WEBVTT - Full of (John) Bull: Horatio Bottomley 0:00:00.480 --> 0:00:03.400 Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:03.720 --> 0:00:04.840 Zaren Elizabeth. 0:00:04.880 --> 0:00:05.360 How you doing? 0:00:05.400 --> 0:00:06.720 But I'm doing pretty good about you? 0:00:06.840 --> 0:00:08.080 Hey, pal, I'm good. 0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:10.719 Nice, you look good, you look like you're happy and uh, 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:12.680 you got your energies all balanced. 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:15.640 Yeah, same with you. You've got a great or say 0:00:16.320 --> 0:00:18.720 you have incredibly skin and a. 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:22.200 Beautiful aura in the beds of my nails. 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:26.480 Christine listen, Yes, you know it's ridiculous. 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:29.120 I do. So you want to be pointed out to 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:31.560 me a while back, this like couple that they're like 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:34.840 your crazy erratic friend or what it's like an Instagram 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:37.800 meme or these two comedians. Oh yeah, come in telling 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:38.440 a story? 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:38.760 Right. 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:41.040 Oh god, I wish I could remember what they're called, but. 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:42.600 Yeah, I can't remember them either. 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:45.720 It's type B front now something else. 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:49.159 But yeah, your friend who's like always just coming in 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:51.879 with like you did wait what and they're very casual 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:52.240 about it. 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:54.680 And the guy, the one guy is always there's always 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:58.600 one that involves Wells Fargo Bank. Yeah, I'll find it 0:00:58.680 --> 0:00:59.960 somewhere because I got to watch the. 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:02.960 Yeah baby can get the interns of puzzing on Instagram. Yeah, yeah, okay, 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:06.240 so I thought of that. With this story about this 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:10.600 girl named Caitlyn Maxwell. She's twenty two years old from smalltown, Mississippi, 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:13.720 a place called Ellesville, population forty six hundred and fifty 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:14.399 two souls. 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:15.200 Yeah. 0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:20.680 So she was out driving her twenty seventeen Dodge Challenger, Okay, yep, 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:23.520 and it was about nine forty PM when she got 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:25.759 pulled over by the police. So you kind of got 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:27.840 a picture going right so far I do. So it 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:30.200 turns out that that wasn't it. When the police got 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:33.080 up to the driver's side window, they found that old 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:36.039 Caitlyn Maxwell, twenty two years old, in her twenty seventeen 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:39.560 Dodge Challenger, was driving buck naked among us. 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:40.280 You you know what I mean. 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:43.360 That's not all, Elizabeth, because then the officers noticed a 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:47.639 strong odor of recently smoked marijuana. So she's driving around 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:50.200 high buck naked in her twenty seventeen she. 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:52.440 Thinks, she says, Matthew McConaughey, right, and. 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:54.480 Then the cops looked down and they noticed a glock 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:56.000 handgun at her feet. 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:57.639 Oh dear, oh, at her feet, at. 0:01:57.480 --> 0:01:59.160 Her feet the driver's side and her feet like in 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:01.880 the footwell. And then there was another glock wedge between 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:04.080 the passenger seat and the center console, like she didn't 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:06.520 get done hiding it. The cops were like, do you 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:08.400 mind popping your trunk? So they pop her trunk and 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:11.880 then they find a third glock and two AR fifteen's 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:14.959 that had been outfitted with this special switch that makes 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:16.160 them fully automatic. 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:18.560 Was very illegal. So the cops are like, where did 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:22.000 you get this? Like armory of weaponry, and please, here's 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:23.680 a towel. Put this on while we talk to you. 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:25.200 And then they find out. 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:27.239 She's like, well, my boyfriend he uses a three D 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:30.440 printer and he makes these switches. And the cops are like, 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:32.640 where's your boyfriend lives? And they go to her boyfriend's 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:35.040 house and then they arrest him too, for making the 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:36.680 illegal three D printed switches. 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:37.240 Stocks. 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:41.080 Yeah, exactly like machine gun conversion kids basically. And so 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:44.360 he also had a small arsenal at his place, you know. 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:47.600 Luckily apparently he was clothed. So yeah, I thought I 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:50.160 thought of those Instagram couple which I was driving my 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:52.040 twenty seventeen Touch Challenger and I got pulled over, and 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:53.280 then that's not the story at all. 0:02:53.480 --> 0:02:56.919 Offense to dudes who drive a Dodge Challenger. We like 0:02:57.040 --> 0:03:00.720 your chaotic energy. But you know, it's it's a. 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:03.280 Car that says, you know, like the Dodge hell Cat. 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:05.359 There's a few of them. It just says like, I'm 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:06.519 not afraid of you, officers. 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:08.880 That's exactly what. 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:11.799 That is ridiculous. And you want to know what else 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:12.639 is ridiculous? 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:14.000 Please? I got the time. 