HOOLEY DRAMA

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 129, 3 June 1922, Page 5

HOOLEY DRAMA

/ APPEAL DISMISSED

LAST STAGE IN BIG CASE

STORY OF GREAT SWINDLER.

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.-WJPYRIGHT.)

(AUSTRALIAN • NEW ZEALAND CABLE" ASSOCIATION.) LONDON, Ist June.

Ernest Terah Hooley's appeal against his sentence of three years' imprisonment for fraud in connection with the flotation of the Jubilee. Cotton Mills, Ltd., of Oldhain,. has been dismissed.,

The histo»y of the Hooley case was interestingly summarised at the conclusion of the trial by the London Daily Telegraph, in the following editorial article: An end has been put—at lea6t for, a | time—to the financial activities of Mr. Hooley, who was sentenced., to three years' penal servitude at the Old Bailey j on Saturday. The trial lasted twenty-six j days, and everyone must have sympathised with the confession of weari- j ness wrung from the Common Serjeant ] when he began his eleven hours' summing up. Yet the case was only heard at almost interminable length in order to give absolutely fair play to the persons who stood in the dock, for: the record of the principal actor in the drama was such that there cannot have been the slightest doubt in anyone's mind from the very outset as to his being guilty of conspiracy to defraud the public. That has been his constant occupation for many years past, and it has long been one of the most glaring and incomprehensible scandals of our time that this professional swindler has been able to continue living in luxury and engaging in the promotion of shady companions .on a considerable scale, though modest, indeed, compared with'] his soaring ventures when he was in the heyday of his fame. He was made a bankrupt in 1898, in 1911, and again' in. 1921, and as he'has never discharged or been discharged from his liabilities, they amount to about £700,000. But liabilities never weighed on Hooley's spirits. Always, in his own phrase, "game ajs. a linnet," he never allowed any consideration for his .old creditors to interfere with his plans ,for creating a fresh list of new ones, and this "boss of bosses"— ac he was described by one of "the witnesses in the trial just ended—lias pro ceeded on his nefarious course, always on the look-out for new victims to pluck,' and always ready to listen to any promising plan for taking advantage of the credulity, of. the public and the general desire to get rich quick by some lucky financial coup. "WITHIN THE LAW." It says much for HooleyV astuteness and complete acquaintance with the laws dealing with company promoting that only once before during his thirty years' career as a financier has he come under the ban of the law. He was found guilty in 1912 of obtaining cheques by false pretences from a rich and foolish young man \vho fell into his clutches and whom he stripped of his fortune in less than three ■ months. Then he was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment' in the second division; his present sentence will, doubtless mark the ignoble end of an almost. fabulous career. The outlines of the story of the Jubilee 'Cotton Mill swindle can be told very briefly. The plant of this Lancashire mill, which had previously passed through chequered fortunes, was bought •in 1910 by an ex-Mayor of Derby, named Fletcher, for a hvt figure, and worked by him during the- following years: .In .1919 Fletcher entered into an agreement with the landlords to purchase their interest in the building, a-nd his total outlay on the concern, would seem to have been about £15,000. In that year, ac will be remembered, the cotton trade was booming and large profit-■•were being matte. Even the Jubilee Mill, though not an -up-to-date property, .earned a good, profit, but Fletcher was in serious financial1 difficulties owing to his large losses on certain Russian properties, and he therefore arranged with Hooley to sell the mill for £20,000 cash and 35,000 shares in the new company which was to no formed. Many other cotton, mills wexe changing hands about that time on terms of gross over-capitalisation, and Hooley and his associates were eager to be in the swim, and get their share of what was going. A MYTHICAL CONCERN. The syndicate set about the promotion of a company, and looked about for persons to take up the shares. They sold them first by promises of large dividends, and neit by the pretence that large ■dividends had been earned and paid. The Jubilee Cotton Mill, -which was to earn such good returns on a share capital of £150,000 and £30,000 debentures, had not' a farthing of working capital, but that did not prevent the board of directors with no accounts before them, from declaring an interim dividend of 33 1-3 -per cent. The mill -was valued by a practical expert, at the request of the Official Receiver, at not more than £20,000 or £30,000, in January, 1920, when the boom was still vising, and at less than £10,000 in June, 1921, when the slump was at its wrast; and the shares, quoted as high as 32s in 1920, can, now hardly be given away at 3<L AN AMAZING CAREER. Hooley has had an amazing career Of recent years, of course, his character has been fly-blown, and reputable people have fought shy of contact with him, though he has never been short of clients. His great days came to an end as far back as 1898, and the younger generation never knew Hooley in his prime, when he was the blazing comet of the financial world, and drew after him a motley crowd of high and low, all eager for a nod from the genius who thought in millions; Hooley was the son of a humble twist hand in a. Nottingham lace factory, but he was born with gre>t ideas. He ha-d none of that respect for millions which overawed the careful, plodding Victorians. He., came to the conclusion that the way to for-, tune was to aim high and grasp at what others thought unattainable. "Go always for the biggest thing," he once ■said : "Midway up, the ladder is 'cluttered' with thousands who have not the courage to grasp at the biggest deals. At the top of the ladder you have a clear, ■untroubled field." The problem, perhaps/is not quite so simple as that, but beyond question Hooley Tightly judged that the times were ripe, in the nineties of last century, for the purchase of certain well-established and prosperous undertakings and for their notation on ■a grandiose scale. The public, as he saw, were "on the feed," and he fed them with both hands. Ho earned through some enormous deals. FROM BOOM TO CRASH. -He started the "cycle boom," with disastrous results to the finance of most of the companies, though highly profitable to himself.; He bought the Dunlop tire for three millions, floated it for five millions, and in a few months saw it valued at seven million?. The pubho lost their heads. Hooley's name was in every month. Tho man with the foxy face* who played the rale of city super-magnate in loud .country tweeds, whn da-essed like- a racing, sport-in? Btiuite, and professed to "hate town lifo and town sharks with their tncks and

wiles," added estate-: to -estate, aadi bought houses and parks in a dozen counties. He was High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, he nursed a constituency, and, according to his own account, he was ready to pay £50,000 for a baronetcy, while with sublime effrontery ha presented St. Paul's Cathedral with a magnificent set of gold communion plate. It could not last. Like many another before, him, Hooley found money easier to get than to keep. His lucky vein ran out. He made bad mistakes. He lost all he had—though he never wag flush with hard cash—and the comet expired in thei .darkness in 1898. After the first bankruptcy, the genius who in twenty months had floated twenty-six companies with a capital of £18,000,000 was reduced to thinking in thousands, and had' to hunt his dupes, instead of keeping them waiting in the ante-room of his hotel. And now the last stage of all is penal servitude! It is a fine them© for the moralist. But we ajre rather concerned to regret the bad) influence which Hooley and men of his stamp have upon tbe financial and commercial world as a whole, _in encouraging the 'belief that he and they are typical- of modem capitalism—which they certainly are not—and in making people discontented with the slow returns of laborious work and patient application, whan they see the?© vulgar gamblers tossed up so suddenly to wealth and power. Hoolsy's career points the moral that some measure of honesty is still a necessary ingredient to permanent success.