The Century of Deception

The Birth of the Hoax in Eighteenth-Century England

Ian Keable The Westbourne Press 2021 Hb, 305pp, £20, ISBN 9781908906441

As tides of lies and deception threaten to overwhelm our perception of the world’s events, this history by a professional stage magician arrives well-timed. In the 18th century, England’s reputation for being a country in which hoaxes flourished became so great that Europeans flocked to take advantage of the famed “English credulity”, believing the population to be “one great pack of fools”. Credulity was a part of the national character, with Londoners possessing the greatest share; thus it was widely thought on the Continent.

Here are 10 of the most notorious and contentious hoaxes of the century. In 1704, the Bishop of London and other clergymen were impressed by the claims of George Psalmanazar to have lived in the hitherto unknown country of Formosa, a place where the criminal penalties made mediæval Europe look like modern Finland. In the same decade, astrologers flogged heaps of prognostications in almanac form to the ire of Jonathan Swift, who responded satirically. The learned gentlemen hoodwinked by Mary Toft’s pretence to gestate rabbits is a prime example of the misconception that scientists are the most likely to discover fraud. The author has a special fondness for the Bottle Conjuror, a magic performance that caused a riot when it failed to show at a Haymarket theatre. The Shakespeare fakes of William Henry Ireland is another wellworn episode, but the telling is superbly researched.

Subjects with more fortean heft are the Cock Lane Ghost and the Stockwell haunting. Typically for a professional magician, Keable only has time for a materialist explanation for the latter events and even ropes in the modern Enfield poltergeist as another example of a fraud. Must conjurers always assume such paranormal events are hoaxed, just because they can be? Notably absent are medical hoaxes, a topical subject which the book could have benefited from, by including something like James Graham and his Grand Celestial Bed, which exploited the craze for magnetism.

Small disappointments aside, this is a rollicking ride with a smattering of Hogarth and Gillray cartoons and other engravings. Jerry Glover

★★★★