FINANCIERS WHO CRASHED

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 August 1928, Page 10

FINANCIERS WHO CRASHED

PRISON GATES FOR SOME

Whether Mr Alfred Lowenstein, the Belgian millionaire financier, met his death by accidentally falling out of the aeroplane while flying over the English Channel, whether he committed suicide by deliberately jumping out, will doubtless be cleared up to everyone’s satisfaction, but it is worth while directing attention to the fact that some other millionaire financiers when their operations went wrong, and they were faced with crises which threatened them with ruin, either committed suicide or mysteriously disappeared. Among those who disappeared and were subsequently brought to the bar of justice to answer charges of fraud were Gerald Lee Bevan and Jabez Balfour; among those who committed suicide were James White and Barney Barna to. Whitaker White, another millionaire financier, disappeared, and after being extradited from the United States and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, committed suicide within an hour of leaving the dock by swallowing a tabloid of cyanide of potassium which he had secreted. Among those bankrupt financiers who stayed and faced the music were Ernest Terah Hooley, Horatio Bottomley, Alfred Carpenter, the founder of the Charing Cross Bank, and Thomas Farrow, the founder of Farrow’s Bank.

Bevan, Balfour, Bottomley, Carpenter and Farrow ‘ were sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment, but Hooley, the greatest money-maker of them all, was not placed in the dock in connection with his bankruptcy, when he crashed in 1898 with unsecured liabilities amounting to £1,549,071 10/5, although the Public Prosecutor was repeatedly urged to institute criminal proceedings. Six years later Hooley was tried at Old Bailey in company with Henry John Lawson on a charge of fraud in connection with the promotion of several companies subsequent to his bankruptcy. The trial lasted 21 days and Hooley was acquitted, but Lawson was found guilty and sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment. But in 1912 Hooley was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment for defrauding George Tweedale of £2OOO.

In commenting on his downfall over such a comparatively trivial amount, Hooley states in his “Confessions,” published in 1925:—‘When I thought of the millions I had dealt in only a few years previously, as compared with the trivial amount which looked like sending me to. gaol, I could have wept. How the mighty had fallen! It took four weeks to decide my fate, and right up to the finish it was just touch and go. In fact. I thought that I should escape and even when the jury came into court, and I stood at the front of the dock, with my heart beating fast in anticipation of what likely to happen, I imagined that it would be a verdict of not guilty. But I did not flinch when the foreman of the jury declared me to be guilty. I could take the rough with the smooth, and though I knew that a sentence of prison practically meant the end of my career, I, was philosophical enough to realise in my heart of hearts that I was more sinned against than sinning. For the time being I was doomed to vanish from the world, and when, they sent me to Wormwood Scrubs Prison I received an amount of flattering attention somewhat humorous in its way. Never before in the history of Wormwood Scrubs had an ex-millionaire been received there. Everyone treated me deferentially, and expressed a sympathy which went a long way towards consoling me in my sorrow and humiliation.” Ex-Millionaire’s Philosophy. Ernest Terah Hooley, as he reveals himself in his “Confessions,” is an unprincipled rogue, yet he is ever a cheerful philosopher. “My trouble, like that of other men,” he wrote, was that I fondly imagined I could go on making money for ever. Prudence should have told me there was only a certain amount of money in the country for speculative purposes, and that I might be, considered to have had my share . . . One way find another, over a busy business life of something like fifty years, I suppose I have made £15,000,000 for myself. Where has it all gone? My family have not got it. despite innumerable reports to the contrary. If I should die the day this story is printed by will would not be worth proving . . . People say even to-day that I have a fortune hidden away somewhere, but the only reply I can "make to this is that I wish they would find it for me. “There is just one person in this world to whom I would like to pay tribute, and if I were a foreigner I might very well call him ‘Master,’ ” wrote Hooley in the final chapter of his “Confessions.” “This is no other than my old friend Horatio Bottomley, now, alas, languishing behind prison walls. (He was released in 1927 on the completion of a sentence of seven years). I shall never forget the last time I saw him. It was in Wormwood Scrubs Prison, just prior to my removal to Parkhurst. I, the ex-millionaire, was engaged in pushing a wheelbarrow with a party of men going out to work. Passing by the exercise ward, who should I see but another companion in misfortune, like myself (a light of other days, no other than my old-time colleague, Horatio Bottomley. He was pacing up and down the yard, looking the picture of dejection, while I, who have always been able to take the rough with the smooth, was in my usual cheerful frame of mind.

