PRESIDIOS AT HOME AND ABROAD

The Spanish "presidios" or penal establishments for offenders sentenced to long terms are the counterpart of the English convict prisons. They are of two classes, those at home in provincial capitals or in fortresses and strongholds, and those abroad installed in North Africa, as the alternative or substitute for the penal colonies beyond the sea established by Italy and France. Home presidios are at Burgos, Cartagena, Granada, Ocana, Santona, Valladolid and Saragossa. There are two at Valencia, one at Tarragona and two more at AlcalÁ de Henares. Of the foregoing that of Cartagena was especially constructed to meet the needs of the arsenal and dockyard and is spoken of as deplorably deficient by those who visited it. Four hundred convicts were lodged miserably in one dormitory; their bedding consisted of a rough mattress and one brown rug; clothing was issued only every two years; the dietaries were supplied by a thievish contractor who supplied a soup consisting of beans boiled in water, abstracting the ration of oil and bacon. A presidio of ancient date was installed in the arsenal of La Carraca near Cadiz, a survival really of the galera or galleys planted on shore when human motive power ceased to be used in propelling warships.

A terrible story is preserved of the cruelties inflicted on a number of these presidiarios employed to make the road between San Lucar de Barrameda and Puerto Santa Maria. Their labour was leased to an inhuman contractor who worked them literally to death. They were half-starved, over-burthened with chains and continually flogged so that within one year half their whole number of one thousand had disappeared; they had died "of privation, of blows, hunger, cold, insufficient clothing and continuous neglect." The contractor cleared a large profit, but lost it and died in extreme poverty after having been arraigned and tried for his life as a murderer.

The presidio of Valladolid was also condemned for the severity of its rÉgime. The climate alternated between great summer heat and extreme cold in winter, but the convicts worked in the quarries in all weathers. The death record rose in this prison to such a high figure that a third of the average total population of three thousand perished within eighteen months. The general average of the presidios was low but as a rule the death rate was not high. Even when twenty per cent. of males and twenty-five per cent. of the females were sick and hospital accommodation was scarce and imperfect, the deaths did not exceed two and a half per cent. per annum and this included the fatal results of quarrels ending in duels to the death. One of the most serious evils was overcrowding. Official figures give the prison population as about nineteen thousand and the available house-room was for not more than twelve thousand. Salillas puts it at a much lower total, asserting there was barely room for three thousand.

While the prisons of Cuba are not strictly within the scope of this work, one of historic and particular interest may be mentioned. This is Morro Castle, which still guards the Harbour of Havana. It was begun in 1589, soon after the unsuccessful attack on Havana by Drake, and was finished in 1597. In 1862 it was partly destroyed by the English who captured it and remained in possession of the city for a year. The arms of the city, granted by royal decree, were appropriately three castles of silver on a blue field, and a golden key. The castles were La Fuerza, El Morro and La Punta, guarding the harbour.

The ancient fortress has been described as a "great mass of dun coloured rock and tower and battlement and steep, of which the various parts seem to have grown into one another." It contains cells as damp, dark and unwholesome as those in the notorious dungeons of the old world. This is testified to by a California journalist, Charles Michelson, who was arrested by mistake and thrown into a cell in the castle just before the Spanish-American War. Although he was liberated in two days, his experience was not soon forgotten. The cell was an arch of heavy masonry, damp with the moisture of years. The only window was high up in the arch, and there was no furniture—no bed, blanket or chair. He was not without company of a kind, however, for the place was full of cockroaches and rats. When he clambered up and tried to look out of the window, which commands a fine view of the harbour, a guard outside poked at him with a bayonet. The soup brought him was, he said, "strong and scummy, and the can had been so recently emptied of its original contents that there was a film of oil over the top of it." His interpreter, who was arrested at the same time, fared worse, for he was bound and kept in even a fouler cell.

In the days of Spanish sovereignty, many Cuban prisoners were shot and their bodies were hurled from the outer wall of the castle to the sharks of the so-called "shark's nest," forty feet below, on the gulf side.

There are said to be many caverns in the castle through which the rush and noise of the waves make music, but this is probably due to the winds rather than the tides.

