A V Lamartine

I don’t know whether A V Lamartine was a student of Shakespeare but he seemed to subscribe to Lady Macbeth’s view that the milk of human kindness was a lamentable trait. He devised an ingenious con which preyed on the sympathy and good natures of his victims. What aided his con in America immediately before the Civil War was that whilst news undoubtedly travelled quickly through a town it rarely spread beyond the limits of its jurisdiction. Once the con had worked, he just simply moved on.

Lamartine’s modus operandi was very simple. He would walk into a hotel, like the Chemeketa Hotel in Salem, Oregon in the spring of 1859, and ask for a room. So downcast was his demeanour that the concierge would fear that he would break down into tears there and then. But Lamartine would put on a brave face, check in and take his only piece of luggage, a medical bag, up to the room he had been allocated.

Some hours later Lamartine called for room service but when the bell hop knocked on the door there was no answer. The servant would enter the room and find Lamartine prostrate on the bed, moaning and groaning, requesting assistance and that a priest be called. A bottle of laudanum would be on the bedside table and the bellhop would assume that the unfortunate hotel guest had consumed some in an attempt to end his life.

A doctor would be called and he would note that the 2 ounce bottle of laudanum had been emptied. On further investigation a note would be found which informed the reader that Lamartine was taking his own life because of his dire financial situation and the consequent shame he had brought on his family. Using emetics the doctor would cause Lamartine to vomit and after a few days bed rest the patient would be on the road to recovery or as one Brooklyn newspaper put it, “he was restored with difficulty…”.

News of the poor man’s tragedy would travel quickly round the town and some local worthies and others with kind hearts would rally round and organise a collection to raise funds to ease Lamartine’s financial difficulties or, as the same journal noted, “sympathetic people raised a purse for him.” By the time he had recovered his health, the good folk of Salem had raised the sum of forty dollars, more than enough to fund a ticket out of town for Lamartine and to see him through for a few months. The grateful recipient would offer profuse expressions of gratitude, mixed with intentions of repaying the denizens for their generosity when funds allowed, and he would depart into the sunset, never to be seen again.

Using the same plan, Lamartine worked his way across Ohio, staging Apparent Suicide attempts and raising money here ($25 in Dayton) and there ($40 in Sandusky). He had worked out how much laudanum he needed to take to give a convincing display of an apparent suicide attempt without actually killing himself. He also seemed to know which establishments would be sufficiently concerned about his plight to summon a doctor and the towns where the good citizens were sufficiently good-hearted enough, and suitably ignorant of his ruse, for it to work again.

Lazarus he wasn’t and the fact that we know of his exploits suggests that he was rumbled at some point but, alas, my researches have failed to quite how.

If you enjoyed this, try Fifty Scams and Hoaxes by Martin Fone

https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes/