The Wasp — 1895 — page 804: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes fortune-telling and spiritualism as fraudulent schemes in 1890s San Francisco. The image shows two women at a card table; the caption states: "No money is being a professional philanthropist nowadays in San Francisco unless you practice some side-line, such as telling fortunes or Christian Science healing." The satire targets wealthy women who posed as charitable benefactors while secretly operating confidence schemes—fortune-telling and faith-healing scams that exploited the era's widespread fascination with spiritualism and New Thought movements like Christian Science. The "side line" reference suggests these fraudulent practices were lucrative supplementary income, mocking both the perpetrators and the gullible wealthy clients who funded them. This reflects period anxieties about con artists infiltrating respectable society.