Page:Facts, failures and frauds- revelations, financial, mercantile, criminal.djvu/15

TACTS, FAILTJEES, A^TD FEAUDS. 8 show of virtuous indignation that took place when the misdeeds of the celebrated Mr. Hudson were discovered, and he was forced to disgorge part of his ill-gotten wealth, there is no doubt that the generally diffused rage for speculation had considerably lowered the standard of commercial morality, and that many men perpetrated deeds they would have blushed even to contemplate a few years previously. Those individuals who were unfortunate enough to be exposed, must not be supposed nearly to represent the whole amount of special delinquency committed during the speculative era, since numbers of persons equally guilty, escaped public contumely, simply because they had not the misfortune to be found out.

Eminently characteristic of the period is the extraordinarily large scale on which ordinary crimes are planned, and, for the moment, successfully carried out. From time immemorial, clerks have been discovered embezzling the property of their employers; but when, save in the middle of the nineteenth century, could it be supposed a case such as that of Walter Watts would occur, who, not content with trifling peccadilloes, successively opened two theatres with money surreptitiously obtained from the Globe Insurance Company, and managed them in a style of undisputed magnificence in the face of empty treasuries. The career of Watts, and his melancholy end in Newgate—death by his own hand—may, in part, be regarded as a symbol of that taste for luxury, and that recklessness in the choice of means to a desired end, which so singularly distinguish the present age.

Many, however, are the names who stand prominent in the history of what may appropriately be termed "high art" crime. Watts's case was, in some measure, isolated, and partook of the nature of an individual eccentricity; but the failure of Messrs. Strahan, Paul, and Bates, and the punishment with which their dealings were visited, commenced that series of financial and commercial delinquencies, in which persons of supposed elevated character were involved, that all