History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

In 1915 The Foreign Office were contacted by the British Consul General in Barcelona about a poor boy in Granollers near Barcelona, who had received an advertisement written in Spanish, from an astrologer called Professor Zazra shown in a turban and Indian dress, requesting money for a horoscope. A resident of Granollers forwarded the advertisement to the Consul General and asked for action to be taken against Prof. Zazra.  The Foreign Office in London took the matter seriously and raised the complaint with the Home Office who asked Scotland Yard to investigate. This advert by Prof. Zazra appeared in numerous newspapers. The police went to 90 New Bond Street and found that Zazra, ‘The Chief Mystic of the Hindu School of Predication’, was an Englishman called Arthur Drew Clifton. They warned him that unless he stopped advertising, he would be prosecuted under the Vagrancy Act (1824). The police described him as a very shrewd man and one not easily scared, but he complied (for a time...