Spain maintains several presidios beyond sea, chiefly on the North African coast, and there is one also at Palma de Mallorca, one of the Balearic islands. Those in Africa are Alhucemas, Melilla, PeÑon de Velez de la Gomera, Chaferinas and Ceuta, immediately opposite Gibraltar, which is no doubt the first and original of all Spanish presidios. The expression when first used was taken to convey the meaning of a penal settlement, established within a fortress under military rule and guardianship, with its personnel constantly employed on the fortifications, constructing, repairing and making good wear and tear, and answering, if need be, the call to arms in reinforcement of the regular garrison. The early records of Ceuta prove this. This stronghold, on one side rising out of the sea, with its landward defences ever confronting a fierce hostile power, was exposed at all times to siege and incursion. When the Moorish warriors became too bold the Spanish general sallied forth to beat up their quarters, destroy their batteries and drive them back into the mountains. Working parties of presidiarios, armed, accompanied the troops and did excellent service, eager, as the old chronicler puts it, to clear their characters by their heroism, "always supposing that blood may wash out crime."

Ceuta was a type of the military colony beyond sea, held by a strong garrison against warlike natives who resisted the invasion and would have driven out the intruders. The settlement was secured by continual fortification in which the abundant penal labour was constantly employed. Its social conditions were precisely similar to those which obtained in the early days of Australian transportation and such as prevail to-day in the French penal colony of New Caledonia. The population is made up of two principal classes, bond and free. The first are convicts serving their sentences and the second the officials who guard them. Ordinary colonists have not settled to any large extent in these North African possessions. A few traders and agriculturists have come seeking such fortune as offers and the number of residents is increased by released convicts, the counterpart of the emancipist class in the Antipodes, who remain with the prospect of earning a livelihood honestly, instead of lapsing into evil courses on their return to the mother country.

Ceuta is essentially a convict city, not exactly founded by penal labour but enlarged and improved by it and served by it in all the needs of daily domestic life. The first period of close confinement on arrival is comparatively brief and is spent in the prison proper outside the city at hard labour in association on the fortifications, in the workshops and quarries. In the second period the convicts are permitted to enter the city and are employed under supervision in warehouses, offices and in water carrying. In the third period, commonly called from "gun to gun," extending daily from the morning gun fire until the evening, the convicts are allowed to go freely into the city and work there on their own account. The fourth and last, entered when two thirds of the whole sentence has been completed, is called "under conditions," that is to say, in conditional freedom, and the convicts are let out to private employers precisely as they were "assigned" in old Australian days. They may live with their masters, sleep out, and are only obliged to report at the prison once a month for muster. More than a third of the total number are thus employed.

The result is that Ceuta offers the singular spectacle that it is nominally a prison, but the bulk of the prisoners live beyond the walls, quite unguarded and really in the streets forming part of the ordinary population. Convicts are to be met with at every corner, they go in and out through the front doors of houses, no one looks at them in surprise, no one draws aside to let them pass. The situation is described graphically by Salillas. "Who is the coachman on the box? A convict. Who is the man who waits at table? A convict. The cook in the kitchen? A convict. The nursemaid in charge of the children? A convict (male). Are their employers afraid of being robbed or murdered? Not in the least."

Another eye witness[11] writes:—

"Could this happen in any other city in Spain? If the inhabitants found themselves rubbing shoulders with the scum of the earth, with the worst malefactors, with criminals guilty of the most heinous offences, would they have enjoyed one moment's peace? Could they overcome the natural repugnance felt by honest and respectable people for those whom the law has condemned to live apart? The fact is that at Ceuta no one objects. The existing state of things is deemed the most natural thing in the world. It has been too long the rule and it is claimed seriously that no evil consequences have resulted. The utmost confidence is reposed in these ex-criminals whose nature has been seemingly quite changed by relegation to the African presidio. They wash and get up linen without losing more pieces than a first class washerwoman, they wait on the children with the tenderest concern, they perform all sorts of household service, go to market, run messages, polish the floors and the furniture with all the zeal and industry of the best servants in the world. The most cordial relations exist between employers and their convict attendants and cases have been known where the former have carried the latter back to Spain to continue their service. One was a Chinese cook who was excused ten years' supervision to go back with his master."

