With the large number of troops in the town it was extremely inadvisable that this sort of thing should be going, Town Clerk William Smith told Luton Police Court on March 27th, 1915, when a woman claiming to be a genuine relative of the Gipsy Lee family was charged with "practising palmistry to deceive and impose".
Adelaide Garrett, of 24 Church Street, Luton, denied the charge, brought under Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act 1824. She was convicted and fined 30 shillings, including costs. She could have faced three months in prison or a fine of up to £25.
The court was told that at 9.20 pm on March 23rd two soldiers, one aged 19 and the other 23, were induced to go to have their fortunes read in a hired room at 11 Church Street by a notice in the window. It read: "Madame Lee, a genuine relative of the old-established Gipsy Lee family, now nearly extinct, which has been patronised by the leading aristocracy, nobility and gentry".
The older soldier was told that he was soon going abroad, that he would be wounded, but only slightly, and that he would soon get over it. The younger man was told he was going to the war very soon and would come back without a scratch. Both paid one shilling and were given a little book.
The Town Clerk said Adelaide Garrett would probably contend that she sold the book for a shilling and threw the palmistry in. But he hoped the Bench would not be deceived in any other subtle means of deceiving people. There were always plenty of fools, and a fool and his money are soon parted.
He thought that young men who had responded to the call of their country and were training for service abroad would have quite enough to do in the way of work and recreation without being enticed into a house of this description, and having fictions told to them by a person who, of course, really could not foretell the future. It was not an isolated case. The defendant lived in Luton during the winter, and in the summer she carried on the same game at seaside places. She had been seen at Yarmouth.
Under oath, the defendant said the soldiers came to have their hands read. She was not a fortune teller, but sold her book for a shilling.
When she had come to Luton to set up business she had been concerned in a case at Yarmouth, where she was born and brought up, and won. When she first came to Luton she was advised at the police station that she could carry on her business in the town, because if it was legal at Yarmouth it was legal at Luton. Her book was a genuine palmistry book and not a betting or gambling book.
She admitted that Madame Lee was her professional name, as her married name of Garrett was not a gipsy name. Her husband's father sat on the Bench at Yarmouth and was Mayor of the borough twice.
Chief Constable Teale said he had never spoken to the defendant in his life until a short time ago. Then the defendant had gone to the police station to see a friend who was in the cells, having been arrested on a similar charge involving Burnley.
[Saturday Telegraph, March 27th, 1915]