Fraudsters and Charlatans (28 page)

Despite these setbacks, in 1919 he was once again entertaining in style at the Midland Grand Hotel. This time it was the boom in cotton that had attracted his attention, and he floated Jubilee Cotton Mills Ltd, a company whose failure landed him in court once again in 1922 on charges of conspiracy to defraud. He was sentenced to three years in prison and became bankrupt for the third time.

Martin Rucker's career had also declined. The large sums he had received during his association with Hooley were squandered in unwise specula-tions, and he became a commission agent selling patents from an office in Fenchurch Street. In 1905 he filed for bankruptcy. He died in 1922, aged 67.

When Hooley came out of Parkhurst in 1924 he declared that if he had his time over again he would live the same life. He saw himself as a great public benefactor: ‘if I had done a certain amount of harm to my fellow-beings, at any rate I had also done a very considerable amount of good.'
⁶⁶
‘I am the man who put cycling all over the world,' he claimed,
⁶⁷
and by setting the fashion of appointing ornamental directors, ‘I saved many a noble family from ruin.'
⁶⁸
Even in prison he had obtained some consolation from the thought that ‘I had left my mark on the history of the world. . . . I boomed the pneumatic tyre, I had a great deal to do with the coming into being of the motor car. . . . it was I who established Bovril as a world-wide food.'
⁶⁹

Hooley's actual impact on society, stated the editor of
Money
, was that ‘thousands of investors are now saddled with shares bought at a high price which are now either unsaleable or only realisable at alarming discounts'. He continued:

The common type of the genus promoter is a plausibly clever person, of small education, and a large amount of self-conceit. He deals in but one commodity – money – the very lowest form of industry. His plan of operations is to buy something – it does not matter what – at a very low price, and to sell it for a high one. He may pose as the heaven sent friend of the inventor or as the man who lays the foundation of a new industry. In reality he adds nothing to the world's wealth, nor one iota to its productiveness. . . . His one mistake is that he never knows when to stop.
⁷⁰

Hooley continued dealing in a small way almost to the end of his life, although his final years saw him in very reduced circumstances. No longer the owner of a landed estate, he had returned to his roots and was living at 197 College Street, Long Eaton. His fourth and final examination for bankruptcy took place shortly after his eightieth birthday, when he cut a somewhat pathetic figure. Reminded of his glory days, he commented: ‘I have descended in the financial world since then.'
⁷¹
He was still running a small property-dealing business five years later. He died in 1947, aged 88.

Whether the public learned caution from Hooley and his like is doubtful. The editor of
Money
further commented: ‘When the Hooley fiasco has been forgotten the next big promoter will be able to do the same thing, and to do it with impunity. A new generation of investors will have arisen who knew not Hooley, and the same game will be played out with another set of puppets.'
⁷²

EIGHT

The Greatest Liar on Earth

I
n the spring of 1898 a thin, shabbily dressed middle-aged man visited the Southampton Street offices of the
Wide World Magazine
. With him he had a letter of introduction from Australian-born John (later Sir John) Henniker Heaton MP, which he presented to the editor, William Fitzgerald. His name, declared the visitor, was Louis de Rougemont. Timidly, he said he understood that the magazine published true stories of adventure and wondered if his was of any interest. He thought not, as unfortunately he had nothing in writing. The stranger was sunburnt, with piercing eyes set in a rugged, heavily lined face, and Fitzgerald, sensing that the man might have a story worth hearing, invited him to stay. He was not disappointed. Once launched into his tale, de Rougemont had a dramatic and eloquent manner of speaking which at once commanded attention. He spoke of the mysterious silent spaces of uncharted Australia, dangerous exploits by land and sea, and almost thirty years spent in the wilderness living with tribes of cannibals. Surviving shipwreck, battles, thirst and disease, he had become a great chief, taken an aboriginal wife, rescued two white girls from the doom of a horrible slavery, discovered a lost explorer and wandered the most inhospitable wastes known to man.

