Frauds of the 19th Century – Our Next Event
Martin Hedges, well known to members from his talk last year on ‘The Miser and the Murderess’, will talk to us about Frauds of the 19th Century; this sounds absolutely fascinating, and as he says:
Panics, failures and frauds have always been with us. From Tulipmania and the South Sea Bubble to dotcoms, there are always con merchants to spin a yarn; so cheer the days when bankers were hanged for playing fast & loose with our money.
Martin’s book ‘The day they hanged a banker’ also sounds a tremendous read from the following summary:
A miscellany of tales of fraud from the 19th century onwards, which show that whatever we just lived through during the crisis of 2008, our forebears got shafted just the same. There have been Black Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays — there isn’t a day of the week that does not have a shadow over it, as greedy bankers, money magicians and downy-faced chancers seek to fleece investors. From the man that invented a country in Central America just so that he could lure pioneers to buy plots in a swamp, to the humble clerk — by day — who was a millionaire in the evenings and the weekends, to the man who was Ponzi before Ponzi. British crooks, American crooks, French crooks — they’re all here. Many of the stories are amusing, some are poignant. One at least is tragic, when a society banker caught robbing his clients had the dubious honour of being the last banker hanged in England.
I can’t wait, and look forward to seeing many of you in the Parish Room, at 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday 19th September, when we kick off our new events programme; its going to be great.
Martin Hedges
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