Fraudsters and Charlatans (32 page)

Louis de Rougemont (Grin never resumed his true name) continued to capitalise on his adventure stories for the rest of his life. On 12 April 1899
The Times
advertised that he would give two lectures at the Crystal Palace on Monday next at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. on his life and adventures among the cannibal blacks of Australia, illustrated by lantern slides. Seats were available for as little as 6
d
. It is not known how he was received, but perhaps it did not go well, since he soon declined from serious lecturer to vaudeville act.

On 16 March 1901 he appeared at the Bijou Theatre, Melbourne. The performance was not a success. ‘M de Rougemont . . . has probably never had a less enjoyable five minutes than he spent on the stage on Saturday evening,'
⁷²
commented the Melbourne
Argus
. ‘The audience was intolerant from the outset. . . . De Rougemont was billed to tell no fewer than 25 wonderful stories, but he told none. The audience did not want them. The prospect of sitting still while 25 stories were told, even by de Rougemont, was too much.'
⁷³
The audience was so vocal that he was hardly audible. ‘The gallery was boisterous and rude, and kept up a running fire of comment. . . The storm grew and howled around him. From above, a pitiless hail of rude interjections smote and stung him, while the thunder of stamping feet pealed ominously.'
⁷⁴
Finally, someone in the wings suggested he leave the stage, which he did.

The following week he appeared at the Tivoli Theatre, Sydney, which advertised:

Come and hear the greatest liar on earth.
The world famous
Louis de Rougemont
⁷⁵

The
Sydney Morning Herald
observed that ‘the theatre was not by any means crowded', but he was ‘received with good-natured tolerance'
⁷⁶
by an audience determined to treat him as a joke.

In the next few years de Rougement's movements are unknown, but in July 1906 he was back in England, appearing at the Hippodrome for one week only, billed as ‘The Modern Robinson Crusoe'
⁷⁷
and demonstrating turtle riding in a large tank of water, to prove that what he had always claimed was possible.

Writer and traveller The Hon. Sir John Kirwan saw one such performance. A turtle was placed in a huge rubber tank filled with water, which was placed in the arena. When de Rougemont appeared he presented a comic spectacle. He was partly bald, what hair he had was grey, and he wore a rug or blanket over his shoulders. He was in a bathing suit, which revealed his thin legs. Most of those present laughed, and some hissed, but he maintained his dignity. The remarkable piercing blue eyes slowly surveyed the audience, then in a calm and clear voice that could be heard distinctly throughout the building he said quietly and impressively, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am an old man.'
⁷⁸
There was a sudden and complete silence. Those who had mocked him began to feel ashamed, and they listened respectfully. After a pause he added:

More than threescore of years have passed over my head. [He was actually 59.] Throughout my long life I have met with many misfortunes, but the greatest of all my misfortunes was when I ventured to write down the experiences and adventures that befell me. They were strange – so much stranger than fiction – that those who could not judge said they were untrue. I said that when living on an island I amused myself by riding turtles in the water. They jeered and said it could not be done. I am old, and my strength is not what it was, my limbs have lost the suppleness of youth, but still I am prepared to show you that I can do it.
⁷⁹

He slipped in the water, took hold of the turtle and then

there was a fearful splashing, a struggle went on, but whether de Rougemont was riding the turtle or the turtle de Rougemont was not quite clear. One second the bald crown of the man's head was on top, but a second later it was below the water and the turtle's head showed up. And so it went on. Judged by points I should say the turtle won, though occasionally de Rougemont had the best of the contest.
⁸⁰

In June 1921, aged 74, Louis de Rougemont was admitted to Kensington Infirmary under the name Louis Redman. He died on 9 June, and was buried five days later in Kensal Green Roman Catholic Cemetery.