Exciting as this was, Fitzgerald did not at once rush into print. The
Wide World Magazine
, an ‘illustrated monthly of true narrative, adventure, customs and sport', had commenced publication in April, with the motto ‘Truth is Stranger than Fiction' and the promise ‘There will be no fiction in the magazine, but yet it will contain stories of weird adventure, more thrilling than any conceived by the novelist in his wildest flights'.
¹
The first edition contained such articles as ‘The Romance of Seal Hunting' and ‘Queer Sights in China'. The founder, Sir George Newnes, had made his name with
Tit-Bits
in 1881, an instant popular success, and had followed this with the
Review of Reviews
and
Strand Magazine
. He had an instinctive appreciation of what the general reader would enjoy: it was he who had recognised the potential of the Sherlock Holmes stories and bought up every one for the
Strand
. He was sent so many articles about foreign adventure that he realised that there was enough interest and material for another periodical; and so the
Wide World Magazine
was born.

Questioned at length in the Southampton Street offices, de Rougemont remained consistent and convincing, but before publication it was essential to test the truth of his story. Fitzgerald, with no expert knowledge of his own, now made his first serious error. He called in Dr John Scott Keltie and Dr Hugh R. Mill, respectively the secretary and librarian of the Royal Geographical Society, to interview de Rougemont and verify his tale. Unfortunately, neither of these eminent men had visited Australia or had expertise in Australian geography or anthropology. They met de Rougemont several times, conversing with him for about two hours on each occasion, and finally expressed their opinion that he could have acquired his knowledge of the region and its people only through personal experience.

Over a period of weeks, de Rougemont made regular visits to the offices of
Wide World Magazine
, recounting his story, which was recorded in shorthand and subsequently became a series of ten articles. While it was never divulged how much he was paid for his memoirs, from that time on de Rougemont no longer looked shabby and was able to dine in style.

The first instalment appeared in issue number five, dated August 1898, which went on sale in the third week of July. ‘The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont' was given the status of a leading article, which the editor introduced as

the most amazing story a man ever lived to tell. . . . it will be obvious that after his thirty years' experience as a cannibal chief in the wilds of unexplored Australia, his contributions to science will be simply above all price. He has already appeared before such eminent geographical experts as Dr J. Scott-Keltie [
sic
] and Dr Hugh R. Mill, who have heard his story and checked it by means of their unrivalled collection of latest reports, charts and works of travel. These well-known experts are quite satisfied that not only is M de Rougemont's narrative perfectly accurate, but that it is of the very highest scientific value. . . . we have absolutely satisfied ourselves as to M de Rougemont's accuracy in every minute particular.
²

Keltie and Mill were a little alarmed to see their names used in this way, since neither of them had vouched for the accuracy of every detail of de Rougemont's story as suggested by the overenthusiastic editor; nevertheless, they saw no reason to doubt the astonishing tale that was unfolding.

