The Memorial of St. Petersburg Accidents: as written by the first police newspaper of Russia.
On July 1 (13), 1839, the first issue of “Vedomosti of the St. Petersburg City Police” was released. He came out in two parts – official (government decrees, orders for the police department, etc.) and unofficial (information about those who arrived and left from St. Petersburg, various announcements, “Memorial of St. Petersburg incidents”). It was in this section that information was published about the capital’s incidents, or, as they were called, “adventures”:
“Last May, on the 25th day, the following incident happened. An unknown woman comes into one house in the morning, and, having entered the second floor from the yard to the kitchen, he asks the hostess he met-is it not here that Ms. ** lives here? When asked why she needed a mistress, the woman replied that she ordered her to come to the death of the loss. This aroused the curiosity of the hostess, who had two silver spoons disappeared from the table a few days ago. She asks the new Sivilla to guess about the loss, and she agrees. In addition to the hostess herself, her two more friends lived in her apartment. The imaginary warfare, starting to their business, first asks who was at that time at that time, and gets to his question that all those present at dinner are now on the face. After such an answer, she tells each of these three elderly ladies to take out any money, certainly by bank notes, and the more, the better. Its requirement is fulfilled: one takes out 100 rubles, the other 75, and the third 50. The fortuneteller, having wrapped all this money into three pieces of paper, ties it to each lady under the sole, assigning it to a new dressing in an hour and a half. The time comes – the new dressing is made. Meanwhile, the word for the word, the quick woman managed to speak three patients of her so that they, in the middle of the noise and dispute, did not notice how she left the room. Finally, they grabbed the fortuneteller herself – but her trace was already caught up: to look, ask, no. Mysterious nodes are unleashed: the pieces of paper in which the money was wrapped, here, but money as it happened.
The ladies, inadvertently entrusted with an imaginary fortuneteller, say that she calls herself Feodosia Vasilyeva, as if from Novgorod, from Troitskaya-Yamskaya; The growth of medium, about forty years old, the hair is bright, the face is round, white, the eyes are gray, dressed in a chintz sundress in a red field with yellow flowers.
This incident is reported in general information in order to warn others. In the event of any loss, everyone should immediately ask for the search for this by the police: this is more accurate fortune-telling “
“Vedomosti St. Petersburg City Police”, July 1, 1839
“ВЧК ОГПУ”