his hand if it was really
shut.
“Well, John,” said the doctor, “what absurd lie is this that you are
vending among your fellow-servants, of having seen a ghost?”
John picked some odds and ends of threads out of his bonnet, and
said nothing.
“You are an old superstitious dreaming dotard,” continued the
doctor; “but if you propose in future to manufacture such stories, you
must, from this instant, do it somewhere else than in my service, and
among my domestics. What have you to say for yourself?”
“Indeed, sir, I hae naething to say but this, that we hae a’ muckle
reason to be thankfu’ that we are as we are.”
“And whereon does that wise saw bear? What relation has that to
the seeing of a ghost? Confess then, this instant, that you have forged
and vended a deliberate lie.”
“Indeed, sir, I hae muckle reason to be thankfu’—”
“For what?”
 “That I never tauld a deliberate lie in my life. My late master came
and spoke to me in the stable; but whether it was his ghaist or
himself—a good angel or a bad ane—I hae reason to be thankfu’ I
never said; for I do—not—ken.”
“Now, pray let us hear from that sage tongue of yours, so full of
sublime adages, what this doubtful being said to you?”
“I wad rather be excused, an’ it were your honour’s will, and wad
hae reason to be thankfu’.”
“And why should you decline telling this?”
“Because I ken ye wadna believe a word o’t, it is siccan a strange
story. O, sirs, but folks hae muckle reason to be thankful that they
are as they are!”
“Well, out with this strange story of yours. I do not promise to
credit it, but shall give it a patient hearing, providing you swear that
there is no forgery in it.”
“Weel, as I was suppering the horses the night, I was dressing my
late kind master’s favourite mare, and I was just thinking to mysel,
an’ he had been leeving, I wadna hae been my lane the night, for he
wad hae been standing ower me, cracking his jokes, and swearing at
me in his good-natured hamely way. Ay, but he’s gane to his lang
account, thinks I, and we puir frail dying creatures that are left ahint,
hae muckle reason to be thankfu’ that we are as we are; when I looks
up, and behold there’s my auld master standing leaning against the
trivage as he used to do, and looking at me. I canna but say my heart
was a little astoundit, and maybe lap up through my midriff into my
breath-bellows—I couldna say; but in the strength o’ the Lord I was
enabled to retain my senses for a good while. ‘John Broadcast,’ said
he, with a deep angry tone,—‘John Broadcast, what the d—l are you
thinking about? You are not currying that mare half. What lubberly
way of dressing a horse is that?’
“‘Lord make us thankfu’, master,’ says I; ‘are you there?’
“‘Where else would you have me be at this hour of the night, old
blockhead?’ says he.
“‘In another hame than this, master,’ says I; ‘but I fear it is nae
good ane, that ye are sae soon tired o’t.’
“‘A d—d bad one, I assure you,’ says he.
 “‘Ay, but master,’ says I, ‘ye hae muckle reason to be thankfu’ that
ye are as ye are.’
“‘In what respect, dotard?’ says he.
“‘That ye hae liberty to come out o’t a start now and then to get the
air,’ says I; and oh, my heart was sair for him when I thought o’ his
state! And though I was thankfu’ that I was as I was, my heart and
flesh began to fail me, at thinking of my speaking face to face wi’ a
being frae the unhappy place. But out he breaks again wi’ a great
round o’ swearing, about the mare being ill-keepit; and he ordered
me to cast my coat and curry her weel, for he had a lang journey to
take on her the morn.
“‘You take a journey on her!’ says I; ‘I doubt my new master will
dispute that privilege wi’ you, for he rides her himsel the morn.’
“‘He ride her!’ cried the angry spirit; and then he burst out into a
lang string of imprecations, fearsome to hear, against you, sir; and
then added, ‘Soon, soon, shall he be levelled with the dust!—the dog!
the parricide! First to betray my child, and then to put down myself!
But he shall not escape—he shall not escape!’ he cried with such a
hellish growl that I fainted, and heard no more.”