It is claimed by the champions of Ceuta that

despite the freedom accorded to the convicts their conduct is exemplary. "I can certify," says Relosillas[12] "that during a whole year there were but three or four instances of crime amongst the convicts employed in domestic service." Others however are not so laudatory. An independent witness, DoÑa Concepcion Arenal, has little good to say of the prisons. "In them justice is punished or rather crucified," she wrote, "and with it hygiene, morality, decency, humanity, all, in a word, which every one who is not himself hateful and contemptible, respects. It is impossible to give any idea of the cuartel principal or chief convict barrack in the place. We can only refer to its terrible and revolting demoralisation." Yet she is inclined to contradict herself and argues that the convict when trusted will behave well. His life on the whole is light and easy; he has sufficient food, congenial company, and can better his position by steady industry; he wears no chains, performs no rude or laborious tasks and is driven neither into insubordination nor crime.

The statements just quoted are hardly credible and cannot be reconciled with the reports of others, from personal experience. Mr. Cook, an English evangelist, who has devoted himself to extensive prison visitation, has drawn a dark picture of this ideal penal settlement as he saw it in 1892. At that date general idleness was the rule. Hundreds hung about with no work to do. Criminals with the

worst antecedents were included in the prison population. One had been a bandido or brigand who had been guilty of seven murders; another had four murders to his credit and one assassin was in a totally dark cell, confined hand and foot, condemned to death and daily expecting to be shot. No fewer than one hundred and twelve slept in one large room without more supervision than that exercised by their fellows discharging the functions of warders. Mr. Cook expresses his wonder that they did not break out oftener into rebellion. As a matter of fact and as against the statement given above, outbreaks were not uncommon with fierce attacks upon officers and murderous affrays among the prisoners. Crime and misconduct are certainly not unknown in Ceuta.

A gruesome description was given by a correspondent writing to the London Times in the year 1876. When he visited the citadel prison he found from eight hundred to one thousand convicts lodged there in a wretched condition, clad only in tattered rags, the cast off uniforms of soldiers, generally insufficient for decency. They tottered in and out of the ruinous sheds supposed to shelter them, quarrelled like hyenas over their meagre and repulsive rations, which were always short through the dishonesty of the thieving contractor, and fought to the death with the knives which every one carried. Each shed contained from one to two hundred where they lay like beasts upon the ground. Vermin crept up the wall and dirt abounded on all sides. "No words of mine," said this outspoken eye-witness, "can paint the darkness, the filth, the seething corruption of these dens of convicts, dens into which no streak of sunlight, divine or human, ever finds its way, and where nothing is seen or heard but outrage and cruelty on the one hand, misery and starvation and obscenity on the other." There was a worse place, the "Presidio del Campo," or field prison in which the hard labour gangs[13] employed on the fortifications were housed in still filthier hovels, with less food and more demoralisation. This same correspondent when he enquired his way to the presidio was told by a Spanish officer: "They are not presidios but the haunts of wild beasts and nurseries of thieves." Obviously there is much discrepancy in the various accounts published.

The true state of the case may best be judged by examining and setting forth the conditions prevailing. On the surface the convicts may seem to abstain from serious misconduct, but even this may be doubted from the facts in evidence. "It is a wild beasts' cage," writes one well informed authority. It may be to some extent a cage without bars, or in which the wild beasts are so tamed that they may be allowed to go at large and do but little harm, but

evil instincts are at times in the ascendancy as shown in the quarrels and disorders that occur, but to no greater extent says the apologist than in any of the prisons on the Spanish mainland. It may be that the rÉgime is so mild that the convicts yield willingly to it without a murmur and seldom rise against it. But the very atmosphere of the place is criminal. There may be few prison offences where rules are easy but if serious offences against discipline are but rarely committed within the limits, others against society are constantly prepared for execution beyond. Ceuta is a hot bed of crime, the seed is sown there, nourished and developed to bear baleful fruit afterwards. It is a first class school for the education of thieves, swindlers, coiners, and forgers who graduate and take honours in the open world of evil doing. It is the original home, some say, of the famous fraud, peculiarly Spanish, called the entierro, which still flourishes and draws profit as ever, not from Spain alone, but from far and wide in nearly all civilised countries.

