THE JUBILEE PLUNGER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11807, 9 August 1900, Page 6

THE JUBILEE PLUNGER.

Ernest Benzon, once notorious as the " Ju« bileo Plunger," has turned up again after a period of retirement.

According to Truth? Benzon made his appearance at Copenhagen early this year, and having made himself extremely popular with a number of people staying at the same hotel, borrowed various sums from, his new.-found acquaintances, and presently left them all lamenting.

After the hurried departure) of the entertaining Benzon, there was ample leisure in which to compare notes. It was found (says Truth) that he owed many small sums, including an item of £21 for his hotel bill. Perhaps the saddest man in Copenhagen was the one who, in a burst of friendly feeling, lent Benzon his valuable fur-lined overcoat.

Subsequent inquiries go to provo that prior to his appearance in Copenhagen Bcazon had "worked " Hamburg, Antwerp, and Brussels on the same system. At Hamburg his insane craving for other men's overcoats led him to appropriate a garment of that kind some few days before he left the city for good.

Ernest Benzon, as many are aware, flung away his fortune of a quarter of a million inside of two years, and then he was taken in hand by trustees appointed under his father's will. No sooner had he come into.possession of the money left him by his father, who was a merchant, than he began to fling his money in all directions. Every race meeting knew him, and his wild doings soon filled, columns of print. When his money was gone, he wrote a book, telling how he lost a quarter of a million.

One of the trustees the other day said to a press representative:

" I have lost sight of Benzon for some years; indeed, I am quite ignorant as to his whereabouts, and but for the exceedingly painful revelations to which my attention has been drawn, I should not even have known that he was on the Continent. I believe that a relation of his some time ago paid certain debts of his in Hamburg, a-nd that is all I know. He gets in interest about £1 a day, which would keep him, were he disposed to be respectable; but, alas! he is not. My own view, formed from experience of Ernest Benzon. during his boyhood, is that he has alwas^s been a little queer mentally, which may perhaps account for this new phase of his career."

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