Advertisement from the Daily Mirror, 17 July 1905.
In 1905, Britain staged a major event to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar: the Naval, Shipping and Fisheries Exhibition, at Earls Court exhibition hall in London. Visitors flocked to the venue to witness the many treasures on show, which included a model of HMS Victory, a quilt which purportedly came from Nelson’s bed, some of Captain Cook’s navigation instruments and a full-size replica of a naval cruiser. Patrons could enjoy the traditional fairground rides, as well as Hiram Maxim’s astonishing new Captive Flying Machine. Adventurous visitors could even take a simulated trip in a submarine.
In a more sedate corner of the exhibition, small booths were laid out in which various businesses demonstrated their wares to prospective customers. One of these was the South and South-West Coast Steam Trawling and Fishing Syndicate, an organisation run by none other than Charles Deville Wells (masquerading as William Davenport) and the Reverend Vyvyan Henry Moyle, a clergyman whose credentials included a master’s degree from Oxford University and a seven-year prison sentence for forgery.
Some forty years previously, Moyle had been appointed vicar of a small country parish near Middlesbrough in Yorkshire. As a young clergyman he did much to benefit the parish and was popular with the locals. However, after some years it was noticed that his standard of living had become unusually lavish for a young priest on a limited stipend. When the Archbishop of York visited Moyle one day, he was astonished to be met at the station by a smart carriage and pair of horses, driven by a liveried footman. Moyle intimated that he had inherited a fortune, and suspicions were temporarily allayed.
But the truth of the matter was that in 1873 he had forged share certificates to the value of £22,000 (£1.7 million). When the counterfeit documents were eventually traced to him he was sent to prison. On his release, the bishop forgave him and appointed him to the parish of Ashampstead near Reading. But once there Moyle seems to have spent very little time looking after his parishioners. He conducted services in the local church only three times in six months and appeared to be spending most of his time in London. And when he was not ‘on business’ in the capital, he immersed himself in his duties as president of the local literary and scientific society, and as secretary of the Berkshire Beekeepers’ Association. Finally he was declared bankrupt and jailed again. The prison authorities allowed him out on Sundays to take the service at Ashampstead, where the theme of his sermon, on one occasion, was ‘Owe no man any thing’.
When Wells and Moyle met, the plump, red-haired, scurrilous, beekeeping vicar probably reminded Wells of his own father.
At the Naval, Shipping and Fisheries Exhibition, Moyle’s role was to show visitors a life-saving machine invented by Wells, which incorporated a novel method of artificial respiration. Wells had set up a demonstration using a Japanese doll in a glass case (to represent the unfortunate victim) together with an assortment of bellows, tubing and other material (the life-saving apparatus). Air was pumped into the tank, and the doll was made to breathe. Moyle, in his clerical dress, took charge of the apparatus, and lectured on the merits of the invention, which he claimed could restore people who appeared to be dead … and even people who actually had died!1
A secondary aim of the exhibition stand was to attract investors into a fraudulent investment scheme which Wells and Moyle had dreamed up.
This time Wells stayed away from his former territory around Great Portland Street, and turned instead to the south bank of the Thames. He first went to 156 Stamford Street, not far from Waterloo Station. The owner of the house, a Mrs Ashton, had advertised an office to let. Wells introduced himself as ‘William Davenport’ and informed her that he was engaged in a fishing business. The landlady said she hoped he would not be bringing any fish back to the premises, and he reassured her, ‘Oh no, all our fish goes to Billingsgate market’. He then took a room just down the road at number 147 as his living quarters; at the same time, Moyle moved into lodgings above a nearby coffee house, where he was known as ‘Mr Henry’.
The two conspirators then purchased a steamship, the Shanklin, a vessel of 61 tons, 99ft in length, built at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. She may have been a magnificent sight when new in 1873, but now, thirty-two years later, her timbers were rotten, her engines rusty and she had been lying at her moorings for the last five years, unloved, unwanted and unusable. No longer fit for the purpose she had been designed for, she was instead a boat for buying, for selling and for pledging as security for loans. In the last seven years, she had changed hands five times, being passed from one owner to the next like a hand grenade with the pin removed. Wells and Moyle then appeared, and made an offer of £140. This was doubtless accepted by her then owner with a combination of relief and incredulity.
