A “coloured man” named Colin Harper was charged, in Liverpool’s Police Court on 18 May 1899, with 22 charges of defrauding lodging house keepers in the city. He had numerous aliases including Prince A. O. Hipsinji and Prince Khan and claimed to be related to the Duke of Devonshire through marriage, and was a cousin of the well-known cricketer Ranjitsinhji. When pretending to be the consul for the republic of Columbia in Liverpool in 1898 he had said he was Colin Harper from Kingston, Jamaica, as stated in the Midland Counties Express (20 May 1899, page 8) in an article headed “A Spurious Prince”, noting “Coloured Man with Many Aliases Charged with Fraud”.

Readers of newspapers all over Britain in the summer of 1899 could read brief reports and that he had been sentenced to nine months with hard labour. London’s St James’s Gazette (31 July page 10) said the “Indian Prince” had committed a series of frauds on Liverpool lodging house keepers. The Manchester Evening News of 29 July (page 3) headed its report “The Bogus Prince at Liverpool”. London’s Globe (29 July 1899, page 7) said there were 22 charges and that he had spent “two years living on the credulity of others”. The Birmingham Mail of that date (page 4) had “Black Man’s Extraordinary Frauds” and named him “Colin Harper, alias Prince Hipsinji”. The Dundee Courier noted he had “numerous aliases” and the Cambria Daily Leader (also on 29 July) had “A Pseudo Prince”.

There was a little more information in the Boston Independent and Lincolnshire Advertiser of 5 August (page 2), entitled “A Bogus Prince at Liverpool”, for it said Harper was aged thirty and he was intending to form a company to import turtles into England (turtle soup was popular at this time). The Cheltenham Chronicle of 5 August (page 8) noted he had claimed to be the “cousin of Ranjitsinhji, the cricketer, and related through marriage to the Duke of Devonshire”. These false connections had been noted by the Jersey Evening Post back on 20 May (page 4).

There were suggestions of exploitation of women including borrowing “a considerable sum” from a nurse (Midland Counties Express, 20 May 1899, page 8). Harper’s sentence was widely reported – South Wales Daily News, 31 July 1899, page 3; Western Mail, 31 July 1899; South Wales Echo, 29 July 1899, page 3; Teesdale Mercury (Durham), 2 August 1899, page 3 “a sham Indian Prince”; Wigan Observer, 4 August 1899, page 2 (his name is here Colin Harpeg), and the Cornishman of 3 August 1899, page 3.

Harper’s abuse of trusting Britons was not unique, not was his claim to be royal. What happened to him after his prison term ended is untraced.