“Weel, that beats the world,” exclaimed the smith. “I wad hae
thought the mare wad hae luppen ower yird and stane, or fa’en down
dead wi’ fright.”
“Na, na,” said John, “in place o’ that, whenever she heard him fa’ a
swearing, she was sae glad that she fell a nichering.”
“Na, but that beats the hale world a’ thegither!” quoth the smith.
“Then it has been nae ghaist ava, ye may depend on that.”
“I little wat what it was,” replied John, “but it was a being in nae
gude or happy state o’ mind, and is a warning to us how muckle
reason we hae to be thankfu’ that we are as we are.”
The doctor pretended to laugh at the absurdity of John’s narration,
but it was with a ghastly and doubtful expression of countenance, as
though he thought the story far too ridiculous for any clodpoll to
have contrived out of his own head; and forthwith he dismissed the
two dealers in the marvellous, with very little ceremony, the one
protesting that the thing beat the world, and the other that they had
both reason to be thankful that they were as they were.
 Next morning the villagers, small and great, were assembled at an
early hour to witness the lifting of the body of the late laird, and,
headed by the established and dissenting clergymen, and two
surgeons, they proceeded to the tomb, and soon extracted the
splendid coffin, which they opened with all due caution and
ceremony. But instead of the murdered body of their late benefactor,
which they expected in good earnest to find, there was nothing in the
coffin but a layer of gravel, of about the weight of a corpulent man.
The clamour against the new laird then rose all at once into a
tumult that it was impossible to check, every one declaring that he
had not only murdered their benefactor, but, for fear of discovery,
had raised the body, and given, or rather sold it, for dissection. The
thing was not to be tolerated; so the mob proceeded in a body to
Wineholm Place, to take out their poor deluded lady, and burn the
doctor and his basely acquired habitation to ashes. It was not till the
multitude had surrounded the house that the ministers and two or
three other gentlemen could stay them, which they only did by
assuring the mob that they would bring out the doctor before their
eyes, and deliver him up to justice. This pacified the throng; but on
inquiry at the hall, it was found that the doctor had gone off early
that morning, so that nothing further could be done for the present.
But the coffin, filled with gravel, was laid up in the aisle, and kept
open for inspection.
Nothing could now exceed the consternation of the simple villagers
of Wineholm at these dark and mysterious events. Business, labour,
and employment of every sort, were at a stand, and the people
hurried about to one another’s houses, and mingled their conjectures
together in one heterogeneous mass. The smith put his hand to his
bellows, but forgot to blow till the fire went out; the weaver leaned on
his loom, and listened to the legend of the ghastly tailor. The team
stood in mid-furrow, and the thrasher agape over his flail; and even
the dominie was heard to declare that the geometrical series of
events was increasing by no common ratio, and therefore ought to be
calculated rather arithmetically than by logarithms; and John
Broadcast saw more and more reason for being thankfu’ that he was
as he was, and neither a stock, nor a stone, nor a brute beast.
Every new thing that happened was more extraordinary than the
last; and the most puzzling of all was the circumstance of the late
laird’s mare, saddle, bridle, and all, being off before daylight next
morning; so that Dr Davington was obliged to have recourse to his
own, on which he was seen posting away on the road towards
Edinburgh. It was thus but too obvious that the late laird had ridden
off on his favourite mare,—but whither, none of the sages of
Wineholm could divine. But their souls grew chill as an iceberg, and
their very frames rigid, at the thought of a spirit riding away on a
brute beast to the place appointed for wicked men. And had not John
Broadcast reason to be thankfu’ that he was as he was?