As in Wells’ previous schemes, advertising played a prominent part. This time, though, he cautiously avoided using Willing’s as his advertising agents, knowing that there was a strong possibility that he would be recognised. Instead he went to Charles Pool & Co. of 92 Fleet Street, who arranged for announcements of the following kind to be inserted in newspapers:
If you don’t mind my rather common business, somewhat similar to farming, and can invest £100 on mortgage on short or long notice, you may secure a monthly income of about £20 without liability or partnership. Box 4,970, care of Pool & Co., Fleet Street, E.C.
The announcement was spotted in July by Christopher Walton, a resident of Brixton. Walton went to 156 Stamford Street and met ‘Davenport’, who told him about the syndicate’s ‘fleet’ and said that the vessels were worth about £3,000 each. On the strength of ‘Davenport’s’ representations Walton decided to invest £100 in the venture.
Another advertisement caught the eye of a convicted fraudster, Alfred Braithwaite Emanuel – a 55-year-old man with a most unsavoury past, whose wife had divorced him some years previously on the grounds of adultery and physical cruelty. He had once masqueraded as a financial journalist, and had even owned a publication for a time, the Stock Exchange Times. It was his custom to call on financial firms, such as stockbrokers, asking them to advertise in his newspaper. Should anyone decline to do so, he would threaten to publish highly defamatory statements about their financial standing which were likely to panic their clients and bring about their ruin. This practice resulted in him being convicted for extortion, and he received a two-month prison sentence.
Emanuel later conceived the idea of scouring the small advertisements in newspapers and looking for obvious scams – something his long years of experience made him eminently qualified to do. He would then approach the advertiser and offer to sell him a mailing list of potential clients. He would also write flattering paragraphs about the scheme in newspapers for which, apparently, he was the financial editor.
In the course of this exercise he stumbled on the advertisement for the Fishing and Trawling Syndicate, and recognised an opportunity in the making. When they finally met, it was agreed that Emanuel would supply Wells with 500 names and addresses of potential investors, to whom the promotional brochure and other documents could be sent. Emanuel was to receive 2½ per cent commission on funds received from these new clients. He also agreed that the name and address of his firm, William Freeman & Co., could appear in Wells’ literature, and that he would act as a broker.
A glowing report – doubtless written by Emanuel – soon appeared in a journal called Financial Truth. It recommended the syndicate as an investment, and informed readers that ‘the business was conducted by this company on legal lines, and there appeared to be but little risk, if any’. Similar testimonials appeared, with Emanuel’s help, in the Hackney Mercury and the Sussex Advertiser.
Enquiries from the public flooded in. Wells responded to them by sending out ‘voluminous literature, much of it got up in a very expensive style’. The package enticed would-be investors to buy shares in the Fishing and Trawling Syndicate, secured on the ‘first-class vessel’ Shanklin – a description which had not been applied to the leaky old tub for many a year. The prospectus pointed out that fishing was ‘one of the best paying lines of business’. In the previous year, it claimed, profits had been no less than £320 per £50 invested (£32,000 per £5,000 invested). Wells enclosed a copy of the catalogue from the Naval Exhibition, and an illustrated pamphlet depicting the syndicate’s vessels. Enclosed, too, was a copy of a letter of recommendation concerning the life-saving apparatus, purportedly signed by ‘J. H. Hart, MD, USA, LRCP, LRCS, LFPSG, Edin.’2
Shortly after receiving this package of promotional material, enquirers would receive a separate letter from the Reverend Moyle – the ‘respectable-looking and ostensibly independent referee who vouches for the bona fides of the party who holds the cards’. In comparison with the near incomprehensible language that Wells himself would have used, Moyle’s letter was a model of clarity (though he did somehow achieve the remarkable feat of cramming 120 words into a single sentence):
Dear Sir,
Happening to call at the office of the S. and S.W.C.F. Syndicate this morning, Mr. Davenport, the energetic manager, showed me your letter and asked me if I would write to you thereon, which I do with pleasure, because I am perhaps better qualified than many to speak on this matter, as I was born near an important marine fishery centre, and so from childhood knew the lucrative character of this industry, and also after leaving Oxford prior to my ordination as a clergyman of the Church of England used to yacht a good deal off the S. West Coast and North Devon Coast and as an amateur trawled also, so practically and in many ways I understand this work. I have also put several old and valued friends into it as mortgagees for substantial sums. … The profits are very good, and with good reason, for there is no rent to pay for the sea, and no stock to buy or feed. The fish feed themselves and are awaiting capture. I can strongly recommend this investment.