The entierro, or the "burial" literally translated, means an artful and specious proposal to reveal the whereabouts of a buried treasure. It is another form of the well known "confidence trick" or, as the French call it, the "vol À l'americaine," and we cannot but admire the ingenuity and inventiveness so often displayed in its practice, while expressing surprise at the credulity and gullibility of those who are deluded by it. It originates as a rule in a letter addressed from the prison to some prominent person in Spain or elsewhere, for the astute practitioner is well provided with lists of names likely to be useful to him in his business. It is on record that a seizure was made in the presidio of Granada of a whole stock in trade, a great mass of information secretly collected from all parts of the world to serve in carrying out the fraud of the entierro, and with it a number of forms of letters in various European languages. The invitation is marked "very private and confidential" and conveys with extreme caution and mystery the suggestion that for a sufficient consideration the secret hiding place of a very valuable treasure will be confided to the person addressed. Colour is given to the proposal by some plausible but not always probable story on which it is based.

In one case the writer pretended to be a Spanish officer who had received from the hands of Napoleon III himself, when flying to England in September, 1870, a casket of jewels which he was charged to convey to the Countess of Montijo, mother of the Empress Eugenie, in Madrid. The messenger had however become involved in a Carlist or revolutionary movement and was now in prison, but he had succeeded before arrest in burying the jewels in a remote spot so cleverly concealed that he alone possessed the secret. The liberal offer was made to the person addressed of a fourth share of the total value provided he would transmit to the prisoner correspondent through a sure hand, indicated, the sum of three hundred pounds in cash by means of which he could secure release and proceed to unearth the treasure.

Another story is as follows:

One day the regular mail boat brought to Ceuta an Italian ecclesiastic, a high dignitary of the Church, of grave and venerable appearance, who proceeded at once to make a formal call upon the commandant or general commanding for the time being. He was in search of certain information and he more particularly desired to be directed to an address he sought, that of a small house in a retired spot in one of the small little-frequented streets in the hilly town. He carried with him a heavy and rather bulky handbag which when he started from the general's he begged he might leave in his charge on the plea that its contents were valuable.

After the lapse of two or three hours the Monsignor returned with terrified aspect and evidently in the greatest distress of mind. He entreated that a priest might be summoned to whom he might confess, and his wish was forthwith gratified. The moment he had unbosomed himself to his ghostly adviser, he seized his handbag and ran down to the port just in time to catch the return mail boat to Algeciras. The priest who had heard his confession was to be released from the secret confided to him and reveal it to the authorities as soon as the safe arrival of the mail boat at the mainland was signalled across to Ceuta. Then the whole story came out.

Monsignor X was one of the most trusted and confidential chaplains of his Holiness the Pope and he had gone to Ceuta in the interests of an ex-Carlist general who had the misfortune to be detained there as a political prisoner. A sum of money was needed to compass his escape from the presidio and help him to reach in safety the burying place of a vast treasure, to disinter it and apply it to the furtherance of the civil war in progress. This general seems to have satisfied the papal dignitaries of his identity and good faith; his communication was endorsed with plans and statements pointing to the whereabouts of the hidden treasure, and the method by which the money he needed for his enterprise was to be used, was minutely described. He said he was too closely watched to allow any messenger to reach him direct, but he had friends in Ceuta, two titled ladies, near relatives who had been permitted to live in the prison town and to visit him from time to time and who would pass the money to him when it was brought to Ceuta.

Monsignor X landed as we have seen and learned where he was to go, but with commendable caution he hesitated to take his money with him. He would hand it over when he had made the personal acquaintance of the general's aristocratic friends. They did not prove very desirable acquaintances. He found the house he was to visit, was admitted without question, but then the door was shut behind him and he was murderously assailed by half a dozen convicts, knife in hand. He was ordered to give up the money he had brought, and when on searching him it was found missing, he was rifled of everything he carried in his pockets, both his watch and a considerable sum in cash. His life was spared because it was certain that his prolonged absence would lead to a hue and cry, but he was obliged to swear that he would not attempt to leave the house for one clear hour so that the robbers might make good their escape. Moreover he was warned if he gave the alarm he would certainly be assassinated. Hence his desire to pass beyond the Straits of Gibraltar before the outrage became known. When the house was visited it was found empty and unfurnished with not a sign of life on the premises. The most interesting feature in the story is that the swindlers should fly at such high game, but it is founded on undoubted fact. The Carlist insurrection was often used to father the attempt to defraud.