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:18.160 Selling lies, holding hateful rallies, and scanning people left and right, 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:23.600 only to wind up penniless and alone. That's ridiculous and satisfying, 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:25.000 if I do say so myself. 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:25.960 You just said it. 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:50.720 This is Ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:54.640 caper's hests and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:56.960 free and one hundred percent ridiculous. 0:03:57.040 --> 0:03:58.360 Oh you damn right. 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:03.200 Hmmm that the crooked politician is a total trope, you know, 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:08.240 But all the same, they do ridiculous things, and when 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:10.600 you're in the thick of them, it's hard to find 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:14.560 it funny. But time softens it a little, and at 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:20.960 least we hope and we can find the humor in audacious, opportunistic, vulgar, 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:22.520 narcissistic grift. 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:25.760 We can at some point there's a lot of grift 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:27.039 for the milk exactly. 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:30.200 At least I'm hoping that's the case for us in 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:32.480 the future with regard to our current state of things, 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:35.760 and the case for us today with someone from more 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:36.800 than one hundred years ago. 0:04:36.960 --> 0:04:40.720 Oh some distance to the comedy is it? It's comedy. 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:42.520 Is a tragedy plus timing. 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:45.919 Yeah, it equals comedy. The guy has a name that 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:55.120 sounds made up to American ears, Horatio Bottomly Bottomly. Yeah, right, 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:58.320 it's like something I would do in the credits. Yeah, exactly, 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.880 Horatio Bottomly. He ends the world in East London in 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:05.080 eighteen sixty and the world did not really roll out 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:06.040 the welcome. 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:08.160 Matt for this, hey, mister Bottomley. 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:12.520 No, his father was a tailor's cutter and also a 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:14.080 serious alcoholic. 0:05:14.200 --> 0:05:15.440 And in that order, I hope. 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:20.080 Yeah. Well, well he wound up in an asylum with 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:23.440 the tremors and all, and he died when Horatio was 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:23.919 just three. 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:26.320 Oh yeah, that's quite the blow. 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:29.880 His mother followed shortly after passing away, and so he 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:32.640 was an orphan by the time it was five. Oh man, 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:33.839 so funny, huh. 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:36.200 Yeah, somebody contact Dickens. 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:43.960 So there was how one interesting branch of the family tree. 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:49.279 His mother's side sat squarely in the Victorian radical left. 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:50.279 Oh wow. 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:55.200 His uncle was George Jacob Holyoake, the man who coined 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:59.600 the terms secularism and jingoism. Oh really he did both. 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:01.599 Love jingo Is and also I love his work with 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:03.240 mounts like Mount Holio. 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:08.640 Mount Holyo exactly. Maybe. He also co founded the National 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:14.440 Secular Society. He ran a rationalist socialist journal. He paled 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:18.880 around with the atheist liberal MP Charles Bradlaw, and he 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:21.960 later became a fixture of the cooperative movement, which I 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:25.839 talked about before. So young Horatio lived with him for 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:26.320 a time. 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:28.880 Guy had somebody, yeah, and somebody so interesting. 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:31.360 Yeah. But then he was packed off to this really 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:34.240 grim Birmingham orphanage. It didn't last long, no, but he 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:36.480 lived there for five years at the orphanage, and then 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:38.880 he ran away when he was fourteen to go live 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:43.880 with an aunt. Four years with the uncles Angela, Yeah, exactly, exactly. 0:06:44.240 --> 0:06:47.240 And so then what follows is the string of just 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:50.400 dead end jobs. At one point he does an apprenticeship 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:54.120 in wood engraving. That was a bust. But then he 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:56.679 got this gig as an office boy at a City 0:06:56.720 --> 0:07:00.440 of London's solicitors firm. Okay, and then there's something clicked. 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:04.600 He became genuinely fascinated by the law, and he read 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:08.719 up on it obsessively, and the knowledge would prove professionally 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:13.920 useful later. So he learned Pittman's shorthand and he moved 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:18.480 to a firm that transcribed court proceedings. Now, Pittman's shorthand 0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:22.960 is a writing system that was invented by Sir Isaac Pittman. 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:26.040 Oh there it is, I know, in eighteen thirty seven. 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:28.400 So it was designed to let people write as fast 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:31.320 as someone speaks, and so you don't spell words out 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:36.560 letter by letter. It's like sounds using simple strokes, curves, dots, dashes. 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:38.640 Is that the keyboard that a court reporter uses. 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:39.720 I think it is. 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:40.480 It leads to those. 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:44.600 Yeah, it's basically phonetic rather than alphabetic. So knee and 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:47.480 ned start with the same symbol because they start with 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:48.080 the same sound. 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:50.000 Yeah alphabet. 