Yours sincerely,
Rev. V. H. Moyle.
The investors came from all walks of life. Some were rich, while others had only meagre savings with which to speculate. John Ord Hume, a man in his early forties from Edinburgh, bought £50 of shares. He was a distinguished musician and bandmaster, who had composed the regimental march of the Green Howards. The wife of Lord Dartmouth, Lady Mary Legge, invested £200.
Many were taken in by Moyle’s reassuring patter. John Gilbert, a labourer from Liverpool, put up the whole of his £100 savings on the strength of Moyle’s recommendation. Mrs Lucy Carlyle, the wife of a clergyman, had received from Moyle a letter saying that he considered the syndicate to be worthy of full and serious consideration; that he had persuaded some old friends of his to buy shares – a viscount and a city official of high standing, hard-headed men who would not have taken part if they had any doubts about the business. The letter, and the fact that Moyle was a man of the cloth, reassured her enough that she participated to the extent of £25.
Hugh Richard Dawnay (Lord Downe) had retired from the British Army in 1901 with the rank of major general. He was a trusted confidant of King Edward VII: upon the king’s accession to the throne, it was Dawnay who was chosen to visit the rulers of Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands to convey in person the news of Queen Victoria’s death. He, too, became a shareholder in the syndicate.
The high-ranking official referred to in Moyle’s letter was Thomas Bowater – a sheriff of the City of London, and paper-manufacturing magnate. He ventured £50 and was issued with two shares in the vessel. Other investors were much less well known. Amy Elizabeth Elliott, a single woman, lived in a tiny house in Goods Station Road, Tunbridge Wells. She earned a meagre living as a dressmaker and supported her elderly widowed mother. She, too, paid £50 for two shares.
Wells and Moyle pretended that Shanklin was worth £1,600, but its true value barely exceeded one-tenth of that figure. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, they sold each share several times over and raised £5,333 on a ship worth at most £180.
In addition to the ‘puff’ paragraphs written by Emanuel, Wells publicised the scheme by approaching a recently launched weekly newspaper, Farm Life. Early issues reflect a distinct lack of interesting news, and are full of sleep-inducing articles about muck spreading in Suffolk, goat rearing in Lancashire and the like. Its publishers were clearly overjoyed to have some content which could be considered even remotely interesting, and reproduced a grainy photograph of the Shanklin lying on a slipway – presumably at Birkenhead, as she was in no condition to be moved. The caption describes this image as that of the ‘underpart of the Stern and Propellor of the First-class Steam Fishing Ship, No. 212, belonging to the South and South-West Coast Steam Trawling and Fishing Syndicate’.
Although he was using the alias of ‘Davenport’, and was anxious not to disclose his true identity, Wells could not resist harking back to his days as an inventor. He claimed that the vessel incorporated a fuel-saving device of his own invention. ‘This curious Patent Propellor of 5-feet diameter, with Gun-metal Bronze Blades has increased the speed of this Ship by one knot without further expense of fuel’. An almost identical photograph and text later appeared in the Penny Illustrated, a popular newspaper with a much higher circulation than Farm Life. The advertising campaign was further stepped up with semi-display advertisements in national newspapers, including the Daily Mirror and Daily Express, as well as regional papers, such as the Manchester Courier:
While Wells was operating the scheme in London, Jeannette took care of the home front in Ireland. She used £800 of the proceeds to buy the lease on a hotel near the bungalow Wells had constructed, and used her business experience – gained in part from running the station buffet at Uxbridge – to control the finances. All the while she reported to Charles by mail. One of his replies to her reads as follows:
Nest of Love, 17 September, 1905.
In reply to your dear letter, always very dear to me, like mine to you. … First, my favourite choice would be to retire from the world completely, and to live for ourselves alone in a small house near the sea in the South of France, to live on our income, to have some fowls for ourselves, and an old, unsuspecting servant. In that manner, my dear, you could rest your poor head, and rest your weary body. I would like to have the sum of 50,000 f. [£200,000]. … It would be necessary to draw from the bank all our money to form the Jap3 society which might profit us … Then comes the hotel, which also requires thousands.
They are clearly concerned about how much money they can extract from the Fishing and Trawling swindle before they are caught.
We must also calculate the two boats, the buying of the second, the men’s wages, the keep of the house, the keep of the hotel, etc. We would require at least a capital of £3,000 to be sure of not getting stranded half-way. … Destroy this letter after having well read it, and tell me frankly what you think of my reply.
