Hoaxing The Times.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 299, 16 May 1889, Page 4

Hoaxing The Times.

A very curious story has been unearthed at the British Museum, showing how The Times not far from a century since was imposed upon by a forgery which caused much excitement at the period. It appears that on Saturday, the 13th of February, 1796, it published, as coming from the columns of L’Eclair, a Paris journal which then enjoyed the reputation of being usually well-informed, the text, in Erench, of a treaty of peace alleged to have been entered into between the French Republic and the Emperor of Austria. The news was so good and so unexpected that all the Funds rose at a bound, and the Stock Exchange temporarily rejoiced. This was despite the fact that the previous evening, in the House of Commons, Mr (afterwards the celebrated Lord) Grey had called the attention of Pitt the younger to- the fact that copies of the L’Eclair were in circulation that day containing striking news, and that the Prime Minister had replied that he knew nothing whatever about the matter, and that he doubted its authenticity, because the French used in the suppose,! treaty was more than dubious. It was, in fact, as grotesquely bad as Piggott’s spelling; but The Times, then as non", was confident in the integrity of its agents, and told Mr Pitt on that eventful Saturday that ‘ all wo can say is that the thing came to us in the regular way from Ramsgate in the name of our Dover correspondent, and that it appears to us perfectly regular.’ But by the Monday it began to recognise that something was wrong, and the committee of the Stock Exchange took the matter up and offered £5OO to be put on the track of the •forgers ; for by that time it had been found that forgery had been at work > seme Jews in the city of London hav-J ing, for speculativopurposes, fabricated the whole number of L’Eclair in question, and circulated it to the various papers and prominent persons in the shape best calculated to deceive.”