In another case a letter conveyed to the proprietor of a vineyard at Maestrazgo the alluring news that a large sum in gold was hidden on his ground, the accumulated contributions of Carlist supporters in the neighbourhood. The exact position would be revealed and a plan forwarded in exchange for a sum of four thousand dollars in hard cash, which was to be forwarded to Ceuta according to certain precise instructions. The money was sent but no reply came. Days and weeks passed and at last, weary of waiting and a little unhappy, the easily duped victim made up his mind to cross to Ceuta in person and bring his disappointing correspondent to book. The wine grower unhappily landed in the presidio on the day they were baiting a bull in the streets, a game constantly played and with more danger to the passers-by than the players. The bull goaded into a state of fury attacked the new comer and tossed him so that he fell to the ground with both legs broken. The poor man got no plan and no news of his dollars. All he gained was two months in bed lying between life and death.

The writer Relosillas, who filled the place of an inspector or surveyor of works at Ceuta, has given some of his personal experiences in that convict prison.[14] He describes how on one occasion he was present at a free fight among the convicts in the barracks which had been originally a Franciscan convent. He was in his own office at a late hour, hard by, when he heard a terrible uproar in the great dormitory and ran over to exercise his authority and prevent bloodshed. Knives were out and being freely used by combatants ranged on two sides, one lot backing up a friend who had been robbed of a photograph of his sister, the other lot defending the thief, who had stolen the portrait for use in a buried treasure swindle. He had created her a marchioness and intended to forward it as a bait to show his intimacy with the aristocracy and prepare the way for the fraud. The case may be quoted to show how minutely the practitioners in the entierro studied their ground and acquired the means of operating. In all Spanish prisons and notably in Ceuta, cunning convicts are to be found, men of ability and experience, who have travelled far and wide, who are conversant with many languages and well acquainted with prominent people in other countries and the leading facts and particulars of their lives.

A few additional stories of swindles akin to the entierro are of much interest.

A French landowner by name Armand Carron, a resident of a small town in the Department of FinistÈre, received, some time ago, a letter from Ceuta, signed Santiago (or James) Carron. The writer explained that he was a native of FinistÈre where the Frenchman resided; that he was a namesake and a member of the landowner's family, son of a first cousin of his who had left France many years before and settled in Spain with wife and three sons, of whom he, Santiago Carron, now alone survived. This Santiago, the letter went on, had been placed by his father in the military college at Segovia, had served through all the subaltern grades as an artillery officer, had risen to the rank of brigadier and in that capacity had been sent out in command of the district of the Cinco Villas in Cuba, where he had married the daughter of Don Diego Calderon, a wealthy Havana merchant, and the owner of vast sugar plantations. His wife had brought him a dowry of four million reales (£40,000) and had died leaving him a daughter called after her mother, Juanita, now about 17 years old. This girl, the only object of her father's love and care, had been by him sent to Europe and placed for her education at the convent of the Sacre Coeur at Chamartin near Madrid.

His career in the army had been for many years very fortunate and his wedded life in Cuba exceedingly happy. He had been laden with honours by a grateful Government and received many proofs of his country's trust, but lately the officer in charge of the chest of the military district at Cinco Villas had absconded and run away to New York with a sum of two million reales. As he, the brigadier, was answerable for his subaltern's conduct and was not willing to sacrifice one half of his wife's—now his daughter's—fortune to pay for the defaulter, he had been summoned to Spain and then relegated, or sent as a prisoner on parole to the fortress at Ceuta to take his trial before a court martial, which owing to the dilatoriness of all things in Spain might sit till doomsday.

After thus giving an account of himself and his belongings the brigadier proceeded to explain the reasons which induced him to address himself to his unknown French relative. Having suffered much from long exposure to the heat of a tropical climate he felt old before his time, and his hereditary enemy, the gout, had by several sharp twinges made him aware of the precariousness of his tenure of life. He had only that one daughter in the world, the sole heiress of a considerable patrimony who might at any moment be deprived of her natural protector and for whose final education and introduction into society it was his duty to provide. The girl had great natural gifts, had inherited her mother's Creole beauty, and the accounts of her proficiency, given by the nuns at Chamartin were most flattering to his paternal pride. He was anxious to appoint a guardian to his daughter and he could think of no one fitter in every respect for that charge than his only relative, M. Armand Carron.

He (the brigadier) had lately been diligently looking over his father's papers; had found among them very numerous and interesting family documents—ample evidence that a hearty and loving correspondence had for many years been kept up between his father, Vincent Carron, and the father of M. Armand Carron, also called Armand, and he followed up the narrative with frequent allusions to several incidents occurring in the early youth of the two cousins, with descriptions of localities, common acquaintances and the usual joys and sorrows alternating in their domestic circles. Altogether it was a well contrived, plausible story verging so closely upon probability as to avoid shipwreck upon the rock of truth.