However, the outcry of the community became so outrageous of
murder and foul play, in so many ways, that the officers of justice
were compelled to take note of it; and accordingly the sheriff-
substitute, the sheriff-clerk, the fiscal, and two assistants, came in
two chaises to Wineholm to take a precognition; and there a court
was held which lasted the whole day, at which Mrs Davington, the
late laird’s only daughter, all the servants, and a great number of the
villagers, were examined on oath. It appeared from the evidence that
Dr Davington had come to the village and set up as a surgeon; that he
had used every endeavour to be employed in the laird’s family in
vain, as the latter detested him; that he, however, found means of
inducing his only daughter to elope with him, which put the laird
quite beside himself, and from thenceforward he became drowned in
dissipation; that such, however, was his affection for his daughter,
that he caused her to live with him, but would never suffer the doctor
to enter his door; that it was, nevertheless, quite customary for the
doctor to be sent for to his lady’s chamber, particularly when her
father was in his cups; and that on a certain night, when the laird had
had company, and was so overcome that he could not rise from his
chair, he had died suddenly of apoplexy; and that no other skill was
sent for, or near him, but this his detested son-in-law, whom he had
by will disinherited, though the legal term for rendering that will
competent had not expired. The body was coffined the second day
after death, and locked up in a low room in one of the wings of the
building; and nothing farther could be elicited. The doctor was
missing, and it was whispered that he had absconded; indeed it was
evident, and the sheriff acknowledged that, according to the evidence
taken, the matter had a very suspicious aspect, although there was no
direct proof against the doctor. It was proved that he had attempted
to bleed the patient, but had not succeeded, and that at that time the
old laird was black in the face.
When it began to wear nigh night, and nothing further could be
learned, the sheriff-clerk, a quiet considerate gentleman, asked why
they had not examined the wright who had made the coffin, and also
placed the body in it. The thing had not been thought of; but he was
found in court, and instantly put into the witness-box, and examined
on oath. His name was James Sanderson, a little, stout-made,
shrewd-looking man, with a very peculiar squint. He was examined
thus by the procurator-fiscal:—
“Were you long acquainted with the late Laird of Wineholm,
James?”
“Yes, ever since I left my apprenticeship; for, I suppose, about
nineteen years.”
“Was he very much given to drinking of late?”
“I could not say; he took his glass geyan heartily.”
“Did you ever drink with him.”
“O yes, mony a time.”
“You must have seen him very drunk, then? Did you ever see him
so drunk, for instance, that he could not rise?”
“Never; for long afore that, I could not have kenned whether he
was sitting or standing.”
“Were you present at the corpse-chesting?”
“Yes, I was.”
“And were you certain the body was then deposited in the coffin?”
“Yes; quite certain.”
“Did you screw down the coffin lid firmly then, as you do others of
the same make?”
“No, I did not.”
“What were your reasons for that?”
“They were no reasons of mine; I did what I was ordered. There
were private reasons, which I then wist not of. But, gentlemen, there
are some things connected with this affair, which I am bound in
honour not to reveal. I hope you will not compel me to divulge them
at present.”
 “You are bound by a solemn oath, James, the highest of all
obligations; and, for the sake of justice, you must tell everything you
know; and it would be better if you would just tell your tale
straightforward, without the interruption of question and answer.”
“Well, then, since it must be so:—That day, at the chesting, the
doctor took me aside and said to me, ‘James Sanderson, it will be
necessary that something be put into the coffin to prevent any
unpleasant odour before the funeral; for owing to the corpulence,
and the inflamed state of the body by apoplexy, there will be great
danger of this.’
“‘Very well, sir,’ says I; ‘what shall I bring?’
“‘You had better only screw down the lid lightly at present, then,’
said he; ‘and if you could bring a bucketful of quicklime a little while
hence, and pour it over the body, especially over the face, it is a very
good thing, an excellent thing, for preventing any deleterious effluvia
from escaping.’
