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A LESSON IN MISTAKEN IDENTITY - Part 1
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One day, in 1896, a woman visited Scotland Yard to lodge a complaint. About a week before, she said, she had answered an advertisement in a newspaper for a housekeeper for an English nobleman. Within a day or two a man appeared at her house and introduced himself as Lord Willoughby de Winton. He interviewed her, described his great country estate in magnificent terms, and intimated that if the lady accepted the position offered, she might in time be elevated above the status of a mere housekeeper.
His lordship must have been a man of persuasion, for before he left he suddenly discovered that he had "forgotten" to bring his wallet, and asked his new housekeeper to lend him a few pounds. The good lady, completely befuddled by her unexpected luck, impetuously handed over to him all the money she had in the house. His lordship accepted with profuse thanks, and wrote her a check to cover the amount. What brought her to Scotland Yard was the baffling fact that when she presented the check at the bank, no one there had ever heard of Lord Willoughby de Winton. Gone was her rapturous vision of the future; gone was his lordship; and worse still, gone were her painfully earned savings. What did Scotland Yard make of it all? A petty swindle of this caliber would probably not have disturbed Scotland Yard very much if it had stopped there. But within the next few days, sixteen other women turned up with the same story. Apparently Lord de Winton was operating in London on an extensive scale. A search was inaugurated, but no clue developed until one day a bobby in Victoria Street was attracted by a woman's cries. "There he is," she screamed. "That's him—Lord Willoughby de Winton!" The man was arrested at once and brought to Scotland Yard. There he was confronted by the seventeen women who had lodged complaints. All but one of them identified him at once, with absolute certainty. He, on the other hand, registered the utmost bewilderment. What was all this about—Lord de Winton? His name was Beck, Adolph Beck, and he had never set eyes on any of these women before in his life. Nevertheless, on the strength of the fact that sixteen women had identified him at sight, the law took its course, and Adolph Beck was sentenced to fourteen years in prison. He served seven years, and then was released. But that is only the first half of the story. Two years after Adolph Beck left prison, another woman visited Scotland Yard and reported herself a victim of the same sort of swindle. The technique was identical: the advertisement, the visit, the forgotten wallet, the worthless check. Scotland Yard sent out an alarm, and soon Adolph Beck was once more in the toils of the law. Once more he protested his innocence.
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