“POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTION,
“309, Regent Street, London,
“_21st August, 1863_.
“To the Editor of ______
“Sir,
“On public grounds I venture to call your attention to the
fact that many persons are now going about the country
endeavouring to pirate effects to be produced by the
apparatus patented by Mr. Dircks and myself, and to deceive
the public by giving them an exhibition with which they are
certain to be disgusted, and with which I have nothing to do.
I beg to enclose one of the numerous statements I have received
from different parts of the country alluding to the imposture
now so commonly practised. I shall esteem it a favour if you
would insert this and the accompanying statement in your
valuable journal.
“I am, Sir,
“Your obedient Servant,
“JOHN HENRY PEPPER.”
I won all the cases taken into Court against persons using my name in
a fraudulent manner, and in one flagrant instance the Magistrates gave
the impostor fourteen days’ imprisonment for “getting money under false
pretences.”
The famous _savant_ Mon. l’Abbé Moigné, of Paris, wrote the brief
notice of the ghost which is here copied from his journal called _Les
Mondes_, May, 1863:—