SUICIDE OF JIMMY WHITE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19720, 20 August 1927, Page 2 (Supplement)

SUICIDE OF JIMMY WHITE.

A JUGGLER IN FINANCE.

"LIFE A BIG FRAUD."

{STORIES TOLD, BY FRIENDS

LAST WORDS AND THOUGHTS

]Uanv stories are told in the London, papers of "Jimmv White," the 'juggler in finance," whose recent suicide created such a painful sensation in England. One writer who knew the deceased very intimately writes:—"lt is eight years since the memorable day when I. first met Jimmy White. He was then interested in a" brewery flotation. I was told I must meet him. I was taken to see him. I walked across his office to the table where he sat and in that interview the memorable feature for me was the fact that I was being gimleted through and through by the most pair of 'eves I have ever encountered. Violetblue' in colour, they seemed to penetrate my innermost thoughts. "Jimmy rose to greet me. T have two main objects in life ' he said, with the merest hint of a smile, beer and business. I am not interested m beer today. Let's talk business.' Later he told me- '\s a man crosses this room I can always tell before he reaches my desk if he is going to agree to my proposal or not.' ' ■ " If I were asked what was the secret of White's meteroic rise I would say that it was his flair for real estate deals. In this respect he had an intelligence service the intricacies of which I have never pretended to fathom. But if any property of value was to be sold Jimmy knew of it. Had he continued in real estate, had he lett the share market alone, he would have been a power still to-day. But his successes in that direction strengthened his belief in his own infallibility and lured him to his doom. "Jimmy's" Weird Lunches. "At the height of his career—as with Jabez Balfour, Whittaker Wright and Bottomley before him—he had gathered around him a circle which was dominated by his personality. He had no culture in /the ordinary sense of the word; often his speech was more vigorous than polite; and to the end he preserved his Lancashire accent. But his coterie believed in him—as he believed in himself.

"What a strange mixture of individuals it, was I His lunches at .the Beecham TruSt offices became a cult; you were considered to have lacked an experience if von had not been a guest. At any noon you might find round that table boxers, 4 financiers and playwrights. And I have a distinct memory of a politician—now a Cabinet Minister —present on one occasion drawing satisfaction from an excellent cigar and savouring the uniqueness of Jimmy White. "Jimmy's soles at those luncheons acquired a " fabulous reputation. He was in the habit of sending a man very early in the morning to Billingsgate Market to buy the finest soles that were on offer. Thev were brought back to the offices and'cooked on the spot. Jimmy at this meal drank ginger-beer. Wines were available, but it is tvpical of the watchfulness inspired by him that any guest there with a business project to discuss also confined himself to that innocuous beverage. Bludgeon Beaten by Rapier. "The last phase was marked by a battle which' Will become historic. It was a contest of giants, and—Jimmy White was riotquite big enough. Friendships of years' standing were destroyed; bitter enmity.was tKe sequel. Sir Edward Mkckay Edgar—Mike Edgar to his intimates—has assured me that he had no personal enmity to Jimmy White on the question of British Controlled Oil- / fields; that the enmity was solely on the side of Jimmy: Repeatedly. I told him he was wrong, said Sir Edward, but he refused to listen. I was out to save the company and I have saved it. One of us bad to "be beaten. It was Jimmy. I'm sorry-, truly- sorry. r "One never-to-be-forgotten evening tie plunged into the stronghold of his rivals, found them changing into dress clothes, cropped heavily into an armchair, and began to talk. His theme was: You are wrens ; I-shall- win. Now he was threaten- ' ing, now pleading. A soft-footed butler brought him a mixture of ginger-beer and port wine—to be replenished at intervals during the five hours he remained there. "All his forcefitlness, all his originality of invective, were brought into play. His audience attempted interpolations; he silenced these with a gesture and he talked on and on. It was early morning when he finally qnit—and in those five hours the men with whom he was arguing declare thev had not been able to interpect a single complete sentence. Effect of Burst of Bubble. "On the evening of his death I was with a financier and we were discussing the precise implications of the tragedy. What is there to meet his liabilities ? I asked. The financier walked to the mantelpiece, picked up a glass that rested there, and inverted it. A few drops fell to the carpet. That! he said. It is to be hoped that the effects are not so farreaching as the action inferred. None would be sorrier than the following which believed in Jimmy White to the extent in which he believed in himself —implicitly. If the disaster is as grave as conjectured, then not only will practically every servant at the hotels and public resorts and clubs he frequented suffer; not only will there be gloomy faces in Lancashire; but there will be anxious examination of passbooks in May fair itself. "Jimmy had succeeded in linking up all classes of his affaiis and fiom the pantry to the boudoir, from the cottage to the castle, the bursting of the bubble will be felt. He did nob possess the cold, frigid brain of the financier of fiction • he was too often brutal to inspire personal affection; he would scruple over the cost of one pair of silk stockings in a theatrical production ; but he was capable of a generous, really munificent lavishness to an individual whom he thought to be in need.

