On December 1st the Times says: "An enormous amount of fraud has been perpetrated, which demands a double enquiry. National honour, the credit of the Legislature, and the incessant importunities of duped and plundered myriads, will not be satisfied without a searching investigation into the origin and management of these schemes, into doings of provisional committees and committees of management, and into the mysteries of allotment and deposit." All classes of the community were represented in the scramble for shares Noblemen and newspaper-boys, barristers and bakers, attorneys and absent-minded bluestockings, surgeons and scavengers, peers and printers, Catholic priests and coachmen, vicars and vice-admirals, bankers, brokers, braziers, butchers, beersellers, shop-boys, pages, nursery-maids, ladies' maids, and other maids. "Old men and young, the famished and the full, Their hot palms itching-all their being filled With one desire." The names of children in cradles, and boys and girls at school, were used for the purpose of obtaining allotments. A clerk named Guernsey, earning 12s. per week, had his name entered for 52,000 shares in the London and York line. A half-pay officer on £54 a year was down for 41,500. Two brothers, sons of a charwoman, with one and a half guineas per week between them, subscribed for 37,500 shares. Ticket porters applied for thousands; men with writs out against them for tens of thousands. One person in receipt of parish alms had £5,000 against his name, and an unbeneficed clergyman £25,000. The merchant knew his clerk was as deeply involved as himself. A butler in the West End of London gave notice to his mistress, as he had made several thousand pounds in shares. Clerks left their situations to become jobbers. Domestic servants studied railway journals. Young ladies deserted the marriage lists and obituary for the share list. The excitement was increased when the Board of Trade decided to select the undertakings to be first attended to by the Government; and when the London Gazette appeared with the weekly list of selections, the scenes outside the Stock Exchange baffled description. Ugly rushes were made, people were crushed and trodden down, and physical strength was a considerable factor in success in share-dealing. So the pestilence spread from one to another; common sense, prudence, principle, were all thrown to the winds. Many sold out of sound and safe investments to put into rising railways. Savings of years, the provision for the rainy day-so near-were converted into scrip. Tradesmen crippled their businesses, brothers gambled with sisters' money, sons with the money of widowed mothers, children risked their patrimony, trust money was secretly used, legacies were offered up, money borrowed and stolen, all to be cast blindly and ruthlessly into the seething cauldron of speculation and- melted. Of course, such a demand for shares was amply met and gratified. Companies were manufactured wholesale, often two or three between the same places. So many were the competing companies that they were hard-pressed for titles, and the changes were rung on the same name to an amusing extent. Trunk lines were greatly favoured, those running from south to north affording the most plausible grounds for existence and promise of traffic. Lines crossing these, and issuing aimlessly from a place and leading nowhere in particular, were blessed with the high sounding title of "Grand Junction." A straight line marked on the accompanying plan, from one small seaside place to another, lying full length on the shore, would be called a coast line. During the height of the madness, the Manchester Guardian reported that in one week eighty-nine new schemes were announced in three newspapers, with a nominal capital of £84,000,000 ; whilst, in one month, 357 projections were advertised in the same journals, with a combined capital of £332,000,000. In June, Punch said: "We shall soon be unable to go anywhere without crossing the line-once a formidable undertaking. We can only say, that we ought to be going on smoothly considering that our country is being ironed from one end of it to the other." All this time, whilst the fever of gambling had been spreading until there was not a family in England free from the infection, it must not be supposed that there had been no note of warning sounded. There were cool heads who could discern the hollowness of the bubble, and the weakness of the hands in which the great mass of speculation rested. Lord Brougham spoke out against the madness. The Times and the Economist pointed out the dangerous path on which speculation was racing. The Railway King, George Hudson, a giant in those days, who knew more about the management and prospects of railways than all the new-fledged directors put together, deprecated the excesses of the public. However, all to no purpose. The whole country had run mad. Wakefield, Pontefract, and Goole line, £2 10s. paid, fetched £60. Dealings were not confined to whole shares, but took place in halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, eighths, and half-fifths. Leeds was, perhaps, the most demented of the country towns. Here there were four marts, and 200 brokers, most of whom had sprung from nothing, and vanished when the game was up. Shares here were Shares in the selling for £25 10s., whilst the price in London was only £21 Reason had been temporarily displaced by passion, and the sure day of reckoning was fast approaching, unheeded and unfeared. All was still smiling, when, on Thursday, the 16th October, the bubble was pricked. The Bank of England raised its rate of interest, and the cry went through the land, “Halt!" Though the rise was only one-half per cent. (to three) it was sufficient to sober the intemperate, and cool the over-heated imagination; and things at once began to assume their natural appearance, to the horror and dismay of tens of thousands of dupes. The golden summer of wealth was suddenly transformed into the winter of penury; the fancied reality gave way to the shadow of a dream. The climax had been reached and passed as if by magic. The reverse side of everything was now exposed, and hope gave way to despair. The provisional committee-man turned pale at his responsibility. Loans on scrip became impossible—existing loans were called in, as margins rapidly disappeared under falling prices --sales were attempted and prices fell still lower. Railways were flat. Consols declined. Only yesterday, everyone was a buyernow, all were sellers. Shares, once a fortune, were now a fatality. Railway announcements disappeared. People who had embarked their all in railway scrip at heavy premiums, now found themselves possessed of white elephants-paper which was unsaleable, but which carried a burden of liability in unpaid calls which they had no means of meeting. Ruin, relentless