Hoaxes are sometimes malicious, and often cruel, as the following
instance will show: A young couple were about to be married in
Birmingham when those officiating--it was a Jewish wedding--were
startled by the delivery of a telegram from London with the message:
“Stop marriage at once. His wife and children have arrived in London
and will come on to Birmingham.” The bride fainted and the bridegroom
was frantically perturbed at thus summarily being provided with a
wife and family. But it was useless; the unhappy man had to make the
best of his way through an exasperated crowd full of sympathy for the
wronged girl. Inquiry, however, showed her friends that the whole thing
was a hoax--possibly worked by some revengeful rival of the man whose
happiness had been so unexpectedly deferred.