A " Jimmy White Atmosphere." "In many respects he was a quaint contradiction —'a card.' I have known him pause in the midst of business discussion in his office at Daly s Iheatie and call up the leading lady and an accompanist to try over some new songs that had been submitted on the small grand piano which was one of the furnishings of the room. And after repeated trials he has summarily dismissed the 'pros.' and resumed the business discussion from the point where it had been interrupted. My impression is that by these methods he sought to create 'a Jimmy White' atmosphere, to impose a pleasant haze over the mind of the man ho was dealing with, and thus modify inconvenient obstinacy. Frequently he was successful. fv

"He was difficult to teach: I doubt if he was willing to learn. He thought himself a super-bridge player; but he was not. Yet he preserved and framed — they hung on the walls of his theatre office —the scores of rubbers in which he had participated and in which the points bad amounted to thousands on a single game. He took a pride in these records, whereas to unprejudiced eyes they were simply monuments to his superb egoism

"Foxhili. I should imagine, was one such monument. On the gates leading 1 o that retreat there were plaques in' scribed 'J W ' and '1919.' There is a drive a quarter-mile in length winding to the house It was always trim and cleanly sanded, and he could never bear to see" a fallen leaf lying about Winter arid summer it be kept clear of leaves, and woe betide the gardener if Jvmrnv discovered a leaf marring its surface!

His energy was amazing; indeed, it was the most unique characteristic of this unique man. I have known him to be engaged in a deal until three in the morning, suddenly decide to go to Foxsnatch a brief sleep, and be at o clock to watch closely the' parade

of his horses. He was as fresh, as wide awake at the end of a 24-hours dav as at the beginning. He was fond of relating the story of his first deal —of how, a lad of 19, he. bought a circus at Rochdale for £IOO I suspect that from this original operation sprang his belief that he was what in Lancashire is known as a card.'

"As 'a card ' Jimmy preserved ais roughness of speech, his simplicity of dress and .taste; as ' a card ' he plunged where angels (financial) might fear to tread; and as ' a card ' he faded out. His last. letters which have been üblinhed are those of ' a card.' And it was ' the card ' in him which imagined his death —a dose of prussic acid to stiffen the muscles grasping the sponge saturated with chloroform on which his head collapsed in the bed om " Only in the last weeks did his superb self-confidence show signs of weakening. He approached a well-known magnate for a loan of £IOOO 1 to tide him over the week,' as he explained The magnate said: 'Not a thousand. Jimmy, that means Carey Street. £250,000 if you like; but clean up first and give me guarantees.' And it is possible that if Jimmy White had turned into Carey Street for the solution of his problems when he emerged there might have been several helping hands extended to lift him once again to a pedestal. Poor Jimmy White!" Another writer who describes himself as White's last interviewer, and one of the last to see him alive, says that the ruined gnmbler spoks as follows on the

evening before his death: —" lam fifty years of age, and I tell you life is a big fraud. What are we but a heap of hungry animals thrusting each other aside and climbing over each other ? Money ? I don't care a damn for money and never did. It is the excitement of the battle that gives me the only jov. And when I lose— here White broke off, and stared for a minute in front of him.

" When 1 lose," he resumed, in a calm voice, " I will go out. Don't be surprised at any time, if you hear of my death. Jimmy White will not live to accept sympathy for a beaten and broken man. I have had my triumphs and my fun. I have had some good friends and some rotten enemies. Some of them tried to use me, to get tips about my horses and tips about my deals. I have forgotten them. " I have had my regrets. Successful men have them more often than their enemies suppose. .There are many people I helped. I would have helped them more. They must do as I did, and fight their own battle."

An intimate friend writes: —"On Monday Jimmy, with the banks refusing him further credit, and all avenues of finance tried and failing, was like a madman. He was in his office that night with two of his closest associates —one is ruined, the other lost only a few thousands on the sale at a loss.pf 25.000 shares. "Jimmy said he'd shoot himself and half pulled open a drawer. One of his friends caught his arm and told him hot to be a fool. Next day his closest friends

made a last supreme effort, and it succeeded. A millionaire, whose name is worlo famous, and with whom Jimmy White had some big dealings—which were very beneficial to the millionaire—said : 'All right, I'll see him through.' "This was after dinner on Tuesday, jimmy then had taken a taxicab away from his office, and no one knew where ho had gone The good news awaited ,i in oui it was too late. He had already, with his nerve gone, taken a double dose of poison—a first dose of r.-'icsi. .-,oid and then a fatal dose of chloroform. " 1 lie determination of the man! Finding th'» prussic acid was not killing him quickly enough, he turned to the chloroform bottle by his bedside, soaked a sponge in it, and inhaled that, and so escaped into the mysterious shades from whence there is no return."