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:55.480 Yeah. Meanwhile, okay, So Bottomly he reconnected with Uncle George, 0:07:55.880 --> 0:08:00.360 who introduced him to that atheist liberal MP, Charles bradlaw Right. 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:03.960 He liked Bottomly. Bradlaugh liked Bottomly enough to bring him 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:08.720 into his political orbit, and that connection got the liberals attention. 0:08:08.800 --> 0:08:11.080 They're like, who's this Bottomly kid. 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:14.880 And his ambitious orphans everything we love. 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:21.560 And he's great at transcribing. In age eighty seven, Bottomly 0:08:21.640 --> 0:08:24.680 stood as their candidate in the Hornsey by election. 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.760 Oh, they really loved him on the ballot. 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:31.920 They were like warm for his form. Yeah, so Bottomly 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:33.000 he's short on cash. 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:35.080 That's not new to him in politics. 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:39.320 He had to be clever, so he convinced his opponent HC. 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:43.160 Stevens of Stephen's Ink I n K so like an 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:46.679 eight company you to lend him the money for his 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:47.480 own campaign. 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:50.720 He got his opponent to pay for his campaign. 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:51.880 Which he did. Yeah he did. 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:54.160 Did his opponent think, I mean easily beat you? 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:56.840 So it's kind of like did Stevens won the seat 0:08:57.000 --> 0:09:00.280 and then Bottomley never paid him back. He was like, 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:02.920 got you, suck. They both got what they wanted, right, 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:05.000 But now everyone knows who Bottomly is. He's got his 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:05.679 name out there. 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:06.120 Gotcha. 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:10.760 Around around this time, he also married a woman named Eliza, 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:12.720 which he'd go on to have a daughter with a 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:17.120 girl named Florence. Like business wise, things are moving fast 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:20.560 for Horatio. By the mid eighteen eighties, he was a 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:24.960 founding partner in this big publishing firm, and before the 0:09:25.040 --> 0:09:29.559 end of the decade he'd landed a contract to publish Hansward, 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:34.600 which is Parliament's official record of debates. Oh okay and 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:37.440 so eighteen eighty eight. He then went on to co 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:42.079 found The Financial Times, where he briefly employed this sub 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:50.160 editor named Alfred Harmsworth. Hasworth was the future Lord Northcliffe 0:09:50.679 --> 0:09:53.439 and the eventual press baron of the Daily Mail. 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:56.040 Oh thanks did yeah? 0:09:56.160 --> 0:10:02.920 Good on? So Bottomly's he that fund he overreached almost 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:06.280 immediately he had a falling out with a business partner 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.600 that cost him his magazines. In May of eighteen ninety one, 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:15.880 he had like floated hanswerd publishing union in the stock 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:19.280 market and then it just the publishing unit just collapsed 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:22.600 under a bunch of debt over one hundred thousand pounds, 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:26.360 So that's nearly fifteen million dollars in today's money and 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:31.680 debt went quote missing. Oh and I like you first 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:36.720 had to do the UK inflation calculator, then the currency. 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:41.959 So Bottomley gets charged with conspiracy to defraud. Everyone assumes 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:43.839 that he's going to get convicted. He's going to get 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:46.960 this long sentence well, I mean and partly because he 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:51.160 defended himself. He didn't hire a solicitor, didn't hire a lawyer. 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:53.800 That's not a good move, no, not for something this big. 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:58.040 But he charmed the judge into his corner and then 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:00.920 he watched as the jury acquitted him in minutes. 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:02.599 The jury and the judge went for it. 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:05.000 Oh yeah, everyone loves them stars born baby. 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:08.360 Oh he's a future politicians ever, I heard of one. 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:13.560 Eighteen ninety three old boy went bankrupt, doesn't and yet 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:17.240 he escaped it in classic fashion. So he paid off 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:22.320 creditors with these sketchy shares in Australian gold mines that 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:26.000 didn't like, I mean, if we're going to be full disclosure, 0:11:26.040 --> 0:11:27.280 they didn't really exist yet. 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:30.599 Oh, so they were going to be mine futures. 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:34.960 Yeah, And so he founded the Joint Stock Trust and 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:39.240 Institute to float these gold mining ventures. They're like fifty 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:42.559 companies in all, and most of them were like basically 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:44.520 like someone went out and dug a hole in the ground. 0:11:44.520 --> 0:11:46.240 They're like, that's my company, and the company is a 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:48.760 shell company in terms of like the PaperWorks the company. 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:52.760 Yeah. And so the vast no, no, the vast majority 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:56.560 went into liquidation and then they were like quietly quote 0:11:56.600 --> 0:12:00.920 reconstructed under new names. And then bottom would get all 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:04.640 these burned shareholders of the dead company to buy into 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:06.720 the shiny new one at a steep discount. 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:08.800 He'd burn him again. Oh yeah, I thought, you get 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:11.160 them together and just like sue the former company that need. 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:14.120 Taking well and sometimes though like by accident, really it 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:17.080 would it would work. So he had shares in the 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.720 Great Boulder Minds that he'd picked up at two shillings 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:23.000 eventually hit thirteen pounds. 