APPENDIX.

THE GREAT OPIUM FRAUDS.

PERHAPS the first instance on record of wholesale frauds being perpetrated upon the telegraph wires occurred at Bombay, and henceforward the Indian Telegraph will enjoy the unenviable notoriety of having originated this rather novel procedure. Although the frauds to which attention is about to be drawn occurred about five years ago, it is notorious that even at the present moment the system is perpetuated, because somehow or other the native merchants in the bazaars throughout India manage to obtain information of mercantile news long before the recipients of the telegrams are informed themselves. In the evidence before the Parliamentary Commission now sitting, one of the largest Indian houses in London exhibited a long list of very recent telegrams, sent from London to Calcutta, in all of which the most important parts were omitted, and the quotations deliberately altered to suit the Calcutta markets. The frauds now alluded to refer to the falsification of the opium advices, which inflicted a loss of 100,000l. on those who acted on the misquotations. The first falsification took place on the arrival of the steamer Pekin at Galle from China on the 30th of December, 1861. The following list will exhibit the telegrams as sent from Galle, and the alterations as delivered to the recipients at Bombay :

G

No. 6. Patna 250 more, double 125 Patna 200 more, double 100

Hong-Kong.

996 15th December

850

. 650

645

. 850

856

The intention of the instigators of this fraud was to lower the value of the drug in the Bombay market, and it will be seen that in almost every instance the prices were lowered 30 dollars per chest for Malwa, and 50 dollars for Benares and Patna, and where the market was stated to be "firm," it was changed to "dull."

Again, on the 15th of January, 1861, another falsification of the messages occurred at Bombay occurred at Bombay on the arrival of the steamer Ottawa at Galle from China, as follows:

After some little delay the perpetrators of these frauds were discovered, and among the chief causes of their detection were pieces of paper with telegrams written on them, found where they had been operating. On one of these pieces was written: "When the price of Patna is above 890 we should lower 50 rupees, and take Maneek Chand's name. Should the price be less than 890 we should higher 50, and take Tarra Chand's name." It turned out that the delinquents were two signallers who had been dismissed from the Government service, and who had been bribed to commit the frauds by native merchants in Bombay. The mode in which the purpose was effected was by cutting the wire at Khandalla and Poonah, not far from Bombay, and there intercepting the telegrams and passing them on with altered quotations. One of the culprits, after being taken into custody, confessed that he had been bribed, and pointed out a native merchant who had bribed him, but there was not sufficient evidence to justify taking proceedings against the accused. On the trial of the prisoners at Bombay, a native witness who assisted them, thus described the operation :

"After having pitched a tent and prepared a battery, the second prisoner threw a string over the wire, pulled it down, and partly cut it with a file. I was then ordered to cut it through. At the time I was cutting the wire, the first prisoner was fixing a machine-the first prisoner saw what I was doing. I assisted the second prisoner in putting down the wire. The second prisoner held the wire while I was cutting it. After the wire was cut, both prisouers

fixed another wire to the broken ends of the wire. They took the new wire from the box. The other end of the wire was attached to a machine in the tent. The ends of both wires were attached to the machine in the tent. It was like a machine I saw at the Poona Railway station, used by the telegraphic people. The second prisoner wrote something on a piece of paper, and the first was shaking the machine. There was a thing in the instrument which pointed to numbers. The prisoners were working at the machine, and writing all day and night. The next day they did the same business."

The two prisoners were found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour for eighteen months, while the real instigators, the native merchants, escaped altogether. This escape rather encouraged the merchants to continue their malpractices, for soon afterwards two Marwarree merchants were taken up for offering bribes to the Telegraph officials at Sattara, found guilty, and sentenced to the altogether inadequate punishment of a fine of 201. with six months' imprisonment with hard labour.

But this is not the only way in which the contents of important private mercantile messages become known in the bazaars long before the real addressees themselves get the telegrams. One gentleman in the Bombay office used to be troubled with extraordinary deafness whenever telegrams of importance were being received, and the signallers were obliged to shout them out for his information, and the information of others conveniently placed to hear them. Again, the system adopted of sending the telegrams by sound considerably simplified the mode of procedure. The reading off of the signals by the clicking of the armature against the electro-magnet was a great boon to the bazaar harpies, and a very profitable investment for the signallers. The plan usually adopted is this. The signallers who are off duty being a part of the establishment have free access to the premises, though not to the signalling room, at all hours. In some offices the clicking of the instrument is sufficiently loud to be heard in the adjoining room or verandah, and the signallers off duty employ their holiday-time very profitably in this anteroom or in the verandah, taking down the messages simultaneously with the signaller receiving them. The boy then saunters away from the office with the telegram in his pocket, and hurries

off to his merchant friend, who thus gets the telegram a couple of hours before the real addressee knows of its existence. And this is the real solution of the mystery how mercantile messages become known to the native merchants, and are acted upon hours before the real addressee, the English merchant, knows anything about them.

COBWEBS.

It was intended to have gone fully into this question, but this discussion has proceeded to such an unexpected length that the matter will only be mentioned to show the extent to which official peculiarities are sometimes carried in India. On one occasion, one of the Indian Railway Companies required about sixty miles of telegraph to be erected very rapidly, and as the Government had a line running along the route, permission was obtained to suspend the wire on the Government posts temporarily, and until the Railway Company could have their own posts erected. No sooner was the Railway wire up than the head of the Government Telegraph Department at once obtained from the Government of India peremptory orders to close up these sixty miles of Railway line on the plea that it was objectionable to work two wires on the same posts in India, because cobwebs forming on the wires, and connecting them together, would produce contact and cause an interruption, and the line was accordingly closed. To clinch the argument with the Government, their superintendent instanced a case alleged to have occurred in America when an interruption was produced from such a cause.

Without going into any lengthened discussion on this point to prove its absurdity, it need only be stated as illustrative of the blindness with which the authorities in India will sometimes commit themselves, that at the very time the Government allowed the Railway Telegraph to be closed up upon such an idle pretext, the Government posts in Calcutta and its vicinity had four wires suspended upon them in one place, three wires in another, and two wires in a third, for a distance of one hundred and twenty miles or more into the country. The Railway