London Gossip.

Hastings Standard, Issue 436, 27 September 1897, Page 4

London Gossip.

(Auckland Stab Correspondent)

Lonl>on, August 7

THE JUBILEE SYNDICATE

Some r; facts and figures have been published this week in connection with the big Jubilee syndicates which came to such signal grief on June 22. The Amalgamated Syndicate bad a capital of £BO,OOO, of which the secretary avers £69,000 was paid up. The directors secured sites for stands, &c., at the Royal Adelaide Gallery, Grand Restaurant, the Adelphi, the Vaudeville, the Adelphi restaurant, the Queen's Head, the Tivoli, Romane's Restaurant, 121 Pall Mall, 154 Cheapside, 34 Poultry, and several places in Cheapside, for which they pa'id £25,670. On the top of that they had to pay heavily for the erection of stands. Before long the directors found the demand for seats was slow indeed, and then came the dreadful slump. Consequently the Friday before the Jubilee found the syndicate with about 3700 seats on their hands and these were balloted for by the shareholders. One room for which they asked £SOO they gladly let for 50 guineas. They also lost heavily on refreshments. They laid in a good stock of eatables, thinking that if the other seatholders did not purchase the shareholders would, but alas not £lO was taken in that department —the people either brought their own food or when the procession had passed coolly walked to cafes or restaurants in the neighborhood. The losses of this enterprise amount to nearly two-thirds of the entire capital. The Commemoration Syndicate subscribed £34,515 capital and paid for sites nearly that amount. The following table shows the prices paid for sites and the amounts received for tickets', but omits, it will be observed, the cost of erecting the stands : Paid for Sites. Received. Goodman's (St. Paul's Churchyard) ... £7,000 £329 19 6 Wanderers Club, Pall Mall 7,350 1,847 4 3 Strakers, Ludgate Hill 3,000 738 7 0 Arlington Street ... 650 17 17 0 King, Lud 2,000 210 16 0 Land and Water Offices ... ... 650 77 2 3 Morning Post Building 1,500 618 2 0 Weingott'a corner of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill ... 500 244 7 0 In addition the directors acquired some sites in the Borough High street and engaged Dollond's roof in Ludgate Hill and the Press Restaurant in Fleet street. They also secured the option of Mr A. B. Pearce's buildings in Ludgate Hill for £2OOO, but did not complete, thus forfeiting their deposit of £SOO. Further they took three lodging houses for the week for the accomn o"'a'ion of expected visitors, but the takings only amounted to £2 10s. Two thousand five hundred and fifty pounds alone was paid to Messrs Maple for the seats and decorations provided at the Wanderers' Club, and £6OOO was expended in insuring Her Majesty's life for £40,000 and against the possible contingency of the procession not taking place. The total receipts came to £4982 17s 6d and the expenditure to over £40,000, or an excess of loss over capital subscribed of some £3OOO. I notice that the promoters of these precious speculations attribute their losses entirely to the alarmist articles in the Press during the first weeks of June. That, of course, is nonsense. The papers no doubt did frighten many away, but there were enough of us left to fill the stands en route twice over had the syndicates been less greedy. At prices ranging from 10s to two guineas seats would have sold like hot cakes. But asking £5, £lO, and £ls for single ehairs —as the syndicates did to begin with—fairly stalled the public off. THE ROYAL DIAMOND JUBILEE SYNDICATE. It is extraordinary how prevalent and widespread was the belief that large sums were to be made out of the Jubilee " boom," and how greedily certain classes of the community grasped at them. Every day fresh instances are exposed. Last Saturday, for example, two men named Culliford and Fenn were charged at the Mansion House with defrauding a domestic servant named Catherine Dormer out of £lO, the savings of three years. The prisoners were the promoters of the Royal Jubilee syndicate, which proposed (like so many others) to make a fortune out of the 22nd June and to return its subscribers glorious dividends. Miss Dormer swore that about the 7th of April last she received a prospectus relating to the Royal Diamond Jubilee Syndicate. It took her fancy and she wrote to Mr J. H. Stewart, the secretary of the syndicate, enclosing a post office order for £lO for 10 shares. She afterwards received a receipt for the £lO. She had not, however, received any letters of allotment for tickets for seats. On the 18th of June she w r ent, accompanied by Detective Inspector Downes, of the City Police, to an office on the third floor of No. 1, Fenchurch street. The name of the Royal Diamond Jubilee Syndicate was on the door. They endeavored to obtain admission but found that the door .was locked and there was a notice thereon stating that tickets wouid be issued shortly, and for further particulars application was to be made to an address in Chancery Lane. Detective Inspector Downes spoke of having made inquiries in reference to the syndicate. On 31st of March, 1897, a man giving the name of Joseph Stew r art opened an account at the Economic Bank, The account remained open until the 29th May, when it was closed at the request of the bank. £2231 16s 4d passed through the account, which would seem to indicate that a goodly crowd must have succumbed to the seducth e advertisement. The Lord Maj-o:

could not see his way to grant the enterprising promoters bail.

KLONDIKE GOLD

Those interested in the Westralian and South African, not to the New Zealand Gold fields, are icing extremely cunr over the reports of the tremendous discoveries in British Columbia. If there should prove to be even a fair proportion of truth in them we are in for a big Canadian company-promoting boom next summer. Reuter's agent at Victoria (8.A.) is sending along roseate pictures of the Klondike placers which, he says, appear to be the richest ever found. Their actual extent is unknown, but the total areas of the auriferous region in Canada in which they are situated extends to nearly a quarter of a million square miles. Dr Dawson, of the Geological Survey, classed this whole area alike, and gold-bearing gravels have been found in the bed of every stream. These great finds are in Canadian territory, being from 75 to 100 miles east of 141 meridian, the boundary of Alaska. They are reached from this city by steamer to the head of Lynn Canal, thence over a mountain range to the head waters of the Yukon, and onward from that point down stream. The distance from Victoria to the head of Lynn Canal is 1034 miles ; across the pass it is thirty-six miles, and the further journey down stream is 530 miles. An ocean steamer is run to the head of the canal and the mountains are crossed by the White Pass, which has just been opened by the British Yukon Company. This part of the journey occupies two days. The highest elevation is 2600 feet. Horses can go the entire distance. The journey occupies from four to six weeks, but with picked men and light canoes the distance from the Lynn Canal to Klondike and back could be covered in six weeks. Every steamer going north is crowded and passages are being booked ahead far beyond the capacity of vessels. The last steamer for the mouth of the Yukon this season went north yesterday. She was crowded. This journey involves 1500 miles of steamer up river, and the entire distance is nearly 6000 miles from Victoria.