Taking Advantage of the Public’s Generosity?

Abstract

Like all public charities at the turn of the twentieth century, the Empire’s Patriotic Fund was careful in the vetting of applications to ensure that no one took advantage of the public’s generosity. The fund certainly detected some attempts at fraud, but there were other cases where they failed to do so and, in one case, the fund’s committee was completely wrong in its identification of an applicant as a malingerer.