De Rougemont claimed to have been born in Paris in 1844, where his father was ‘a prosperous man of business'.
³
He stated that he had later moved to Switzerland, where he learned English from English schoolboys. At the age of 19 he left home to travel in search of adventure. In Singapore he joined the pearl-fishing expedition of the Dutchman Peter Jensen, in a 40-ton schooner, the
Veielland
, with forty Malay divers who worked from small ‘cockleshell' boats, and a dog called Bruno. After a busy season they had amassed pearls to the value of £50,000 and 30 tons of oyster shells. The greatest enemy of the divers was the ‘dreaded octopus'.
⁴
One man, pursued in the water by an immense black specimen, scrambled back into his boat, when ‘to the horror of the onlookers it extended its great flexible tentacles, enveloped the entire boat, man and all, and then dragged the whole down into the crystal sea'.
⁵
The illustrator Alfred Pearse, guided by de Rougemont's description, obliged the reader with a dramatic picture of a man in the grip of an octopus very much larger than himself. Calling at New Guinea to replenish stores, Jensen offended the tribesmen, and soon the schooner was under attack from twenty fully equipped war canoes, the men armed with bows and arrows. Battle ensued, but the guns and grapeshot of the pearlers drove the natives away. One fateful morning in July 1864 de Rougemont had been left on the schooner with only Bruno for company while Jensen and the Malays fished for pearls, when a hurricane swept away his companions and carried off the sails and much of the deck structures of the ship, including the wheel. Left ‘alone on a disabled ship in the limitless ocean'
⁶
with little experience of seamanship, de Rougemont was nevertheless able to make repairs and sail the craft single-handed for two weeks. Drawn close to some rocks, he feared he would be wrecked, but he was able to push the 40-ton boat with its 30 tons of oyster shells away from the rocks with a single oar. He survived another native attack, this time with boomerangs, but the ship finally foundered on a reef, and, swimming for a sand-spit, the adventurer was saved by the indefatigable and faithful Bruno, who first pulled him along by his hair and then allowed his master to grasp the end of his tail in his teeth and tugged him along, a feat that did not in any way impede his ability to swim. The desolate sand-spit, 100yd long by 10yd wide, was to be their home for the next two and a half years. De Rougemont built a small boat, but he would not entrust it to the open sea. Recovering stores from the ship, he was able to build a house from oyster shells, plant corn in a turtle shell containing sand moistened with turtle blood, eat fish caught for him by obliging pelicans and condense an adequate supply of fresh drinking water from a single kettle.

I also played the part of Neptune in a very extraordinary way. I used to wade out to where the turtles were, and on catching a big six hundred pounder, I would calmly sit astride on his back. Away would swim the startled creature, mostly a foot or so below the surface. When he dived deeper I simply sat far back on the shell, and then he was forced to come up. I steered my queer steeds in a curious way. When I wanted my turtle to turn to the left, I simply thrust my foot into his right eye, and
vice-versâ
for the contrary direction. My two big toes placed simultaneously over both his optics caused a halt so abrupt as almost to unseat me.
⁷

This first thrilling instalment ended with the arrival on the sand-spit of a catamaran carrying unconscious human figures. The editor inserted an additional notice saying that ‘The Adventures' were ‘a serial of unique importance and interest, which will run for several months. You would therefore do well to order subsequent copies in advance.'
⁸

There was no doubt that
Wide World Magazine
had struck gold with ‘The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont'. The sensational stories, written in a bold confident and eminently readable style, appealed to readers of all ages and all walks of life. It was as if a genuine Robinson Crusoe had returned to civilisation with thrilling tales made all the more compelling by being true, and, better still, the man himself was actually living in their very midst. The magazine was soon deluged with enquiries from people wanting to see the adventurer in the flesh. Anyone who could pack a lecture hall was assured of a good income, and Fitzgerald could also see that the popularity of his new discovery would boost sales of the magazine. Carried away on a roller-coaster of enthusiasm, neither he, de Rougemont or Newnes stopped to consider the wisdom of leaping from the world of popular consumer science into the more stringent realms of academia. If de Rougemont's tales had remained as articles, all might have gone well; had he ventured only into the public lecture halls, his career would have been rather longer than it in fact turned out to be. Fitzgerald's error was to offer two de Rougemont talks to the annual conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which was to take place in September in Bristol; and the Association's error was to accept them.

At the end of August a second instalment of ‘The Adventures' was printed, even more fascinating than the first. Once de Rougemont had restored the natives on the catamaran to health (a woman called Yamba, her husband and two boys), the home-made boat was got into trim, and, leaving the pearls buried in the sand-spit, they were able to return to the mainland, where de Rougemont's life with the tribe was to commence. A huge feast was prepared in his honour, and he was offered a native wife, a young girl, but it was Yamba whose intelligence and resourcefulness had impressed him and he offered his new wife to her husband in exchange:

Ah! Noble and devoted creature! The bare mention of her name stirs every fibre of my being with love and wonder. Greater love than hers no creature ever knew, and not once but a thousand times did she save my wretched life at the risk of her own.
⁹