“‘Very well, sir,’ said I; and so I followed his directions. I procured
the lime; and as I was to come privately in the evening to deposit it in
the coffin, in company with the doctor alone, I was putting off the
time in my workshop, polishing some trifle, and thinking to myself
that I could not find in my heart to choke up my old friend with
quicklime, even after he was dead, when, to my unspeakable horror,
who should enter my workshop but the identical laird himself,
dressed in his dead-clothes in the very same manner in which I had
seen him laid in the coffin, but apparently all streaming in blood to
the feet. I fell back over against a cart-wheel, and was going to call
out, but could not; and as he stood straight in the door, there was no
means of escape. At length the apparition spoke to me in a hoarse
trembling voice, and it said to me, ‘Jamie Sanderson! O, Jamie
Sanderson! I have been forced to appear to you in a d—d frightful
guise!’ These were the very first words it spoke, and they were far
from being a lie; but I halfflins thought to mysel that a being in such
circumstances might have spoken with a little more caution and
decency. I could make no answer, for my tongue refused all attempts
at articulation, and my lips would not come together; and all that I
could do was to lie back against my new cart-wheel, and hold up my
hands as a kind of defence. The ghastly and blood-stained
apparition, advancing a step or two, held up both its hands, flying
with dead ruffles, and cried to me in a still more frightful voice, ‘Oh,
my faithful old friend, I have been murdered! I am a murdered man,
Jamie Sanderson! And if you do not assist me in bringing upon the
wretch due retribution, dire will be your punishment in the other
world.’
“This is sheer raving, James,” said the sheriff, interrupting him.
“These words can be nothing but the ravings of a disturbed and
heated imagination. I entreat you to recollect that you have appealed
to the Great Judge of heaven and earth for the truth of what you
assert here, and to answer accordingly.”
“I know what I am saying, my Lord Sheriff,” said Sanderson; “and
I am telling naething but the plain truth, as nearly as my state of
mind at the time permits me to recollect. The appalling figure
approached still nearer and nearer to me, breathing threatenings if I
would not rise and fly to his assistance, and swearing like a sergeant
of dragoons at both the doctor and myself. At length it came so close
to me that I had no other shift but to hold up both feet and hands to
shield me, as I had seen herons do when knocked down by a
goshawk, and I cried out; but even my voice failed, so that I only
cried like one through his sleep.”
“‘What the d—l are you lying gaping and braying at there?’ said he,
seizing me by the wrist and dragging me after him. ‘Do you not see
the plight I am in, and why won’t you fly to succour me?’
“I now felt, to my great relief, that this terrific apparition was a
being of flesh, blood, and bones like myself;—that, in short, it was
indeed my kind old friend the laird popped out of his open coffin,
and come over to pay me an evening visit, but certainly in such a
guise as earthly visit was never paid. I soon gathered up my scattered
senses, took my old friend into my room, bathed him all over, and
washed him well with lukewarm water; then put him into a warm
bed, gave him a glass or two of hot punch, and he came round
amazingly. He caused me to survey his neck a hundred times, I am
sure; and I had no doubt he had been strangled, for there was a
purple ring round it, which in some places was black, and a little
swollen; his voice creaked like a door-hinge, and his features were
still distorted. He swore terribly at both the doctor and myself; but
nothing put him half so mad as the idea of the quicklime being
poured over him, and particularly over his face. I am mistaken if that
experiment does not serve him for a theme of execration as long as
he lives.”
“So he is alive, then, you say?” asked the fiscal.
“O yes, sir, alive, and tolerably well, considering. We two have had
several bottles together in my quiet room; for I have still kept him
concealed, to see what the doctor would do next. He is in terror for
him, somehow, until sixty days be over from some date that he talks
of, and seems assured that the dog will have his life by hook or crook,
unless he can bring him to the gallows betimes, and he is absent on
that business to-day. One night lately, when fully half seas over, he
set off to the schoolhouse, and frightened the dominie; and last night
he went up to the stable, and gave old Broadcast a hearing for not
keeping his mare well enough.
“It appears that some shaking motion in the coffining of the laird
had brought him back to himself, after bleeding abundantly both at
mouth and nose; that he was on his feet ere he knew how he had
been disposed of, and was quite shocked at seeing the open coffin on
the bed, and himself dressed in his grave-clothes, and all in one bath
of blood. He flew to the door, but it was locked outside; he rapped
furiously for something to drink, but the room was far removed from
any inhabited part of the house, and none regarded; so he had
nothing for it but to open the window, and come through the garden
and the back lane leading to my workshop. And as I had got orders to
bring a bucketful of quicklime, I went over in the forenight with a
bucketful of heavy gravel, as much as I could carry, and a little white
lime sprinkled on the top of it; and being let in by the doctor, I
deposited it in the coffin, screwed down the lid, and left it. The
funeral followed in due course, the whole of which the laird viewed
from my window, and gave the doctor a hearty day’s cursing for
daring to support his head and lay it in the grave. And this,
gentlemen, is the substance of what I know concerning this
enormous deed, which is, I think, quite sufficient. The laird bound
me to secrecy until such time as he could bring matters to a proper
bearing for securing the doctor; but as you have forced it from me,
you must stand my surety, and answer the charges against me.”
