SIR RICHARD MUIR'S MEMOIRS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 39, 15 February 1930, Page 21

SIR RICHARD MUIR'S MEMOIRS

(By "Ajax.")

, [2nd Notice.]

THE FASCINATION OF E. T,

HOOLEY

Though, as I mentioned last week, Whitaker Wright was botli a client of Muir's and a warm personal friend, and it fell to Muir's lot to prosecute Hooley and get him convicted, it was nevertheless Hooley who fascinated the'rather precise Scotchman the more thoroughly, and won his almost unbounded admiration.

Beins a Scotsman, writes Muir's biosrapher, Mr. S. T. Fclstead, Muiv could admire, if he did not attempt to emulate, the man who could make £7,000;00B profit in two years, as Hooley did hi IS9G-97. and then, after getting rid of the lot, and becomins bankrupt for £1,500,000. cheerfully start over asaiu.

The climax of that first great flight of Ernest Terah Hooley's was in 1596, when, with the help of a few friends, he bought- the Dunlop Tire Company for £3 000,000 and refloated it a few months later for . £5,000,000. In the following year, which was the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, "princes of the blood royal were," we are told, "his intimate friends, and half the nobility of England were trying, to cultivate his acquaintance for the purpose of replenishing their attenuated rent rolls." In return Hooley rras expecting tho slight but dearly valued honour of a baronetcy, and his lingers were just closing on the prize when it ;was whispered that he was crashing, and he crashed. He was, as I have mentioned, £1,500,000 short, and the only title that he pulled out of the wreck was that of "The Jubilee Plunger."

The scale and the rapidity of Hooley's rise and fall well illustrated the diagnosis which Shakespeare puts intp the mouth of Wolsey,"the tender leaves of hope," the blushing honours, •the killing frost, and the fall. But the very last of Wolsey's touches —•

And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, ' Sever to hope again— did not fit .Hooley. _ Hope and the power of inspiring it in others were faculties which did not desert him either when ho failed for a million and r half, or when he received his sen•tence of three years' penal servitude, or when he came out to face the world again and,make his fourth start from scratch.

In obtaining control of other people's money, says Mr. Felstead, on the undemanding that he was going to make a million for them, the world has never seen a man like E.T. Hooley.

.' . . Hooley would calmly buy an estate for £200,000, find some one to pay the ten per cent, deposit, and then begin cutting up the land, hoping to make his profit before the lime came to pay the balance. What is more, he, used to do it, though to be sure very few other people tot anything out of it except himself. He did it all by his fascinating personality. A fine, handsome-looking man, senerous to a fault, always ready to help anybody in distress, he spent what ho made as fast as he got it. Nobody erer appealed to him in Tain, and If he lived like a kins It can also be .said that he spent his money just as royally.. . . He bought his partner, Martin Kuckcr, a yacht for £50.000, cave it to him, and then saw JJuclcer sell it to Wliitaker Wright for a mere nothing. He spent over £250,000 making Fapworth Hall one of the finest farming estates in tho Eastern Counties. He e»doircd tho Conservative Party with a huge sum of money, bought the most expensive pedigree cattle ;in England, and generally comported, himself-.like a modern Croesus. Nothing was too good for him.

To Muir, who. had had more or less intimate relations .with, all the "mushToom millionaires" of the time, the enterprise, the financial genius, the courage, and the powerful and polished presence of Hooley appealed very •trongly.

; From erery point of Tien-, writes Muir's biographer, he (Hooley) was easily the most atiractire personality Muir ever encountered. .Neither Bottomlcj, Whitaker WriEht, Beran, nor anybody els» could compare with Hooley In character. They were all'children in his presence. WhiUker -Wright certainly handled millions of money, Init not oh anything like tiio scale that- Hooley did. His audacious mind would look at liothinz but a million of money, which no doubt accounted for the £1,000,000 company which, was to exploit his Siberian Goldflelds. The price Hooley paid for the concession was £75,000, the other £925,000 was profit. Another little Tenture, Newfoundland Pulp and Timber Territories, also went- cut for a mere £1,000,C05, although the purchase price from the vendor was but the modest figure of £3000.

