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Archiver > SOUTH-AFRICA > 2004-06 > 1086237467-01


From: "Steve Hayes" <>
Subject: Re: [ZA] Fw: [SA-Gen] Coat of arms for CARPENTER
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 06:37:47 +0200
References: <40BD8F8F.28913.1A8EC7@localhost>
In-Reply-To: <80B16D50-B4FF-11D8-B150-000A958703BA@alphalink.com.au>


On 3 Jun 2004 at 11:44, Andrew Rodger wrote:

> In Australia, similarly, there has been a long-running scam involving,
> not coats of arms, but spurious family histories. It has gone quiet in
> recent years, but the way it worked was this: a story would be written,
> saying one (insert name) fought at Agincourt, another served King Henry
> VIII, another was prominent in the time of the napoleonic Wars, and
> such-like rubbish. If you wrote in and shelled out a tidy sum for a
> copy of the book, you got a custom-printed (probably laser-print)
> volume with your name filled in in the blanks of the story. (Very easy
> with a simple global change in any word-processing program.) An
> astonishingly large number of people fell for this thing, including a
> friend of mine, considerably older than her husband who nevertheless
> predeceased her by about 25 years, who felt that she didn't know enough
> about his family. I hadn't the heart to tell her that after her
> purchase she knew absolutely no more than before.

Yes, I believe it was a company called Halbert's, of Bath, Ohio, USA.

The title was something like "The world book of <family>s" - with the name of
your family inserted.

--
Steve Hayes
E-mail:
Web: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
Phone: 083-342-3563 or 012-333-6727

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