The laird arrived that night with proper authority, and a number of
officers, to have the doctor, his son-in-law, taken into custody; but
the bird had flown; and from that day forth he was never seen, so as
to be recognised, in Scotland. The laird lived many years after that;
and though the thoughts of the quicklime made him drink a great
deal, yet from that time he never suffered himself to get quite drunk,
lest some one might take it into his head to hang him, and he not
know anything about it. The dominie acknowledged that it was as
impracticable to calculate what might happen in human affairs as to
square the circle, which could only be effected by knowing the ratio
of the circumference to the radius. For shoeing horses, vending news,
and awarding proper punishments, the smith to this day just beats
the world. And old John Broadcast is as thankfu’ to heaven as ever
that things are as they are.
 AN INCIDENT IN THE GREAT MORAY
FLOODS OF 1829.

By Sir Thomas Dick Lauder.

The flood, both in the Spey and its tributary burn, was terrible at
the village of Charlestown of Aberlour. On the 3d of August, Charles
Cruickshanks, the innkeeper, had a party of friends in his house.
There was no inebriety, but there was a fiddle; and what Scotsman is
he who does not know that the well-jerked strains of a lively
strathspey have a potent spell in them that goes beyond even the
witchery of the bowl? On one who daily inhales the breezes from the
musical stream that gives name to the measure, the influence is
powerful, and it was that day felt by Cruickshanks with a more than
ordinary degree of excitement. He was joyous to a pitch that made
his wife grave. Mrs Cruickshanks was deeply affected by her
husband’s jollity. “Surely my goodman is daft the day,” said she
gravely; “I ne’er saw him dance at sic a rate. Lord grant that he binna
fey!”[12]
12. “‘I think,’ said the old gardener to one of the maids, ‘the gauger’s fie’—by
which word the common people express those violent spirits, which they think a
presage of death.”—Guy Mannering.
When the river began to rise rapidly in the evening, Cruickshanks,
who had a quantity of wood lying near the mouth of the burn, asked
two of his neighbours to go and assist him in dragging it out of the
water. They readily complied, and Cruickshanks getting on the loose
raft of wood, they followed him, and did what they could in pushing
and hauling the pieces of timber ashore, till the stream increased so
much, that, with one voice, they declared they would stay no longer,
and, making a desperate effort, they plunged over-head, and reached
the land with the greatest difficulty. They then tried all their
eloquence to persuade Cruickshanks to come away, but he was a bold
and experienced floater, and laughed at their fears; nay, so utterly
reckless was he, that having now diminished the crazy ill-put-
together raft he stood on, till it consisted of a few spars only, he
employed himself in trying to catch at and save some haycocks
belonging to the clergyman, which were floating past him. But while
his attention was so engaged, the flood was rapidly increasing, till, at
last, even his dauntless heart became appalled at its magnitude and
fury. “A horse! a horse!” he loudly and anxiously exclaimed; “run for
one of the minister’s horses, and ride in with a rope, else I must go
with the stream.” He was quickly obeyed, but ere a horse arrived, the
flood had rendered it impossible to approach him.
Seeing that he must abandon all hope of help in that way,
Cruickshanks was now seen as if summoning up all his resolution
and presence of mind to make the perilous attempt of dashing
through the raging current, with his frail and imperfect raft.
