Horatio Bottomley

Horatio William "Botty" Bottomley (* 1860 in Bethnal Green , London ; † 1933 ) was a British journalist and politician who was at the center of a large fraud process .

Life

He was born to William King Bottomley and Elizabeth Holyoake. Bottomley lost his father when he was three and his mother when he was six. He subsequently grew up in an orphanage in Birmingham . He went to London at the age of 14, where he earned his first living as a market helper for a fur store. Then he improved his career to become a clerk in a law office and on to a court clerk. Working in the law office gave him legal knowledge, while working as a clerk at court gave him an interest in journalism.

He founded a large number of newspapers , in most cases without any financial success. Worth mentioning here is the London Financial Guide , first published on January 9, 1888 , which was renamed the Financial Times in February 1888 . Between 1901 and 1905 alone, the often unsuccessful foundations led to 67 applications for Bottomley to be declared bankrupt. In addition, there were spectacular trials against him in 1891 and later in 1909 on suspicion of conspiracy and fraud , in which he represented himself and was acquitted. The litigation concerned, among other things, investments in gold mines in Western Australia . In 1906 he founded John Bull magazine and was elected to the House of Commons for the Liberal Party that year in the Hackney constituency. John Bull was an ultra nationalist paper, it was about the first medium to call the Germans the Huns during the war . After he had to declare bankruptcy in 1911, however , he was forced to give up his parliamentary seat in 1912.

The excellent speaker Bottomley was able to avert his financial ruin during the First World War as a well-paid speaker. In 1918 he returned to the House of Commons as an independent candidate. He had to give up the seat after the conviction in the great fraud trial of the Victory Bond Club of 1922.

Victory Bond Club

Shortly after the war, Bottomley came up with the idea of ​​making the large-scale loans raised by the British government accessible to small savers. To this end, the Victory Bond Club was formed, for which Bottomley was able to raise a total of around £ 500,000  . However, this amount was only partially invested in bonds. Firstly, it invested in two unsuccessful ventures, and secondly, Bottomley took £ 15,000 off for his own benefit to finance his lavish lifestyle. The following process started when Bottomley had a falling out with one of the parties and this had a pamphlet printed under the title "The Downfall of Horatio Bottomley", in which he disclosed the irregularity at the Victory Bond Club . In the following trial at the Old Bailey , Bottomley defended himself again, but failed and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

After he was released from prison in 1927, he earned another £ 12,500 with a series of articles about his incarceration and re-started a magazine called John Blunt . The magazine was a financial failure and Bottomley went bankrupt again. Finally he applied for a small pension. After his death, he was in the Golders Green Crematorium in London cremated , his ashes in the Sussex Downs scattered.

Film adaptations

The Bottomley case was filmed for cinema in 1960 and for television in 1972.

literature

• Houston, Henry J., OBE, The Real Horatio Bottomley , Hurst and Blackett, London, 1923.
• Felsted, S. Theodore, Horatio Bottomley: A Biography of an Outstanding Personality , John Murray, London, 1936.
• Symons, Julian , Horatio Bottomley , Cressett Press, London, 1955.
• Rodney Castleden, The World's most evil people , Time Warner, London 2005, ISBN 0-7515-3666-0 , pp. 498-505.

Web links

• Local Heritage Initiative
• PW Wilson, Brazen Bottomley , New York Times, June 4, 1922, on his conviction
• Death Of John Bull , Time June 5, 1933, on the occasion of the death of Bottomley
• Newspaper article about Horatio Bottomley in the press kit 20th Century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Editor: A fraudster of stature. In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 100, Berlin, December 13, 1933.
2. ^ "On Trial" Horatio Bottomley, MP in the Internet Movie Database (English)
3. ↑ Horatio Bottomley in the Internet Movie Database (English)