Financial Crisis: Identifying the Victims

The extract shown here is from the book "Piccadilly to Pall Mall" by Ralph Nevill and Charles Edward Jerningham, Duckworth & Co, London, 1908. This date may not fit into your immediate idea of 'all things Victorian' but then the text is a retrospective critique which bemoans the lost values of the past! This theme is very common in Edwardian times with Nevill and Jerningham imposing a withering condemnation of "new money" with all the arrogance and pomposity of gentlemen from the Victorian old school of those born to rule.

"Nothing, indeed, more suited to the English love of making concessions to respectability could ever have been devised than this easy and discreet method of toying with the goddess of chance.

The delightful thing about all of this is that many who are really nothing but confirmed and habitual gamblers are genuinely ignorant of their infirmity, and though themselves speculating in the most regular manner, have the audacity to denounce others who have a taste for the racecourse or card-table - no doubt financially disastrous, but yet not tainted with much humbug or hypocrisy.

Gambling will always exist - life itself is a gamble. Chance regulates our entry into, and also our exit from, this vale of tears - much seems ruled by Chance.

All legislative attempts to stamp out speculations of no matter whatever sort are doomed to complete, and absolute,failure. Legislatures may pass ridiculous laws; ecclesiastics may fulminate; philosophers may deplore; but the instinct of speculation is ineradicably implanted in the human heart, from which not even the most drastic measures will ever extirpate it.

What remedy there lies in sensible regulation and well-conceived enactments to ensure undeviating and strict probity in all financial dealings, whether in speculation or investment; the public should be given a fair chance, and all doubtful transactions ruthlessly branded and exposed.

The mania for speculation reached a climax in the year 1895, when what is known as the South African boom took place. Many large fortunes were made then, and people went mad about the colossal possibilities of an apparently unlimited rise in the price of shares.

The British public were, of course, not behind-hand in joining in this financial revel, eventually burning its fingers, as usual. Out of its pocket, indeed, came more gold than from the mines of the African veldt, which have anything but realised the brilliant forecasts once so generally believed.

As the promoters of many a new company well knew, the gold in the pockets of the British public was more easily extracted than the ore hidden deep in the bowels of the earth, and from England itself rather than from the new Golconda beyond the seas came most of the wealth which produced quite a new brand of millionaire."

This text reveals the beauty I see in collecting these old forgotten books. Little gems await only the effort of you digging through a few pages to reveal a seam of wit or the ore of wisdom. The timeless sense of these writings re-affirms one thing, times change but people most certainly do not.

Piccadilly to Pall Mall

Ralph Nevill
and
Edward Jerningham
(Marmaduke)

Duckworth & Co
London
1908