M. Armand Carron of FinistÈre did not think it right or expedient to cast doubt on the genuineness of the communication. He answered the brigadier's appeal by calling him "My dear cousin," saying he had a perfect recollection of his father's frequent allusions to Vincent Carron, the cousin who had grown up with him in their own home and only left their native town on arriving at man's estate. After heartily congratulating the brigadier on his conspicuous career which reflected so much lustre on their own name, and condoling with him about the momentary cloud that had now—undeservedly he felt sure—settled upon it, he assured his newly found relative of his sympathy and of his readiness to look upon the brigadier's daughter as his own child, to receive her into the bosom of his family and take that care of her which so precious a jewel as she was described to be, must fully deserve.

So the matter was settled. The correspondence between the two newly found relatives continued for six or seven months and became very affectionate and confidential. The brigadier sent the Frenchman his photograph and that of his daughter, both taken in Havana and bearing the name and trade mark of the artist. The one represented a middle-aged officer of high rank in full uniform and with the Grand Cross of San Hermengeldo on his breast, a fine manly countenance with long grey silky moustache; the other exhibiting the arch, pretty countenance of a brunette in her teens, with smooth bands of raven hair on either side of her low forehead and the shade of a moonlit night in her dark eyes; a bright blooming creature with dimples and pouting lips and a look of humour and frolic and sense in every feature. Together with the photographs came a letter of Juanita Carron to the brigadier, her father, from the convent, and bearing the Chamartin postmark, in which the girl congratulated her father on his discovery of his FinistÈre relative, expressed a firm confidence that her loving father would long be spared to her and concluded that she would for her part, in the worst event, willingly acknowledge her relative as a second father and acquiesce in every arrangement that might be made for her welfare.

Seven months passed and the post one morning brought M. Armand Carron a letter with the Ceuta postmark, but no longer in his cousin's handwriting. The writer who signed himself Don Francisco MuÑoz, parish priest of San Pedro in Ceuta, announced the death of Brigadier Santiago Carron, which had occurred seven days before the date of the letter. He stated that the brigadier, brought to the last extremity by a sudden attack of gout, had been attended, by him, Don Francisco, as priest in his last hours, and been instructed to wind up all his earthly affairs both in Ceuta and in Madrid. He was further empowered to remove the SeÑorita Juanita, the brigadier's daughter, from the Chamartin convent and take charge of her during her journey to FinistÈre where she should be delivered into the hands of her appointed guardian. The priest's letter enclosed the printed obituary handbill announcing the brigadier's decease, according to Spanish custom, the last will and testament of the deceased appointing M. Armand Carron sole executor, guardian and trustee of his only daughter Juanita, and entrusting to him the management of her fortune of one million francs, (£40,000), mentioning the banks in Paris and Amsterdam in which that sum lay in good state securities. The whole document was duly drawn up by a notary, with witnesses' signatures, seals, etc., and even with certificates of the brigadier's burial, the signatures and stamps of the civil and military authorities at Ceuta and those of the governor in command of the place.

At the close of this minute statement the priest expressed his readiness to comply with the brigadier's instructions by travelling to Madrid, receiving the young Juanita from the hands of the Sacre Coeur nuns and continuing with her the journey to FinistÈre, immediately upon hearing from M. Armand Carron that he was prepared to receive his lovely ward. M. Armand Carron answered by return of post that his house and arms were open to welcome his relative's orphan child. Where there came after some time another letter from Don Francisco MuÑoz explaining that the brigadier, although the most methodical and careful of men, had left some trifling debts at Ceuta and there were the doctors' and undertakers' bills to be settled: also the travelling expenses for himself and the young lady which he, the priest, was not able to defray. Besides all this the papers, deeds, books and other portable property left by the brigadier, some of it very valuable, but also bulky—among which were the certificates of the state securities deposited in the French and Dutch banks—which at the express desire of the deceased would have at once to be conveyed to FinistÈre. He, the priest, would have to be responsible for all this, so that, what with the boarding money and fees due to the nuns, and the clothes, linen and other necessaries the young lady might require to fit herself for appearance in the world, an expense would have to be incurred of which it was difficult to calculate the exact amount. The conclusion was that he could not undertake the journey unless M. Armand Carron supplied him with a round sum of money, say four thousand francs, which he could forward in French bank notes and in a registered letter addressed not to him but to a DoÑa Dolores Mazaredo, a pious woman, whom her reduced fortunes had compelled to take service as a washerwoman of the Ceuta state prison.