Grasping more firmly the iron-shod pole he held in his hand—called
in floater’s language a sting—he pushed resolutely into it; but he had
hardly done so when the violence of the water wrenched from his
hold that which was all he had to depend on. A shriek burst from his
friends, as they beheld the wretched raft dart off with him down the
stream, like an arrow freed from the bowstring. But the mind of
Cruickshanks was no common one to quail before the first approach
of danger. He poised himself, and stood balanced, with
determination and self-command in his eye, and no sound of fear, or
of complaint, was heard to come from him.
At the point where the burn met the river, in the ordinary state of
both, there grew some trees, now surrounded by deep and strong
currents, and far from the land. The raft took a direction towards one
of these, and seeing the wide and tumultuous waters of the Spey
before him, in which there was no hope that his loosely-connected
logs could stick one moment together, he coolly prepared himself,
and, collecting all his force into one well-timed and well-directed
effort, he sprang, caught a tree, and clung among its boughs, whilst
the frail raft, hurried away from under his foot, was dashed into
fragments, and scattered on the bosom of the waves. A shout of joy
arose from his anxious friends, for they now deemed him safe; but he
uttered no shout in return. Every nerve was strained to procure help.
“A boat!” was the general cry, and some ran this way, and some that,
to endeavour to procure one. It was now between seven and eight
o’clock in the evening. A boat was speedily obtained, and though no
one was very expert in its use, it was quickly manned by people eager
to save Cruickshanks from his perilous situation. The current was too
terrible about the tree to admit of their nearing it, so as to take him
directly into the boat; but their object was to row through the
smoother water, to such a distance as might enable them to throw a
rope to him, by which means they hoped to drag him to the boat.
Frequently did they attempt this, and as frequently were they foiled,
even by that which was considered as the gentler part of the stream,
for it hurried them past the point whence they wished to make the
cast of their rope, and compelled them to row up again by the side, to
start on each fresh adventure.
Often were they carried so much in the direction of the tree as to
be compelled to exert all their strength to pull themselves away from
him they would have saved, that they might avoid the vortex that
would have caught and swept them to destruction. And often was
poor Cruickshanks tantalized with the approach of help, which came
but to add to the other miseries of his situation that of the bitterest
disappointment. Yet he bore all calmly. In the transient glimpses
they had of him, as they were driven past him, they saw no blenching
on his dauntless countenance—they heard no reproach, no
complaint, no sound, but an occasional short exclamation of
encouragement to persevere in their friendly endeavours. But the
evening wore on, and still they were unsuccessful. It seemed to them
that something more than mere natural causes was operating against
them. “His hour is come!” said they, as they regarded one another
with looks of awe; “our struggles are vain.” The courage and the hope
which had hitherto supported them began to fail, and the descending
shades of night extinguished the last feeble sparks of both, and put
an end to their endeavours.
Fancy alone can picture the horrors that must have crept on the
unfortunate man, as, amidst the impenetrable darkness which now
prevailed, he became aware of the continued increase of the flood
that roared around him, by its gradual advance towards his feet,
whilst the rain and the tempest continued to beat more and more
dreadfully upon him. That these were long ineffectual in shaking his
collected mind, we know from the fact, afterwards ascertained, that
he actually wound up his watch while in this dreadful situation. But,
hearing no more the occasional passing exclamations of those who
had been hitherto trying to succour him, he began to shout for help
in a voice that became every moment more long-drawn and piteous,
as, between the gusts of the tempest, and borne over the thunder of
the waters, it fell from time to time on the ears of his clustered
friends, and rent the heart of his distracted wife. Ever and anon it
came, and hoarser than before, and there was an occasional wildness
in its note, and now and then a strange and clamorous repetition for
a time, as if despair had inspired him with an unnatural energy; but
the shouts became gradually shorter,—less audible and less frequent,
—till at last their eagerly listening ears could catch them no longer.
“Is he gone?” was the half-whispered question they put to one
another; and the smothered responses that were muttered around
but too plainly told how much the fears of all were in unison.
