Page:Facts, failures and frauds- revelations, financial, mercantile, criminal.djvu/176

IGi TACTS, FAILURES, A^D TEArj-S. It is to be regretted that precise facts are not forthcoming which would serve to show more of the nature of the transactions entered into between Davidson and Gordon and other parties in connection with the fraudulent warrants they so successfully managed to transfer. Their transactions with Messrs. Overend, Gurney, and Co., the discount bankers, extended back several years prior to the appearance of these fraudulent warrants. No sooner, however, had these warrants come into their possession, than they applied them to obtain advances on their own account, in which they were so far successful as to palm off on Messrs. Overend, Gurney, and Co. simulated issues of the nominal value of £80,000.

The wharf had not long been taken when suspicion arose in one quarter as to the invalidity of the warrants on which Cole, Davidson, and Gordon so largely depended for their resources. It was a peculiarity attaching to these warrants that no individual noticing any irregularity, or suffering by that irregularitv, could infer the wide extent of the scheme, and still less discover the modus operandi, or that anything had gone wrong except in that particular instance. In the course of 1851, Edwards and Mathey, colonial brokers, who had advanced to Cole £2500 on the security of various warrants, had their attention drawn to the name of Hagen's Wharf impressed on one of these warrants, which together represented 350 tons of spelter. The wharf had never been heard of before, and they sent a clerk down to inquire after it, and to inspect the goods. Maltby, who was at hand, pointed out the spelter to the clerk; but the clerk, considering his errand but half done, appears to have gone to the books of the dock company, and to have discovered that there was a "stop" on this spelter in favour of another party. Mr. Edwards, of the firm, was taken by Gordon to Cole, who confessed he knew of the "stop," intimating, probably, at the same time, that Gordon was to blame, and that he should have known the metal answering to the