The reason alleged by the priest for receiving the money in this roundabout way was that as the brigadier had died in debt to the state and the government might suspect that property belonging to the deceased had come into his, the priest's charge and be subject to the law of embargo on the brigadier's effects, it was desirable that every precaution should be taken to disarm suspicion and prevent injury.

The fraud was entirely successful and in due course the letter from FinistÈre enclosing bank notes for four thousand francs was delivered to the washerwoman and from her passed into the hands of the sharpers whose deep laid plan and transcendent inventive powers were thus crowned with full success. M. Armand Carron heard no more of his orphaned relative.

The most astonishing feature in the "Spanish Swindle," as it is commonly and almost universally known, is the extent to which it is practised and in countries far remote from those in which the trick originates. In one case a resident in the Argentine Republic received a letter from Madrid which he communicated to the press stating that he could not conceive how his name and address had become known. But it was clear that the Argentine and many other directories were possessed by the swindler, for similar letters all conveying the usual rosy stories of hidden treasure had come into the country wholesale. The fraudulent agent had long discovered that the credulity and cupidity on which he trades are universal weaknesses and that he is likely to find victims in every civilised part of the world. At another time Germany was inundated with typewritten letters from the Spanish prisoner, and the correspondent cleverly accounted for his use of the machine by stating that he was employed as a convict clerk in the office of the governor of the prison.

An attempt of the same kind was tried on a Swiss gentleman of Geneva, but it failed signally. The swindler in Barcelona thought he had beguiled his correspondent into purchasing certain papers at the price of twelve thousand francs by which a treasure was to be found, and sent a young woman to Geneva to receive the cash. But the Swiss police, having been informed of the transaction, were on the alert, and when she kept her appointment with the proposed dupe she was taken into custody. An individual staying at the same hotel and said to have been in communication with her was also arrested. The emissary denied all complicity in the intended fraud protesting that she had been commissioned by a stranger she met in Barcelona to convey a letter to Geneva and bring back another in return.

The ubiquity of the swindle is proved by the adventures of a certain M. Elked, a restaurateur of Buda-Pest, who was lured into making a journey to Madrid, carrying with him a sum of ten thousand francs in cash. The money was to be used in securing possession of a fortune of three hundred thousand francs, part of which was lying in a trunk deposited in the cloak room of a French railway station and part in the strong room of a Berlin bank. Elked was to get the half in return for his advance. On arrival in Madrid he met the representative of his correspondent and was shown bogus receipts from the railway and bank. To remove all possible doubt it was suggested that telegrams should be sent to the railway station and to the bank and in due course what purported to be replies were brought to Elked by a pretended telegraph messenger. The sham telegrams finally convinced him of the genuineness of the business and he arranged to meet the swindler in a certain cafÉ to hand over the ten thousand francs.

All this time an eye was kept upon Elked by a brother Hungarian named Isray, a commercial traveller, who had come to Madrid by the same train and who on hearing the purpose of the restaurateur's visit had vainly tried to persuade him that the affair was a fraud. Isray followed his infatuated compatriot to the cafÉ in a very low quarter of Madrid and arrived just in time to see three men attempting to hustle Elked into a carriage. He had apparently hesitated to hand over the money at the last moment and the ruffians were attempting to get him away to a spot where he could be conveniently searched and robbed. Isray drew his revolver and fired two or three shots at Elked's assailants, but did not succeed in hitting any one. He contrived however to injure the horse and the struggle ended in the three bandits running away, leaving Elked still in possession of his money. No passers-by offered the Hungarians any assistance during the fight, nor did any police appear on the scene. When Elked subsequently complained to the police authorities they simply laughed at him for displaying so much credulity. The victims of the "Spanish Swindle" are certainly not entitled to much sympathy. Although arrests are occasionally made, the Spanish police have never been able to cope very successfully with the ancient and ever flourishing fraud.

