[ London Times ]
This newspaper, most correctly known simply as The Times, began publication in 1785 and continues to this day.
The edition of August 14, 1841, contained a humorously sarcastic report of a French con man. His main scam was to present himself as a "Mass broker," someone who arranged to have Masses said on other people's behalf, profiting from the difference between what he charged the supplicant and what he paid some poor parish priest to actually perform the Mass. He somehow managed to become very well off doing this.
But he ran another scam as well. He began exhibiting, during big festivals, an "African lion, enclosed in an iron cage." The lion was very highly trained, and the highlight of the show came when
a young girl of the most delicate appearance astonished thousands by thrusting her pretty head within the jaws of the monster. An honest trooper, not liking the danger to which the girl incessantly exposed herself, protested energetically against the horrifying spectacle at the moment when the young damsel entered the lion's den, and, aiding the effect of his words with suitable action, excited the lion in every possible way, and sought to draw him to his side of the cage with a view to prevent the performance. Irritated by the soldier's proceedings, the animal departed at last from his assumed character, and barked with such true canine vehemence, that the spectators were all forced to laugh at their gullibility. The "ferocious lion" was neither more nor less than a large dog of the Newfoundland breed, magnificently dressed up in a lion's skin!
Probably needless to say, the con man was quickly forced to take his act elsewhere.