“What was that?” cried his wife in a delirious scream; “that was his
whistle I heard!” She said truly. A shrill whistle, such as that which is
given with the fingers in the mouth, rose again over the loud din of
the deluge and the yelling of the storm. He was not yet gone. His
voice was but cracked by his frequent exertions to make it heard, and
he had now resorted to an easier mode of transmitting to his friends
the certainty of his safety. For some time his unhappy wife drew
hope from such considerations, but his whistles, as they came more
loud and prolonged, pierced the ears of his foreboding friends like
the ill-omened cry of some warning spirit; and it may be matter of
question whether all believed that the sounds they heard were really
mortal. Still they came louder and clearer for a brief space; but at last
they were heard no more, save in his frantic wife’s fancy, who
continued to start, as if she still heard them, and to wander about,
and to listen, when all but herself were satisfied that she could never
hear them again.
Wet and weary, and shivering with cold, was this miserable
woman, when the tardy dawn of morning beheld her straining her
eye-balls through the imperfect light, towards the trees where
Cruickshanks had been last seen. There was something there that
looked like the figure of a man, and on that her eyes fixed. But those
around her saw, alas! too well, that what she fondly supposed to be
her husband was but a bunch of wreck gathered by the flood into one
of the trees,—for the one to which he clung had been swept away.
The body of poor Cruickshanks was found in the afternoon of next
day, on the Haugh of Dandaleith, some four or five miles below. As it
had ever been his uniform practice to wind up his watch at night, and
as it was discovered to be nearly full wound when it was taken from
his pocket, the fact of his having had self-possession enough to obey
his usual custom, under circumstances so terrible, is as
unquestionable as it is wonderful. It had stopped at a quarter of an
hour past eleven o’clock, which would seem to fix that as the fatal
moment when the tree was rent away; for when that happened, his
struggles amidst the raging waves of the Spey must have been few
and short.
When the men, who had so unsuccessfully attempted to save him,
were talking over the matter, and arguing that no human help could
have availed him,—
“I’m thinkin’ I could hae ta’en him out,” said a voice in the circle.
All eyes were turned towards the speaker, and a general expression
of contempt followed; for it was a boy of the name of Rainey, a
reputed idiot, from the foot of Benrinnes, who spoke.
“You!” cried a dozen voices at once; “what would you have done,
you wise man?”
“I wud hae tied an empty anker-cask to the end o’ a lang, lang tow,
an’ I wud hae floated it aff frae near aboot whaur the raft was ta’en
first awa; an’ syne, ye see, as the stream teuk the raft till the tree,
maybe she wud hae ta’en the cask there too; an’ if Charlie
Cruickshanks had ance gotten a haud o’ this rope——”
He would have finished, but his auditors were gone: they had
silently slunk away in different directions, one man alone having
muttered, as he went, something about “wisdom coming out of the
mouth of fools.”
 CHARLIE GRAHAM, THE TINKER.

By George Penny.

The notorious Charlie Graham belonged to a gang of tinkers, who

had for a long time travelled through the country, and whose
headquarters were at Lochgelly, in Fife. They were to be found at all
markets, selling their horn spoons, which was their ostensible
occupation. But there was a great deal of business done in the
pickpocket line, and other branches of the thieving art. About Charlie
there were some remarkable traits of generosity. In the midst of all
the crimes he committed, he was never known to hurt a poor man,
but often out of his plunder helped those in a strait. His father was in
the same line, and was long at the head of the gang; but being
afterwards imprisoned for theft, housebreaking, &c., he was
banished the county, banished Scotland, and publicly whipped. On
one occasion he was banished, with certification that if he returned,
he was to be publicly whipped the first market-day, and thereafter to
be banished. Old Charlie was not long away when he returned, and
was apprehended and conveyed to Perth jail. A vacancy having
occurred in the office of executioner, the first market-day was
allowed to pass without inflicting the sentence, upon which Charlie
entered a protest, and was liberated. In various ways he eluded
justice,—sometimes by breaking the prison, and sometimes for want
of evidence. The last time he was brought in, he was met by an old
acquaintance, who asked, “What is the matter now?” to which old
Charlie replied, “Oh, just the auld thing, and nae proof;” which
saying has since become a proverb. But this time they did find proof,
and he was again publicly whipped, and sent out of the country. One
of his daughters, Meg Graham, who had been bred from her infancy
in the same way, was every now and then apprehended for some
petty theft. Indeed, she was so often in jail, that she got twenty-eight
dinners from old John Rutherford, the writer, who gave the
prisoners in the jail a dinner every Christmas. Meg, in her young
days, was reckoned one of the first beauties of the time; but she was a
wild one. She had been whipped and pilloried, but still the root of the
matter remained.