NINE

The Juggler with Millions

O
n 17 December 1900 the shareholders of the London and Globe Finance Corporation (Globe) assembled at Winchester House for their fourth annual general meeting. They were in restive mood. The company's financial year had ended on 30 September, yet the meeting that should have been held soon afterwards had been unaccountably delayed, and one shareholder demanded to know if the present assembly was legal, since he had received the directors' report only that morning. Globe's main business was speculating in mining properties, especially those of Western Australia, which, since a rich seam of gold had been discovered in Kalgoorlie in 1895, was a hugely popular investment in Britain. It was nevertheless a volatile market. Investors were at the mercy of inflated and sometimes falsified reports of output and rumours of mismanagement or difficulties in extraction, which caused the price of shares to rise or fall dramatically. In June 1899
The Economist
had commented that until it was possible to get more reliable information from the mines the market ‘would remain a medium for gambling rather than for investment'.
¹

By December 1900 confidence in mining shares was on the wane, while the heavy expense of war in South Africa had depreciated the stock market. Globe had an additional problem. In 1897 it had signed a contract with the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway. Incorporated in 1873, the company had been formed to build a new line linking north and south London, but had since remained virtually dormant from lack of funding. Globe appointed a builder, and work started in August 1898. In two years it had incurred expenditure of £750,000, which it could ill afford. The delayed meeting had only hardened suspicions that the company was in difficulties. Nevertheless, one glance at the members of the Board of Directors must have inspired confidence. In the chair was the highly respected Marquess of Dufferin and Ava. Born in 1826, he had devoted himself to a life of public service: he was a past Governor General of Canada, Viceroy of India and had served as Ambassador in St Petersburg, Constantinople, Rome and Paris. Although he had retired in 1896, he could not bear to be idle. In the following year, despite failing eyesight and hearing, he had accepted the chairmanship of Globe. The other eminent men on the board were Lieutenant-General the Hon. Somerset J. Gough-Calthorpe and Lord Edward Pelham-Clinton, son of the Duke of Newcastle. All these gentlemen had three things in common. Their impeccable reputations inspired enormous public confidence in the company, they knew very little about high finance, and they could be relied upon to rubber stamp decisions made by the managing director, Whitaker Wright, without asking any awkward questions. They were what was known in the financial parlance of the day as ‘guinea pigs'. The real power in the company was, however, no less inspiring. Whitaker Wright was a self-made millionaire. He had gone to America, dirtied his hands and risked his life in the goldfields of the Wild West and used his experience to make a fortune. Now aged 54, he looked every inch the man of money. There is no picture of him in his youth, but if he had ever been slender, then good living had swelled him to unattractively corpulent proportions. His body was round and fleshy, his head overlarge even for that huge frame, with small eyes peering though gold-rimmed pince-nez spectacles, and thick rolls of fat around his neck that bulged over his starched collar. This was a man who enjoyed the good things of life in abundance.

The chairman's opening remarks were made, according to
The Times
, ‘during the prevalence of some disorder in the body of the hall',
²
but his experience as an orator, his ‘scholarly, elegant and persuasive'
³
style, ensured that the mood soon settled. Unknown to his listeners, Dufferin's speech was composed entirely from notes made by Whitaker Wright. The company, he said, had not been able to escape the ‘severe financial depression, in consequence of the war in South Africa',
⁴
but the efforts of the board once again to place the company on a prosperous footing had enabled it to present a balance sheet showing a substantial profit. The shares held in mining companies stood at £2,332, 632 even after writing off a large amount for loss and depreciation. The building and equipping of the railway had absorbed a great deal of funds, and the balance at the bank was only £113,671, not enough to recommend the payment of a dividend. The company was negotiating with a syndicate that wanted to buy out the investment. The mines, however, were showing good returns, with every sign that profitable production was on the increase. By now, Dufferin had the meeting on his side, and when he said that, while it was unpleasant to pay no dividend, sometimes it was necessary, and that ‘it was the only honest course to follow',
⁵
he was greeted with shouts of ‘hear hear' from the floor. He raised a laugh by adding that the directors would suffer also, since when there were no dividends there were no fees. By the time he had finished there was no doubt that the meeting would unanimously re-elect him as chairman.

