Derbyshire, 1880

In another case recorded this week the ending was not so happy, especially to one of the parties concerned, resulting as it did in an appeal to the County Magistrate, and in three months' hard labour to the astrologer involved. The scene is shifted from the Highlands [prev. story] to Derbyshire, and the two chief actors are not crofters but colliers. It would appear that one Levi Cooke eked out his income as a collier by the proceeds of such soothsaying as he could manage to secure. 

A brother collier named PAtrick Smith loses £90, and he, accordingly, knowing Levi's acquaintance with black art, applied to him, asking who had the money. Having heard Patrick's tale of his misfortune, the wise man consulted a book, looked grave, and wrote something mysterious on a slate. He was at last able to inform the anxious inquirer that the money would be returned. The person who had taken it would bring it back. For this satisfactory information Smith paid the astrologer two shillings. Ten days pass away, and yet no money comes back. Another call on the necromancer results in another assurance that the money would certainly be returned. Meantime, as if to make matters doubly sure, the professional man gives the loser of the money a round piece of glass to look through, but nothing came of it - at least no money to Smith.

Somehow or other the police were induced to make a call on the wizard, whose house was found to contain a large number of mystic lore, including "Celestial Philosophy," "Orion's Prophetic Guide and Weather Almanac," and several copybooks filled with discourses on astrology. There was a note which ran thus:- "She can have prescriptions from me, and advice for 14 stamps each time until the evil spirits are expelled from her blood and body." Letters were also discovered showing that this learned collier's patients had as much confidence in him as had ever one in his family physician.

What the collier made off his clientele may be supposed to have been considerably more than collier ever made in the mine even in the palmy days of chicken and champagne. But the efforts of the best and most beneficient of the friends of the people are sometimes very ungraciously received. The great unpaid did not show that sympathy with this philanthropic collier that might have been expected from so enlightened a body, the result being that Cooke, like other benefactors born too soon, has been laid up in prison, not to be restored to his native village till three long moons have rolled away. [...]

Dundee Courier, 16th July 1880.