1825. Carta de José de Faria Machado, sargento, sob o pseudónimo de António Chuço, para José Ferreira Coelho, negociante de panos.

Extortion letter, signed with the alias Antonio Chuço (Antonio, the Pike), sent to José Ferreira Coelho, a cloth merchant.

The author threatens the recipient with death if the latter doesn't deliver the money he asked before to liberate a man from the Limoeiro jail.

In the first quarter of the 19th century, extorsion letters became a very typical practice in the Limoeiro jail, near Lisbon. Prisoners, pretending to be highwaymen, contacted people outside jail, threatening them with all sorts of ruinous events in the case they didn't hand in a certain amount of money. The frequentness of this practice was possible also because of the political and social turmoil associated with these first years of Liberalism.