Whitaker Wright then rose to answer questions, the hint of northern burr in his deep voice overlaid with an American accent. Immediately he received vociferous complaints about the lateness of the balance sheet, and one shareholder demanded that the meeting be adjourned to 7 January. Although seconded, this motion was overlooked when the final vote was taken. Wright declared that the investments had been written down as low as possible, and if the railway could be disposed of it would not be long before the company could resume paying dividends. This announcement was greeted with cheers from the floor. The meeting formally adopted the report and ended on a note of optimism, with a vote of thanks to the chairman and directors. The failure to pay a dividend wiped £800,000 off the market value of the company's most prized shareholding, Lake View Consols, but on 19 December the
Financial Times
advised its readers that, in view of favourable reports on the mine's performance, they should hold on to their shares and await developments. Only nine days later, however, it was announced that the company had been unable to meet its liabilities on the Stock Exchange and was going into liquidation. Over the next few months the whole precarious structure that was the Whitaker Wright group of companies collapsed in ruin.

Whitaker Wright's father, James, was born in Macclesfield. As a Methodist minister he was required to serve in a succession of ministries, so the family moved about the country, and each of his five children was born in a different county. The oldest son was James Whittaker Wright (‘Whittaker' being his mother Matilda's maiden surname), who was born on 9 February 1846 in Stafford.
⁶
He rarely used his first name and later lost one ‘t' from ‘Whittaker'. It is not surprising that many years later Whitaker Wright was unable to recall where he had been born, and believed that he was, like his parents, a native of Cheshire.

At the time of the 1861 census the Wright family was living in Ripon, and 16-year-old James was a printer. He is the main source of information about his early life, and in view of his later reputation for exaggeration, evasion of truth and downright lies, his account should be viewed with some caution. Young men of ambition saw America as a land rich in opportunities, and after the death of his father, James sailed there in 1867, armed with little more than £100 and an interest in inorganic chemistry. Gold was the magnet that drew him to the West, where he set up in business as an assayer and used his profits to speculate in mining properties. It was a time when fortunes could be made and lost with spectacular rapidity, but the life of a miner in the American West could be rough and dangerous. Years later James told the story of how, when prospecting in Idaho, he had given a plug of tobacco to the wife of an Indian camping near his hut. Later, when a party of Indians threatened to kill him, the woman persuaded them to go. Whether or not this was true, Whitaker Wright was looking for a less precarious existence, and moved to Philadelphia.

Finding company promotion more to his taste than mining, he launched the Sierra Grande Silver Mine Company and the Colorado Coal and Iron Company. At first these ventures were successful, and he boasted that he was a millionaire at the age of 31, President of the Philadelphia Mining Exchange and a member of the Consolidated Stock Exchange of New York, but after the profits shrank and turned into losses and one of his companies failed, he sensed that it was time to move on. He returned to England in 1889 with his American wife, 27-year-old Anna Edith, and their three children.

Opening a small office in Copthall Avenue, he launched a number of small mining companies. These ventures did not work the mines but used shareholders' capital to acquire the companies that did, the object being to sell the investments at a profit. Depreciation in American securities saw his fortunes disappear, but then came the Australian boom. In 1894 he launched West Australian Exploration and Finance Corporation and in the following year London and Globe Finance Corporation, with a modest share capital of £200,000 each. By then the craze for mining speculation was in full swing, and there were eager buyers for the shares. Twenty mines he promoted proved ultimately to be worthless, but in 1896 he floated Lake View Consols, and when the mine struck a rich seam of ore and the company started to pay handsome dividends, he rapidly acquired a reputation as a financial genius. His next venture, the Ivanhoe mine, also gave rich returns, and investors were eager to participate in anything bearing the name of Whitaker Wright. The journalist Raymond Radclyffe, who travelled the goldfields of Western Australia and wrote about them in 1898, described the huge reserves of gold to be found at the Lake View and Ivanhoe mines, each of which he estimated could yield almost £1,000,000 worth of gold a year: ‘they are a standing tribute to the acumen and ability of Mr Whitaker Wright.'
⁷
Of Wright, he stated that ‘no man in the City of London has a higher reputation for financial ability and business integrity. . . . [he] is something more than a mere financier and is no “juggler with millions”. His practical mining experience on the goldfields . . . has been of the highest value to himself and those associated with him in his ventures.'
⁸