ASTONISHING PEOPLE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13241, 17 January 1941, Page 2

ASTONISHING PEOPLE

DIRTY DICK Everyone has heard of him. His name is still with us —or perhaps we should say his nickname, for Dirty Dick was Nathaniel Bentley. He deserved his sobriquet. For all that —like many a better man—he began well. His father was a well-to-do-gentleman who was in business in Leadenhall Street, London, giving his son a good education, and afterwards leaving him a fortune.

Young Nathaniel Bentley took over the business after his father’s death, and for some years he cut a figure at home and in France by appearing- in public in costumes which were the height of fashion. He delighted to wear silver and blue, and with his money and education, his grace and his extravagant tastes he made a name for himself at both sides of the Channel. But gradually this finery fell from him. He lived on the premises in Leadenhall Street. Nothing la them was ever dusted. All his goods were left littering up the place. His counters were thick in dust. There were samples of his furniture and beds and plates and dishes here and there and everywhere. Every room was a store-place. Cobwebs hung from the ceilings. Spiders had a royal time in corners. Nothing could ever be found, and business went from bad to worse.

As for Nathaniel, he never washed. His hands were dark and discoloured. “If I wash them to-day,” he complained, “they are no better to-morrow.” The man who had once led fashion became a miserable specimen of unwashed humanity, well deserving the name Dirty Dick which went with him to his grave in 1809. ' '