He later sent updates by telegram – ‘Five hundred mackerel today. All perfectly well for the moment but I fear your mother will have to be seen in about a month.’ This presumably meant that £500 in new investments had been received, and the second part of the message seems to indicate that the deception might have to be terminated within a month. In subsequent telegrams Wells says, ‘we are catching lots of mackerel’ and ‘over one thousand mackerel this week’. Later he reports that he is making satisfactory progress:
My fairy Rose, with the pretty little round arms,
£50 arrived this morning, £50 are promised for Tuesday … the individual has given notice to the Post Office Savings Bank, and this time is necessary to him … others hesitating. Twelve new letters went off yesterday; 11 today, but the replies are no longer so numerous as at first. Fresh bait is therefore necessary, for at any price the matter must be carried through now, and, as you see, there is hope. The cash reserve, however, does not increase very rapidly on account of the enormous expenses. When amounts of £25 go for the company, £15 and £20 for advertising, money is indeed necessary. However, quiet progress is made. In any case we are advancing little by little.
But it was clear that the days of the scheme were numbered:
The newspapers which have inserted my advertisements begin to ask for information about my business. It is necessary then, at any price, for me to push on before the doors are closed. Two or three bonds of £150 or £200 and one can close the bank.
Wells then describes how Moyle had offered to introduce him to a royal personage:
The ‘parson’ came to see me this morning … he wishes to present me — guess to whom! It is not worth while trying. Why, to the King himself!4 It is for the ‘Jap’. As you will imagine, I do not desire it for the moment, for without doubt all sorts of inquiries are made with reference to the chum who aspires to that honour. I told him that it was too soon, we are not ready, etc. but, as you see, he is going ahead, this Bishop!
Wells ends his letter with a reference to one of his recent inventions, ‘Turbril’ – a food product using fish as its main ingredient.
Ah! If the affair of the ‘Turbril’5 company came off, how contented we would be! A lover alone knows how. However, we will see, but I cannot stop. The fishing business must be carried on even if all that is spent in advertising is lost.
I embrace thee as a lover alone knows how.
Thy Loulou6
If Wells’ letters to Jeannette are anything to go by, the Turbril project seems to have been a legitimate attempt to establish a new mass market product. He later writes:
For the ‘Bouillabaisse à Nana’ matter. I have seen ‘M’. It is an important and old established company and everything seems bona fide. … If it comes off we shall forever be free from worry. … They offer to form a company, capital £5,000, of which £1,000 in cash will be for me and £1,000 cash for working expenses ... and my monthly salary of about £20, so that one should be comfortable and without worry. The agent tells me that since they are going to risk one half or more of the expenses it is because they feel certain of being successful.
As Wells had revealed in his letter to Jeannette, newspapers were beginning to ask awkward questions – including some of those which had carried his advertisements. The Reverend Moyle, with his persuasive testimonials, also tended to arouse suspicion as he popped up and urged would-be investors to part with their money. And, at length, it was noted that the address at the top of his letters, a house in St Stephen’s Square, was in fact an empty property.
The Manchester Courier, which had, until very recently, published advertisements for the syndicate, warned its readers not to have anything to do with the firm. Some anonymous person – probably Wells – replied, ‘We are fully prepared to rebut attacks of this kind, and you are doing your paper no good in libellous writing.’ But it was too late for bluster of this kind. On the very same day, Henry Labouchère’s Truth waded in with a scathing double-page spread about the syndicate. Labouchère made reference to the lavish publicity material sent out to prospective investors – ‘everything that ingenuity and glowing eloquence can do to convey an impression of the lucrative business of the fishing industry, and the big business that the syndicate is doing’.
Labouchère had still not yet realised, though, that ‘Davenport’ was Charles Wells – the man he had mercilessly hounded during the patent scam twelve or so years earlier. Instead he concentrated on the chequered career of the Reverend Vyvyan Henry Moyle, who in the past had been no stranger to the pages of Truth, and whom he described as ‘a scoundrel of the very blackest type’.
It was Labouchère’s article that finally spurred the police into action. The next day, Detective Inspector Knell waited outside the office at 156 Stamford Street, saw Moyle coming out and followed him as far as Blackfriars Road. He stopped him and asked for his name.
‘What has that got to do with you?’ retorted the cleric.
‘I shall arrest you for conspiring to obtain money by fraud,’ the officer countered. ‘I have a warrant for your arrest.’