and inexorable, stared them in the face. Rich families were now in want. The distress witnessed during the last few years, over the Liberator frauds, was experienced on a vastly larger scale all over the country. As it always happens in such times, those who could least afford it were those who were caught in the collapse. The shrewd and knowing fraternity had mostly cleared out and netted their profits. But to most of those who were left in, there seemed nothing but disgrace, madness and death. Daughters, delicately nurtured, went out to earn their bread, sons were recalled from college, households were broken up, terrible scenes of failure occurred, and the prospect generally looked serious. The whole thing had been a game between sharps and flats of the stronger and cleverer preying upon the weaker and sillier. All, however, was not lost. In many cases the companies would be wound up, and the full amount of liability on the scrip never be called for. For some companies there yet remained a glimmer of hope. The Board of Trade had announced the 30th November as the last day on which plans of new lines could be lodged. If the requirements of Government could be met and the plans deposited by that date, there seemed a chance of some of the undertakings still providing a small Every effort return, in the future, upon the money invested. was therefore made to accomplish this end. Labour of all kinds in connection therewith was in increased demand, and employment was at a premium, commanding, for a short time, any price which might be put upon it, and it was cheerfully given. Even a peddling stationer, it is said, earned five guineas a day and expenses. Professors and lecturers announced classes and instruction which would quickly endow any ordinary mortal with a wageearning capacity, hitherto undreamt of. Engineers were given carte blanche, and fees to match. Draughtsmen were hunted for in every direction, and even France and Germany were requisitioned in the service-many of those engaged working night and day, and in some cases, as the 30th November drew near, not going to bed for a week. Copperplate, lithographic and zincographic workers were hard driven to turn out the work required; one firm imported 400 lithographers from Belgium, and was then unable to complete all its engagements. Anyone who could handle a theodolite became at once a surveyor or draughtsman. An advertisement appeared on the 18th October, "Wanted eighty surveyors and levellers at two to eight guineas per day," and in some cases these gentlemen were taking up to fifteen guineas per day. Meanwhile, up and down the country where the plans were being prepared, special trains were running night and day, as time grew short, at a charge of 8s. to 10s. per mile, to expedite the work of the surveyor. Great damage was done to private property in these hurried surveys; harvests were trampled down; no place was sacred; the parks of gentlemen and the gardens of ladies were equally intruded upon. Work was surreptitiously done whilst owners were at church, and at night-time with dark lanthorns. Sometimes surveyors were carried to gaol for trespass. At Saxby, when ordered off, they produced pistols in self-defence, or defiance. Near Osberton, they were treated as poachers. Efforts were directed not only to finish plans in hand, but to hinder the completion and delivery of the plans of rivals. Lithographic stones, sketches and plans were stolen. Some lithographers were known to have thrown over their contracts, having been bribed by opponents of the scheme. Any method was good enough to clear rivals out of the way. As the 30th November drew near, horses and carriages had to be closely guarded to prevent them being rendered useless, or stolen; and on the eventful day itself two guineas per mile was paid for carriage hire. The Great Western Railway Company ran on that day six special trains at a charge of £80 each; and one journey from Bristol to London was made in one and a half hours (equal to eighty miles an hour), Eighteen specials were run by the Eastern Counties Company; and other companies ran fifteen and a dozen. In some cases, where the plans related to competing and rival lines, such extra accommodation was altogether refused. One solicitor, finding himself thus disappointed, hit upon the novel subterfuge of a mock funeral. Mourners were employed, and every outward appearance of grief and reality displayed, under which disguise the officials of the company, the Southampton Railway, were hoodwinked into conveying the precious coffin, containing the plans, by special train to the Metropolis, and the documents were duly lodged. So desperate and determined were the exertions put forth to have the plans ready and deposited by the fateful 30th November! At last the day arrived, and it was a Sunday-a day of rest on the calendar, but actually what a memorable day of excitement ! Most of the plans of the Scottish railway projections were, with Scottish prudence, lodged safely on the Saturday—as also were most of the Irish plans. But of others, there remained 800 to be thrust in on the Sunday, or abandoned. The Board of Trade, knowing the pressure there would be, made admirable arrangements to meet the case; but after working well up to eleven o'clock they finally broke down, and confusion reigned supreme. During the day, Whitehall was moderately quiet, but towards nine o'clock a great crowd had assembled. Arrivals then became "Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In Vallombrosa," and applicants were made in some cases the objects of bitter jests. As the hour of midnight approached, the scene around the Board of Trade offices exceeded all powers of description. Applicants crowded the steps of the Hall, laden with bundles of precious documents, elbowing each other out of the way, and in turn receiving the same polite attention from others. Most unenviable must have been the apprehensions of those in charge of plans, as they came rolling up in vehicles towards twelve o'clock, not knowing whether time would beat them after all, or whether they would be allowed to complete the particulars required, afterwards, even if they succeeded in effecting a lodgment of the plans. One party arrived just as the clock was striking twelve. He leaped wildly from the chaise, his arms full of documents, and sent them flying into the Hall, over the head of the janitor, as the door was being closed. On another vehicle rolling up after time, with three individuals laden with plans, they found the door shut. One of the three, however, more resolute than the others, was not to be thwarted without an effort. He boldly rang the bell, and when Inspector Otway opened the door, the plans were immediately flung in over his head, smashing the passage lamp in their flight. This was more than official dignity could endure, and the plans |