Some of the Spanish prisoner's lies are the crudest and most transparent attempts at fraud, but a few are really very fine works of art. An English country gentleman once received the following letter:

This is the prelude to a really clever and picturesque story of the writer's adventures in Cuba, where, after having been secretary and treasurer to Martinez Campos, he had subsequently been driven by General Weyler to join the insurgents, and was eventually forced to flee the country taking with him his fortune of thirty-seven thousand pounds. Subsequently being summoned to Spain by the illness of his "only daughter child" he deposited the money in a London bank under the form of "security document." After this we are introduced to the old mechanism of this venerable swindle. The deposited note was concealed in a secret drawer of the prisoner's portmanteau. The prisoner had been arrested on his arrival in Spain, but a trusty friend at large was willing to assist him in recovering the money for the benefit of his child, if only the dear relative in England "would advance the necessary funds for expenses." It is possible to imagine that anyone who had never heard of these ingenious frauds might be taken in by such a plausible narrative, but it is difficult to understand such ignorance. A letter was received from the Castle of Montjuich in Barcelona by a man in Dublin, who showed it to several friends in the city explaining the process. It was new to them all, and arrests of persons who had all but succeeded in completing this well-worn confidence trick are constantly made in London. The boldness of these attempts may be seen in the case of the swindlers who despatched three letters identically the same, to three persons who were near neighbours, residing at North Berwick near Edinburgh. The letter dated from Madrid and said:—

The rest of the letter simply contained instructions as to telegraphing an answer to Madrid. The whole was a very stupid and clumsy attempt to deceive, lacking all the emotional appeals, the motherless child, the persecuted political adherent of a failing cause. Worse yet it openly invited co-operation with a bankrupt seeking to defraud his creditors. Nor is there any effort to explain the selection of these three particular persons in the same small town as parties to the fraud, and the only conclusion is that dupes had been found even under such circumstances who were afterward reluctant to reveal their own foolishness.

A more elaborate fraud was perpetrated soon after the fall of Cartagena; the story ran as follows: Two of the well known leaders of the hare-brained republican movement that led to that catastrophe,—General Contreras and SeÑor Galdez,—both deputies of the Constituent Cortes, came as fugitives to England and lodged in the Bank of England a sum amounting to several millions of reales in state securities, obtaining for them of course the regular certificates and receipt from the bank. These two Spanish gentlemen afterwards lived for some time on the continent. General Contreras took up his quarters as a political exile in France and SeÑor Galdez ventured under a disguise into Spain, where he had the misfortune to be recognised, arrested and shut up in the Saladero. The certificates had been left in England in trusty hands, in a trunk belonging to SeÑor Galdez, who from his prison sent directions that the box should be sent by rail to Madrid addressed to a person enjoying his full confidence. This person however had some claim upon SeÑor Galdez for an old debt of six thousand francs or about two hundred and forty pounds and insisted upon payment of this sum before he would either part with the trunk or allow it to be opened and the precious certificates to be taken from it.

The matter required delicate handling, for SeÑor Galdez was a prisoner, General Contreras an exile, both beyond reach, and about the money they had placed in the bank there might lie some mystery into which it was not desirable that enquiry should be made. An easy way of getting at the contents of the trunk could be found if any one would think it worth while to supply two hundred and forty pounds, settle the claims of SeÑor Galdez's creditor, and laying hold of the certificates, convey them to England and withdraw the securities from the bank. A man whose name was given and whose address was in the Calle de la Abada or Rhinoceros Street, Madrid, would undertake to carry through the negotiations if any one would call upon him with the needful two hundred and forty pounds and allow him half an hour to rescue the trunk and deliver the certificates. The worthy Yorkshire squire to whom intimation had been conveyed of the coup there was to be made, looked upon the story as extremely probable. He fancied it was corroborated by a good deal of circumstantial evidence and thought he might venture on the speculation. A professional adviser whom he consulted undertook to do the job for him and carry the two hundred and forty pounds to the Calle de la Abada, taking a revolver with him, as a precaution, and intending to deliver the money in Bank of England notes, the numbers of which should be stopped the moment he found out that any trick was being played on his good faith.

Further enquiries were made, however, before any decided steps were taken, and it was ascertained beyond doubt that SeÑor Galdez was no longer a prisoner, that General Contreras had come back from banishment, that the house in the Calle de la Abada was a notorious haunt of malefactors and den of thieves, and the whole scheme was another instance of the criminal ingenuity of the Spanish swindler.