‘I haven’t conspired with anyone,’ Moyle replied. ‘I don’t know what Davenport has done. Why don’t you arrest him? He is the head of the concern.’
Wells was arrested at the office, where a great number of documents were found, but no account books to suggest that a genuine business was being carried out. Subsequently Emanuel was also interviewed by police. Reading between the lines, it quickly becomes apparent that he offered to testify against Wells and Moyle in exchange for his freedom.
As Wells settled down in a police cell, he must have regretted his decision to keep the fraud going as long as he did. He probably wished, too, that he had not taken on any accomplices. In the past he had always worked alone: on this, the first time he had involved others, both Moyle and Emanuel had betrayed him without a second thought.
The court case began at Tower Bridge Magistrates’ Court on 20 November 1905 with a sensational statement by the prosecuting counsel – ‘Davenport’ was, in fact, Monte Carlo Wells.
What began as an ordinary case of fraud instantly escalated to a major news story. ‘MONTE CARLO WELLS – FAME OF YEARS AGO DRAMATICALLY RECALLED’, a Daily Mirror headline declared. ‘Everybody recalled the time when “the Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo” was a topical figure of such dimensions that his feats were made immortal.’
It was shown that the syndicate’s ‘fleet’ consisted of a pair of ramshackle steamers and an old launch. One of the steamers ‘leaked badly and burst her steampipe on a voyage to Cork’, and the launch had sunk at her moorings. The firm’s total assets were these unseaworthy vessels, some fishing tackle and a Japanese doll in a glass case. Predictably, these statements caused laughter in the courtroom.
Emanuel gave evidence as a prosecution witness, and the precise nature of his connection with the syndicate was deliberately smoothed over by the police. He was introduced as a partner in a respectable stockbroking firm, and no mention was made of his criminal past or that he had turned ‘king’s evidence’. In the event, however, his testimony was not of much use to the prosecution. He said that he had found ‘Davenport’ to be a straightforward man with some sound business ideas. He had worked for the syndicate on a commission basis, he added, and the idea to put ‘puff’ paragraphs in newspapers was not ‘Davenport’s’, but his own. ‘Davenport’ had told him that money was ‘coming in fast, every post almost, today £150, £50, and £25 – in all £225, and the day is not over’. Emanuel claimed that at this point he had become suspicious, and refused to have any more dealings with the business.
A clerk at the Customs House, the aptly named Mr Salmon, confirmed that two small ships, the Shanklin and the Rosenhaugh, were registered to the syndicate. The prosecution set out before the court a flurry of unconnected bits and pieces of evidence, and this prompted the defence solicitor to make the unintentional pun that they were ‘on a fishing expedition’.
When the case was transferred to the Old Bailey, the first witness was Christopher Walton, the Brixton man who had invested £100. He described his meeting with ‘Davenport’, adding that the picture of Shanklin in Farm Life had influenced him and reassured him that he was dealing with a solid company.
After several other witnesses had appeared, Amy Elliott of Tunbridge Wells was sworn in. She said that she had been impressed with the information received from the syndicate, and then the letter from Moyle was delivered. ‘I had not made up my mind to invest before I received that letter. The letter settled it. I am a member of the Church of England, and the fact that he was a clergyman influenced me a great deal.’ She had sent £50 in £5 notes to ‘Davenport’. ‘They were practically the whole of my savings, but not quite,’ she recalled, taking care to tell the whole truth. Her testimony, and her unmistakable sincerity, must have had a visible effect on the jury. Wells and Moyle evidently noticed as after a whispered conversation with their defence lawyers they promptly changed their pleas to ‘guilty’.
The judge remarked that Wells was ‘a man of very considerable ability’, and sentenced him to three years’ penal servitude. This was, he said, a light sentence imposed in the hope that Wells would reform when he came out of prison. Moyle was thought not to be the originator of the scheme and received an eighteen-month sentence.
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1 Again, we are reminded of Charles Wells’ father, who had once claimed the ability to bring people back from the dead.
2 It probably goes without saying that no such person has been traced.
3 Probably a reference to his invention with the Japanese doll.
4 There can be little doubt that Moyle’s contact at the Royal Palace, Lord Hugh Dawnay, would have acted as go-between in this matter.
5 Possibly a hybrid name derived from turbot and Bovril™.
6 Further evidence that Louis is his pet name. Jeannette is later referred to as ‘Nana’.