The Royal Exchange

SOME ODDS AND ENDS.

IT is curious that, although the idea of insurance is utterly opposed to that of gambling—the one aiming at rapid gains, the other merely at protection from loss—still insurance took its origin from the doctrine of chance as observed at the gaming tables, and led to the discovery of quite a new form of gambling, which achieved an extraordinary vogue in the first half of the 18th Century. It was a period of fine clothes and callous natures; of high costs and lavish expenditure; of turbulent politics and grave risks. Such a period was the very soil in which gambling and speculation were sure to flourish. But, even so, the rapidity and the ingenuity with which the possibilities of gambling, by means of this new-fangled fashion of insurance, were recognised are quite remarkable. Indeed, during the greater part of this period, gambling in policies altogether superseded the legitimate business of insurance. The life of Sir Robert Walpole, whose person seemed at one time in peril from popular tumult, at another from party hatred, was always there to be insured, if less attractive propositions were not that morning to be discovered.

It is difficult to imagine the state of indignation which would have been aroused if, during the late war when the King went to his troops in France, great premiums had been asked and paid against his return. Yet that happened to his predecessor in the 18th Century. When George the Second fought at Dettingen, 25 per cent. was openly paid against his return. The movements of Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, in 1745, provided one with a sensation of terror in the morning and an opportunity of putting some cash into one’s pocket in the afternoon. There were no daily newspapers, and in much later days, when Wellington was fighting in the Peninsula, the news of Busaco and Badajoz took a fortnight to reach London. Charles Edward’s march to Derby at the head of his dreaded Highlanders, and his retreat, put a good deal of money into the hands of the assurers of Lloyd’s and the members of Garraway’s. Nor, when this rabble had melted away, and he himself was a fugitive in the Western Islands, was their ingenuity at a loss. The Young Pretender was insured against capture; he was insured against decapitation; and if the poor youth could only have gathered up the money which was wagered one way or another upon his luckless head, he would have had enough for another fling at the Throne.

But even though Charles Edward was not captured, many of his followers were. Everyone remembers how Lady Nithsdale rescued her husband from the Tower by dressing him in her clothes and remaining behind in his. You would hardly believe that that gallant exploit raised the wildest indignation in the City of London because so many underwriters stood to lose if Lord Nithsdale kept his head upon his shoulders. Would Admiral Byng be condemned and shot? Would he be condemned and not shot? Would he be acquitted? What was the value of the life of the Duke of Newcastle, Prime Minister when Minorca was lost? Any of these questions could form the subject of a wager by means of a policy of assurance. The strangest dispute of all, however, finally led to the intervention of the Law, and a decision by Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, that a policy of assurance entered into by a person holding no insurable interest was against public interest.

This dispute, which provoked a commotion almost inconceivable to us, was concerned with the sex of the Chevalier d’Eon. We are apt to take historical events for granted, neither marvelling at their strangeness nor speculating upon the manner with which contemporaries received them. Can you imagine a Frenchman of distinction, coming to England upon a confidential mission, quarrelling with the Ambassador of his country, accusing publicly this or that statesman of treachery, and finally arousing the most widespread doubts as to whether he was a man or a woman? Yet this very thing did happen to Charles Geneviève Louise Auguste d’Eon de Beaumont, and we hardly need to be told that the assurance brokers of the City of London found this spicy problem very much to their taste. Policies were opened by which it was undertaken that, on payment of fifteen guineas down, one hundred should be returned whenever the Chevalier was proved to be a woman. The Chevalier, after some passing pretence of indignation, graciously allowed, that at a certain Coffee House, at the hour of noon, he would satisfy all whom it might concern. As may be easily imagined, the assurances were immediately and greatly increased, and there should be no reasonable doubt that the Chevalier got in return for his condescension what nowadays we should call a “rake off.”

At the appointed hour, the Chevalier appeared in the uniform and the decorations of an officer, and, claiming to belong to the sex whose dress he wore, challenged anyone present to disprove it with sword or cudgel.

This was not the sort of solution of the problem which commended itself to the citizens of that day, and all the more, since the Chevalier was known to be remarkably expert with the small sword. The crowd of underwriters and brokers dissolved, leaving the great question of the day unanswered. An action was brought in the Court of Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, who gave the decision to which we have already referred. An Act had already been passed that insurance made on the life of any person on the account of another who had no interest in that life should be void. Lord Chief Justice Mansfield laid it down that the same principle should be held even when the policy was not a policy on life.

It is obvious that the system of insurance, once it became general, would give opportunities to the ingenious criminal. The cases, however, of such frauds or such attempted frauds are, comparatively to the vast volume of insurance business done, astonishingly few. Still fewer present those conflicts of emotion—those struggles between ill-assorted natures thrown together in the jumble of life—which alone give interest to the study of crime. Most of the insurance frauds represent no more than sordid efforts by mean men or women. One or two cases, however, do stand out by something especial in the way of audacity or imagination on the part of the chief criminal.

