DEBTORS EXTRAVAGANCE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18849, 11 April 1931, Page 7

DEBTORS EXTRAVAGANCE.

HAZARDOUS SPECULATION. Heavy losses in card playing and speculation were revealed at Liverpool Bankruptcy Court lately by Arthur Stanley Porter, of Southport, managing director of a cotton-waste firm at Wapping, Liverpool. He returned his total liabilities at £11,76, with no assets. Porter said his salary was £ISOO a year. About the end of 1923 he began to speculate in cotton futures, and in the first 12 months lost about £3OOO. These losses he met by surrendering insurance policies and borrowing money. As the losses continued he began to draw money from his company, to which, he w r as told, he was indebted to the extent of £4125. Although it was the company’s money he was using for his cotton deals, it was a one-man company. Since 1923 up to the date of the receiving order his total losses on the stock exchange and the cotton market had been about £15,000. Porter stated that he had indulged besides in horse racing and dog racing. In the former he did not think his losses were so very much, and in dog racing he had not lost anything. Occasionally he lost money by playing heavily at cards. The Official Receiver: Is it a fact that one June 20, 1928, you lost £146 10s at cards? Porter: A little more. I think it was £222, but I had made £230 the same day at Ascot. It was the evening of the race day that I played this game at the Waldorf Hotel. I had made £230 at the races and also money on some cotton in New York. Porter agreed that in the last two years he had lost £2840 in cotton and £IOB2 in horse racing, and his household and personal expenses in the same period had been £3833. He admitted extravagance in living at the rate of £I9OO a year and attributed his failure to rash and hazardous speculation. Asked why he did not give up his speculations he replied, “I w r as always pestered by cotton brokers’ touts.” Porter’s indebtedness also included £2644 lent by his wife, £1136 borrowed from friends and relatives, and £323 to two bookmakers.