Hoaxes and pranksters are nothing new

Social media didn't invent hoaxes - they have a long history

Greetings Gold and Silver Level Templar Knights! Social media channels have become fertile territory for hoaxes and pranksters who annoy the hell out of many of us. But…as I discover, they have a long history.

Social media and the internet has become fertile territory for hoaxes, pranksters, and impostors. Fake news. Fake obituaries. Wild conspiracy theories. The demonising and bullying of innocent people. "Doxing" individuals by publishing their addresses and personal details. Yet - all of this has been going on, in different ways, for hundreds of years. Though especially in the 19th century - with the emergence of the mass newspaper media and the postal service.

Today, social media channels like TikTok are full of pranksters all seeking the limelight. They are part of a long tradition - that many have found infuriating but others clearly love. The first modern hoax, using mass communication, was The Berners Street Hoax of 1810. The action of these pranksters was talked about for the rest of the century - and imitated by many.

The Berners Street Hoax of 1810

In an age when gambling was a widespread addiction and people would be on anything - a young man, Theodore Hook, bet with his friend Samuel Beazley, that he could pick any address in London and make it the most talked about house in the city. It was decided that 54 Berners Street - just off Oxford Street - would become the talk of the town. Little did the resident, a certain Mrs Tottenham, know what was about to happen.

Thousands of letters were posted by Hook and on November 27, 1810, all hell broke loose. The house was besieged by wine merchants; vans full of ordered furniture; a cradle; a coffin; brewers' drays; coal wagons; a fire engine; a string of hackney cabs; the state carriage of the sheriff; a funeral hearse, etc. The Governor of the Bank of England turned up, followed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Lord Mayor of London.

The mastermind behind this hoax was a serial prankster, Theodore Hook (1788-1841). A Londoner born into a very prosperous family, educated at Harrow and Oxford University. He was a journalist and satirist, incessantly in debt and sent to the "sponging house" - a debtors' prison - from 1823 to 1825. From a house nearby, he watched the chaos while pocketing his one-Guinea bet.

The Napoleonic Cat Hoax of 1816

The problem after the Berners Street Hoax was that every mischievously inclined prankster wanted to organised a similar hoax. We leave London for Chester to cover a hoax that had unpleasant consequences. It took advantage of keen interest among many in Britain over the fate of Napoleon Bonaparte - the defeated French emperor, exiled to the remote British island of St. Helena.

A local newspaper reported that the government was keen to rid St. Helena of its many mice and rats that were plaguing Napoleon, making his life a misery. Cats were needed in large numbers to be shipping all the way to this south Atlantic hellhole. The government would pay sixteen shillings for mature males, ten shillings for females, and half a crown for kittens. All those who wanted to claim their money had to turn up at a particular time and at a designated address.

The money was good and the economy was in the doldrums. So, about three thousand people appeared with cats in baskets, boxes, or just in their arms. Whether they were actually owned by those holding them was another matter. Anger and confusion set in when everybody discovered that the house in question was empty - in fact, it was almost derelict.

While most of those present either returned home with their cats or set them free - more than five hundred felines were found drowned in the River Dee the next morning.

Victorian hoaxes and pranksters

Once the Pandora's Box of hoaxes was opened, the pranksters came thick and fast. One hoax that is still perpetrated today on social media is the fake obituary. Announcing the death of a celebrity who is still very much alive - just to garner a few follows and hits. Nothing new again. In 1839, it was announced in The Times that Lord Brougham had been killed.

The newspaper reported that Brougham and two friends left Brougham Hall in a horse drawn carriage which then overturned as the horses became "unmanageable". His lordship was ejected from the coach, kicked in the head by one of the unruly horses, and then the carriage wheel passed over his head, rendering his facial features unrecognisable.

The obituaries flooded in and Brougham was praised as a great statesman. A great public loss had been sustained by Britain. We would never see his like again. A man who cared about the "spread of knowledge; for legal and representative reforms; for the suffering and enslaved African; for freedom, civil and religious..." And so it went on.

In fact, the obituaries were so glowing that when the hoax was revealed, some cynics wondered if Brougham had staged the whole thing so that he could read the warm words he was sure would be written about him at death. He just didn't want to miss his own obituary!

Others blamed the Count D'Orsay who was seen spreading the rumour in London's gentlemen's clubs. When the truth came out, The Morning Chronicle published a stinging poem, calling for the unmasking of the prankster, that included this verse:

But here we stop the press to say, in number two editions/The story of Lord Brougham's death is all an imposition/Most cruelly have we been hoax'd, by some unfeeling party/And we are pleased to state Lord B. is all alive and hearty.

April Fool's joke at a Victorian workhouse

In April 1848, an April Fool's joke was played on the poor inmates of a Victorian workhouse. This was an institution where the poor, petty criminals, and elderly were sent to be fed and worked by the parish council. April Fool's jokes normally happen on April the First but for some reason, it was decided to perpetrate this hoax the following day.

An egg, "which had undergone a chemical process", was placed in a hen's nest with the words: "Prepare ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand". Finding the egg under the chicken, the inmates were convinced it was a divine message. Hundreds of people congregated at the workhouse entrance and gazed upwards expecting Judgment Day at any second.

Some began to pray to God thanking him for revealing his intentions via this egg. Two stone masons working on repairs at the workhouse left for their homes "in order to die with their wives and families". And several church ministers in the vicinity preached the good news from their pulpits. However, nothing happened. And it became all too clear that everybody had been the victim of a prankster.

The Croydon Hoax of 1880

In October 1880, a prankster directed a stream of unwanted business to the address of a mythical Mrs Ocks in Thornhill Road, Croydon. Letters were written to three doctors to attend the "supposititious occupant of Thornhill Villa". A carriage was arranged to convey Mrs Ocks to the Earlswood Asylum - presumably on the basis that she'd gone insane. Dentists were told to come round and extract her teeth and an undertaker was summoned to come and measure her up for a coffin.

The local newspaper was unamused: "Purveyors of baby linen, upholsterers, makers of window-blinds, looking glass manufacturers, had all been invited to come on the same day and at the same time."

For those tricked into coming - and most of them were - there was nothing but fury at the pranksters who had cost them money and raised their hopes of obtaining business. The newspaper hoped the perpetrator, referred to as a "malevolent human donkey", would be "detected and punished".