CHAPTER 12

An Accountant’s Deadly Reckoning
1927

I can find no solution in all my problems here, so I am going to look for one on the other side.

Alexander Bell Filson had come a long way since his humble beginnings in Portaferry, County Down, in 1877. By 1906 he began to work for Maurice Chater, a City accountant, as a clerk, in his offices in Cheapside, at Chater and Egerton. On 12 January 1907, he married Bessie Eliza Head (born in Mortlake in 1883) and in the following years, three children were born: John Warnock (10 June 1908), Maragret Warnock (14 December 1912) and Mary Warnock (7 November 1917). They were living in Coulter Road, Hammersmith in 1911. The two girls attended Putney High School and in 1927 John was a bank clerk. In 1912, Filson became an associate of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. During the war, Filson was rewarded for his financial acumen by Chater and was made a partner, earning about £1,200 per annum – about ten times that of the average working man (equal to c.£68,500 today). Chater and Egerton was dissolved in 1920, to be replaced by Chater and Filson. Chater was on visiting terms with the Filsons and knew his wife. He thought that Filson was devoted to his wife and children. In 1924, the Filsons moved to River View Gardens, Barnes, overlooking the Thames.

However, matters began to go wrong in the following years. On 11 October 1925, his wife died from cancer, which had been a long drawn out process. Filson told Mrs Woollard before his wife’s death, ‘You know your sister’s going, and if it were not for the children, I would go with her.’ Yet he later promised not to kill himself. Even so, this had a great effect on him and his career. In the following year, Filson had taken his holiday in September. It was then that Chater realised something was wrong. There were ‘irregularities’ which was presumably another way of saying that Filson had been embezzling money, to the tune of £371. The partnership was dissolved and on 30 September, Filson was out of a job. His only comment to his former partner was that he must have been mad. The motive was probably that Filson was spending heavily and needed money desperately. A note read at the inquest said that Filson had borrowed £484 from Chater at 6% interest. Filson was briefly in business on his own, with offices in Philpott Lane, but it did not last long.