That of Thomas Griffith Wainwright is probably the most remarkable. Wainwright was a person of amazing vanity and considerable good looks, who affected the military style of dress which was the last word of male fashion in the days when he lived. You may read a description of the man in Bulwer Lytton’s novel “Lucretia,” where Wainwright postures as Gabriel Verney. Postures is the word, for though Wainwright was not without talents and high abilities, to posture was the enjoyment and ambition of his life. He contributed articles to the “London Magazine” at a time when Lamb, Barry Cornwall, Haslitt and Alan Cunningham were the chief contributors. Under the name of “Janus Weathercock” he wrote on Art, the Ballet and the Opera. He wrote in a fashion which has become much more common to-day than it was then: the fashion, I mean, of creating first of all a personality, through the eyes of which the subjects to be reviewed are seen. The “Eye Witness” whom Wainwright described to the readers of the “London Magazine” was, needless to say, himself, and he drew the picture of himself with so loving a pen, such luxuriant details of his elegant dress, his fine appearance and his exquisite manners, as would make the very effigy of a coxcomb. That one might not misunderstand his writings, he enforced them with his pencil—he was an artist of no small ability—and drew types of female beauty in which “the voluptuous trembled on the borders of the indelicate”—we quote his own luscious phrase. As you can imagine, he had no high opinion of the artistic capabilities of other men, and like all persons endowed with so triumphant a vanity, he impressed those more modest craftsmen who were conscious of their imperfections. He fairly took in Charles Lamb, for instance, who spoke of him as kind and light-hearted.

Never were two epithets so misapplied by a man with a genius for insight, for “Janus Weathercock” was a forger and had even then murder in his mind. He ceased to write. He went with his wife on a visit to his uncle. After a short illness the uncle died, and Wainwright inherited the property. It was not nearly enough to satisfy this high-flown gentleman’s needs. Moreover, it was held by trustees, so that only the interest reached his hands. He forged the names of his trustees to a Power of Attorney apparently with so much success, that for a long while no suspicion was aroused. He apparently forged five such documents, but, even so, poverty was always at his door.

At what particular date he turned his thoughts to the possibilities of insurance we do not know, but it was in the year 1830 that the two young step-sisters of his wife, Helene Frances Phœbe and Madeline Abercrombie, began to haunt the insurance offices of the City. Helene Frances Phœbe wanted her life insured for sums ranging from £2,000 to £3,000 for periods of not longer than two to three years. From office to office these young ladies went, and they were actually able to effect these insurance policies for an aggregate amount of no less than £18,000. The policies once effected, Wainwright had recourse to an ingenious device. Phœbe gave out that she was going abroad and made her will in favour of her sister, Madeline, with Wainwright as the sole executor. He would have, in the event of Phœbe’s death, complete control over the money paid by the Insurance Companies, although he would not stand in the suspicious position of one who had had the money bequeathed to him by will. He might still, of course, be suspected, but he would be a long step further from suspicion than if the crude method of leaving the money to him had been adopted.

There can be little doubt that Phœbe, and probably Madeline too, under the spell of this man’s ascendancy, were parties to the plot—as they understood it. Phœbe was to disappear on the Continent. By means of forged papers Wainwright was to prove her death, collect the insurance money, and join her with the rest of the family on the Continent. This was no doubt the plan talked over of an evening in those shabby furnished rooms in Conduit Street to which the family had been now reduced. But this was merely the plan by which Wainwright had secured the help of the two young and attractive girls. Unspoken, at the back of his mind, lay a much more sinister project. The night after Phœbe Abercrombie had settled her affairs, she went to the theatre with the rest of the family. A lobster supper followed upon their return to their lodgings, and in the night Phœbe was taken ill. She died—Oh! prudent Mr. Wainwright!—at a time when he was out walking with his wife. The body was examined and a certificate of death was issued by the doctor in the ordinary way. Wainwright began to demand his £18,000 from the various Insurance offices. They declined to pay. Wainwright left England and commenced an action. But such a light did the Counsel for the Insurance Company throw upon Wainwright’s manœuvres that his claim was rejected by the Jury. The Bank of England apparently began now to look into that little matter of the Power of Attorney. Wainwright’s forgeries were discovered, and Wainwright wisely preferred to remain at Boulogne. He lodged there, by the way, with an English officer whose life he managed to insure for £5,000, and after one premium had been paid the English officer died. Wainwright seems then to have wandered for a while in France. He certainly was arrested by the French police and imprisoned at Paris for six months. Impelled by some interest of which we do not know, he returned to London for forty-eight hours; and during those forty-eight hours he made the one small fatal mistake which put an end to his activities. He stayed in an hotel close to Covent Garden, but, startled by some disturbance in the street, he for a moment drew the blind aside and looked out. By one of those coincidences which are not so uncommon as the pedantic would have one to believe, there was a man passing in the street who knew him. The passer-by caught a glimpse of the face peeping out from behind the blind and cried aloud “That’s Wainwright, the bank forger.” He was tried on a charge of forgery, sentenced to transportation for life, and died miserably, years afterwards, in Sydney.