A SWINDLING MISSIONARY.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 331, 5 July 1875, Page 3

A SWINDLING MISSIONARY.

Ihe Maryborough Advertiser writes “Aa ancient looking gentleman in spectacles, white choker, and seedy black, has been paying a visit to this locality recently. He represented himself as a foreign missionary, and visited several claims in the Maryborough district, taking especial note of the Duke and Timor plant in a book which he called his ‘ Daily Record of Travel.’ He visited Mr Brooks Clay’s establishment, and ordered some goods there, giving a cheque in payment, signed with a name somewhat incongruous with missionary effort—the name of Rickards, to wit. Mr Clay’s young man was much impressed with the melodious, sad, and serious voice of the stranger, whose aspect was so clerical, but he did not quite so much like the look of the cheque, and an enquiry at the bank elicited the fact that the drawer was not there known; and so a reference was made to Sergeant Fahey, who has done business with these sort of foreign missionaries often before to day, and who is therefore well acquainted with their habits and customs. The sergeant did not therefore go to Mr Rickards and ask him to allow him to inspect his ‘ Daily Record of Travel’—he went to another book, called the Police Gazette. And he there learned that an ancient-looking gentleman, verj like the missionary in every respect, was sadly wanted at Ballarat, where he called himself a schoolmaster, and had disposed of more than one valueless cheque to Smith and Co.