Young Charlie was a man of uncommon strength and size, being
about six feet high, and stout in proportion. His wrist was as thick as
that of two ordinary men; he had long been the terror of the country,
and attended all markets at the head of his gang, where they were
sure to kick up a row among themselves. Two of their women would
commence a battle-royal in the midst of the throng, scratch and tear
one another’s caps, until a mob was assembled, when the rest were
very busy in picking pockets. In this way they were frequently very
successful.
At a market to the west of Crieff a farmer got his pocket-book
taken from him. It being ascertained that Charlie Graham and his
gang were in the market,—who were well known to several of the
respectable farmers, who frequently lodged them on their way to the
country,—it was proposed to get Charlie and give him a glass, and tell
him the story. Charlie accepted the invitation; and during the
circulation of the glass, one of the company introduced the subject,
lamenting the poor man’s loss in such a feeling way, that the right
chord was struck, and Charlie’s generosity roused. An appeal was
made to him to lend the poor man such a sum, as his credit was at
stake. Charlie said they had done nothing that day, but if anything
cast up, he would see what could be done. During this conversation
another company came into the room; amongst whom was a man
with a greatcoat, a Highland bonnet, and a large drover whip. After
being seated, this personage was recognised as belonging to the gang,
and they were invited to drink with them, whilst the story of the
robbery was repeated. On this Charlie asked his friend if he could
lend him forty pounds to give to the poor man, and he would repay
him in a few days. The man replied that he had forty pounds which
he was going to pay away; but if it was to favour a friend, he would
put off his business and help him; when, to their astonishment, the
identical notes which the man had lost were tossed to him; and
Charlie said that that would relieve him in the meantime, and he
could repay him when convenient. It was evident that Charlie smelt a
rat, and took this method to get off honourably. Of course, the forty
pounds were never sought after.
Charlie was one day lodged with a poor widow, who had a few
acres of ground, and kept a public-house. She complained to him
that she was unable to raise her rent, that the factor was coming that
night for payment, and that she was considerably deficient. Charlie
gave her what made it up, and in the evening went out of the way,
after learning at what time the factor would be there. The factor
came, received payment, and returned home; but on the way he was
met by Charlie, who eased him of his cash, and returned the rent to
the poor widow.
The Rev. Mr Graham of Fossoway came one day to Perth to
discount some bills in the Bank of Scotland. Having got his bills
cashed, his spirits rose to blood-heat, and a hearty glass was given to
his friends, until the parson got a little muddy. His friends, loth to
leave him in that state, hired a horse each to convey him home. It
was dark and late when they set out, and by the time they reached
Damhead, where they put up their horses, it was morning. The house
was re-building at the time, and the family living in the barn when
the parson and his friends were introduced. Here they found Charlie
and some of his friends over a bowl, of which the minister was
cordially invited to partake. His companions also joined, and kept it
up with great glee for some time—the minister singing his song, and
Charlie getting very big. One of the friends, knowing how the land
lay, was very anxious to be off, for fear of the minister’s money, and
ordered out the horses; but to this Charlie would by no means
consent. This alarmed the friends still more; as for the minister, he
was now beyond all fear. However, in a short time a number of men
came in and called for drink, and then Charlie, after the glass had
gone round, said he thought it was time for the minister to get home,
and went out to see them on their horses; when he told them he had
detained them till the return of these men, who, if they had met
them, might have proved dangerous neighbours; but now they could
go home in safety.
He was one day on his way to Auchterarder market, when he met a
farmer going from home, in whose barn he had frequently lodged,
when Charlie told him he was to lodge with him that night. The