Muir had long-had his professional eye on Hooley, and both in 1904 and in 1012 appeared against him at the Old Bailey.- Conspiracy to' defraud was the charge in the first' trial, but, though Muir had prepared the case with Ms usual care, Ifooley "gare him as good as he got and emerged from the ordeal with-flying colours."

In 1912 .Hooley Tras tried for a fraudulent misrepresentation ■ involving a paltry £.2000, and "the once famous millionaire had to stand in the dock at the Old' Bailey like a common i'elen charged with false pretences." But the Treasury lad for many years wasted to get hold of a- man who had been defying the law with impunity, and the importance attached to the case Tras shown by the extraordinarily strong Bar arrayed against the prisoner, viz., Sir John Simon, Muir, Travers Humphreys, and Ernest Wild. A sentence of tirolr© months was the result, but the real tug-of-war came in 1922 when Hooley had again to face a charge of fraud, and Muir led the prosecution. A trial which lasted just over three weeks, and which. Muir hardly left for an hour, produced "e)ie of the keenest duels ever knowx in the history of the Central Criminal Court."

Those who heard the case, sajs Sir. Fel*tead,' could.not help.noticing the striklns difference in Muir's manner. While conducting an ordinary cross-examination he would ke cold, severe, and stern. But with the fascinating Hooley, the man whose sjeculatiens had run.into the inconceivable sum of £1«»,»90,----000, there was a pronounced difference. While Hooley stood In' the witness-box far days »n end being cross-examined Muir had a smile on his face practically the whole time. There was no blood and thunder about the duel between the two men, but. rather a half-ceaxins, half-questioning tone plcidins with Hooley to reveal the truth. Once or twice he jsked with his man. treating Hooley as he knew Hooley would treat him. Muir confessed afterwards rhat it sharpened lijs wits to cross-examine a. manlike Hooley—and it did. Hoole.v's masterly revelations of finance taurht Jluir mere in .the twenty-two days the trial lasted than Ije had ever known before, and he slid after it. was all over that Hooley had fascinated him.

Muir'B admiration .of Hooley tras increased by the courage and the cheerfulness with which he faced the inevitable at the end of the trial.

It Is not every one who knows that ho Is solne to penal servitude that can treat tho matter as a huge- joke, said Muir. What a pity he should have taken to fraud. He might have been the greatest Chancellor of the Exchequer this country has ever known.

Hooley maintained his high spirits and his humour right to the fall of the curtain. Mr. Felstead 'records that on the last ds^y. of the trial, after Muir had addressed the jury, Hooley turned to a , co-defendant who, standing by his. side in the dock, looked a pie--ture of misery, and, slapping him on ■the back, remarked: —

Cheer up, old chap. You'll be all right tomorrow. Leave it to me; I'll see that you get :> job in the laundry. That's tho place to he. A nice clean set ef underclothes every week.

The sentence of 'three'years' penal servitude struck both Hoolej and Muir as

somewhat severe,, but neither of ■ them had expected leniency. Mr. Felstead describes Hooley as enduring His imprisonment "with Ms customary che»/r'ulnes3," and as, about two years after his release, "still going strong, still hopeful of making another fortune." The contrast with Whitaker Wright, who about half an hour after his sentence committed' suicide by poison in the precincts of the Court, is complete. When all the blandishments ef life art soae,

Tho physique which enabled Muir ta "go ■ through a long and complicated ease almost without ' assistance, as fresh oji the last day as the first," was hardly less remarkable than his intellect and his industry. But his biographer tells a good story of his fainting one very hot day in a corridor ef thu Old Bailey. Barristers and oftcials rushed to his help aad carried him upstairs. "What's the matter with Muir?" asked a Treasury counsel of a. well-known lawyer .renowned for his spirited defences when ho happened to find himself in, conflict, with Muir. "Has he really fainted?" "Yes," was the reply, "one «f his yrlswers has just, been acquitted I"' The context shows that "the wellknown lawyer" of this story must have been Marshall Hall.