A NOODLE, BRIXHAM, 1845.

 The Brixham correspondant to The Western Times (6th September 1845) sent this report below to the paper:

"About a week since, one of those tricks played off by adepts in the occult science, on the unsuspecting,  was performed here on a cultivator of spinach and asparagus, residing in a cottage detached from the other buildings in the neighbourhood.

"It appears that about the hour of six o' clock in the evening a female called at the house of a market gardener, and asked him if he would like to have his fortune told?  She could assure him that it would be to his advantage as she knew from what she saw of him, that great good fortune lay in wait for him.  She was asked her charge for a peep into futurity, and in reply she observed that if told by 'the lines'  it would be ten shillings but if 'by the planets' three sovereigns.  What was the difference was next asked between the two modes? The ready answer was that the latter method was the most correct, and told of things very shortly to come to pass.  This decided the matter, 'the planets were the things. After having spoken of horoscopes, lords of the ascendant, houses of fate, malign aspects and favorable conjunctions - the noodle was told to put a tin cup half filled with water in the 'fork' of a tree in his own garden, on which the sun's first rays would fall, and visit it the next evening,but on no account before, and he would find six sovereigns there.

"The secret instructions were faithfully kept, but alas! the cruel sorceress had duped her victim."

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I suspect this Brixham correspondant was a romancer and his failure to provide details of time and place makes him seem almost as untrustworthy as the female who told fortunes.  We know she appeared at six in the evening  about a week since but we are not told which day.  We know the market gardener cultivated spinach and asparagus but he is given no name and his cottage no address. Nevertheless, there is, it is said, no smoke without a fire and this remarkable story of a gullible Devonshire peasant being hoodwinked must have had a foundation and probably did occur just as accounted here, in Brixham as recently as August/September, 1845.  

The cunning of this fortune-teller rings true.  The fanciful distinction between a ten-shilling 'fortune' and a three-guinea one is original and ingenious as are the daft details: half filled with water, sun's first rays;   &c. 

The way the correspondant uses the question mark is also ingenious......and wrong!