Spiking people’s drinks is not a modern phenomenon: these accomplished swindlers used the ploy to successfully steal a farmer’s money.
“There was a full attendance of sharpers at the above fair*. One instance of the villainy is the following. About the middle of the day on Tuesday, Mr. Thompson, farmer, of Woolsthorpe, near Colsterworth, was accosted in the street by a man who had the appearance of a horse-dealer, and who, calling him by his name, asked him how he did. Mr. Thompson answered that the enquirer had the advantage of him; on which the fellow said, ‘oh, you must recollect me, I have seen you often at the Red Lion in Colsterworth,’ and her went on to ask about two of three persons in that town. Mr. Thompson, from the familiarity and seeming local knowledge of the man, suffered himself to be persuaded that he really must have met him at Colsterworth, and he accepted the man’s invitation to go to the Red Lion in Stamford, (near where the conversation passed,) to take a glass. Soon after they were seated in the parlour, a younger man joined them, and began to speak of his good fortune in having been left a handsome sum by an old uncle; in confirmation of which assertion, he pulled from his pockets a handful of bank notes and sovereigns (doubtless flash notes and base coin), and swore the he had more money about him than all the other persons in the house put together had; nay, he doubted whether there was another man who could show ten pounds. The fellow who had first accosted Mr. Thompson seemed for a while to take little notice of the young man, but at length modestly said that although he had no pretension that way, he dare say his ‘friend Thompson’ could show as much as the swaggerer. The accomplice said, he would ‘bet ten points that Thompson could not show ten pounds.’ The gammon was so well carried on, that at length Mr. Thompson was induced to go out to his own inn, (the Horns in the Beast-market,) and borrow 10l. of Mr. Roberts his landlord, with a view of accepting the bet at the Red Lion. Whilst he was gone, it is supposed, the swindlers infused some narcotic drug into his glass of liquor, the effect of which was so powerful, that on his drinking it when he returned, he because speedily affected with a stupor; during the time he continued in that state the thieves robbed him of his ten pounds, as well as of some silver which he had in his pockets, and decamped. When Mr. Thompson same a little to himself, he was so ill that it was snot without help that he could get up to his own inn, where he has continued ever since under medial care, seriously indisposed (from the effects of the poison). The swindlers have a present eluded justice.”
The Stamford Mercury, 9th February, 1827.
*Probably the Candlemas Fair – horses, beasts and sheep.