“‘Buck up, B.!’ I shouted as I passed by. “But Bottomley did not reply. He just grunted, and went walking up and down, possibly without giving a thought to the somewhat tragic spectacle of the two millionaires renewing their acquaintances as unwilling guests of His Majesty the King. Well, he has fallen into the trap he so often set for other people, and he mustn’t complain. I take off my hat to him as the cleverest fellow J have ever known. If he had managed to keep straight there was nothing in the world he could not have done.” Some of these millionaire financiers who involved thousands of small investors in. their ruin spent money recklessly in luxurious living, while the money flowed in; but others, even in the days of their greatest prosperity, lived with extreme modesty in suburban homes. Those who made no display with other people’s money include Jabez Balfour, whose bankrupt building societies accumulated liabilities exceeding ,£8,000.000; Alfred Carpenter, the founder of the Charing Cross Bank, which closed its doors with a deficiency of over £1,500,000; and Thomas Farrow, the founder of Farrow’s Bank, which had 75 branches throughout Great Britain. Among the reckless spenders were Ernest Terah Hooley, Whitaker Wright and Gerald Loo Bevan.

Hooley, in his prime, was a handsome man of commanding presence,

and a most persuasive tongue, and spent a great deal in playing the part of a country squire. He spent £250,000 in improvements in his country estate, Papworth Hall, Cambridgeshire and ho paid big prices for pedigree cattle. He bought a yacht for £50,000, and having no use for it, gave it away to one of his friends. He claimed in his “Confessions” that no one was ever as generous to churches and charities as he, and that his total disbursements in these directions reached almost £1,000,000. He paid away hundreds of thousands of pounds in the purchase of pictures and £50,000 for bronzes. A Palatial Home.

But the most lavish spender among tho millionaire financiers was Whitaker Wright. Mr S. T. Fclstead, in his biography of Sir Richard Muir, who appeared as counsel for Whitakei Wright in the trial that resulted in his conviction and subsequent suicide, says of the millionaire: “The great pride of his life was his palatial home, Lea Park, Godaiming, a place which he -bought for £250,000, and upon which he spent another million in ornamenting the grounds to his liking. It was like the Aladdin’s palace of England. Placid silvery sheets of water dotted with gleaming white statuary, graced the far-stretching grounds, with tho mansion perched on a hill in the foreground, and approached by a long succession of terraces, which indeed made Lea Park a veritable palace. Ho had bought the place in 1896, and for over three years he lavished a foitune on it. Hills, terraces and lakes were all made by hand under his -direction. On one occasion he rang up a firm of contractors and ordered them to send immediately 500 workmen to do something he fancied. If all his ambitious' schemes had been put into being, they would have taken twelve years to complete. He designed artificial lakes, hand-made hills, imitation chasms and lifelike grottoes. With a wave of the hand ho ordered thd removal of an existing lake, with a nod of the head requested a hill to bo taken away and put in another place. Under the surface of the larger artificial lake he built a conservatory with a glass roof, so that in the summer time he could bask under the lake and keep cool. “The people who visited him at Lea Park underwent all manner of amazing experiences. Entering one of the boats on the big lake, the visitor passed through a chasm and eventually arrived in a. fairy-like cavern. Steps hewn out of the rocks led to hidden galleries, where the amazed visitor suddenly discovered gorgeous Oriental decorations and rare statuary. Whitaker Wright could never resist buying marble fountains. < He had one carved out of a solid block of marble, weighing 60 tons, so heavy indeed that no railway could carry it, and eventually it had to be dragged to Lea Park by traction engines. Italian sculptors by the dozen were brought to England to make fountains for him, and if all had gone well with him, there is no doubt they would have continued doing so to this day. Inside the house had been built a private theatre, which cost him £15,000. There were stables for 50 horses, the ceilings of which had moulded in relief scenes of the chase! Around this marvellous estate he built a wall 14 miles in length, and it would be no exaggeration to say that it was easily the finest private residence in the world. Half the aristocracy in England. and even Royalty, were his guests.” The dazzling careers of Ernest Terah Hooley and Whitaker Wright made a strong appeal to Mr H. G. Wells, and he drew on both of them for his portrait of Uncle Ponderevo in “Tono Bungay.” The father of the two Clissold boys in “The Story of William Clissold,” is a financier who acquired great wealth, and like Whitaker Wright, when placed in the dock and found guilty of fraud, committed suicide rather than serve his sentence.