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:24.839 Whoa, that's a big lift. 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:29.440 Yeah, And so the trust's stated purpose was to enrich shareholders, 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:34.079 obviously through these subsidiaries, but it's really enriching Bottomly. So 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:39.880 even the money meant to repay his original creditors mostly 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:42.720 arrived in the form of you know, you guessed it, 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:47.360 shares in yet another linked company. One defrauded investor, this guy, 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:50.640 mister Platt. He showed up at Bottomly's flat with a 0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:53.679 gun and he threatened to shoot him unless his money 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:57.920 was returned. And Bottomly is like turns on the charm. 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:01.120 He's like, let me show you how it's done. Just 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:07.319 like absolutely just bedazzles this guy. He pulls out Champagne. 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:09.320 By the end of the evening. 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:10.880 He gives them like the full con price. 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:14.080 Oh yeah, he had not only kept Platt's original money, 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:16.640 but then he talked him into writing a fresh check 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:18.520 for four thousand pounds. 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:19.080 Got more. 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:24.640 This guy's amazing. Another Mark, Robert Masters. This was a 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:30.680 wealthy retired Indian civil service official. He put ninety thousand 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:36.480 pounds into that worthless Bottomly paper, ninety thousand pounds. He 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:40.280 then fled London in shame and kept the lost secret. 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:44.040 And then years later, like his memory is failing, and 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:48.120 he gets one of Bottomly's mailers offering to make his 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:52.280 old victims whole, so he gives Bottomly another forty two 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:56.880 thousand dollars. He died penniless and then he has daughter 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:01.280 sued Bottomly in nineteen eleven and she won. But then 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:04.520 Bottomly was like, that's fantastic, but I'm about to go 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:06.960 bankrupt again, so you're never gonna see a penny of that. 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:08.440 You can't pay that judgment horrible. 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:09.960 Yeah, he just loves bankruptcies. 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:12.479 Sorry pockets. 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:16.920 When a judge ruled against him and then council branded 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:21.359 him the cleverest thief in the Empire, bottomly was like unmoved. 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:24.840 He stood up and demanded that the jury condemn his 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:28.960 accusers as the most disreputable blackmailers around. 0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:29.680 How dare they? 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:33.040 Yeah? Between eighteen ninety three and nineteen twenty two, he 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:36.080 appeared in court like one hundred and twenty different cases 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:41.320 bankruptcy's debt claims, you name it was. He tanked, absolutely not, 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:42.840 had no effect. 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:44.400 He's doing like five years. 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:46.800 Oh yeah. So with a track record like that, it 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:50.280 makes sense that politics would be his next move. Of course, 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:54.320 So he lost an election bid in nineteen hundred and 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:58.320 a newspaper called him a fraudulent company promoter and share 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:01.880 pusher during the campaign, so he sued the paper for libel. 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:07.680 Once again, he represented himself, and once again he was victorious. 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:12.360 He got awarded one thousand pounds in damages for being 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:17.120 described with what history would later confirm is absolutely perfect accuracy. 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:25.360 And they're descriptions, yes, exactly. So around nineteen around nineteen 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:30.760 oh two, he bought a struggling London evening newspaper, The Sun. 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:33.000 No I should know, it's not the same tabloid Sun 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:37.200 that exists today, but laying the groundwork for tabloids to come, 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:39.840 he gave it a gossip column that he wrote himself 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:44.760 under the title The World, the Flesh and the Devil. Wow, right, 0:15:45.320 --> 0:15:49.600 and he just like positively dished on the great and 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:52.840 good of politics, law finance. It was not a big 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:53.320 hit and. 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:55.960 Was it accurate at all in terms of gossip level. 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:01.640 He's making stuff ups. 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:00.600 He's inventors. 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:03.720 How do you know this? So the sun is floundering. 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:05.840 He sells it in nineteen oh four, and you know 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:08.440 he's kind of running out of money. Nineteen oh six, 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:11.320 he finally wins a seat in parliament, so he's running. 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:14.080 He keeps running, so he's like whatever, like yeah, over 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:15.480 four and then finally he wins. 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:17.800 His fast exactly so he gets voted in as Liberal 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:19.320 MP for Hackney South. 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:21.800 Oh, I've actually heard of this, right, Okay, there we. 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:24.840 Are, and you know where we are. One of his 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:29.400 campaign tactics was hiring men in steel sold boots, not 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:33.280 steel toad, steel sold boots to stomp around outside of 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:36.320 his opponent's rallies so that no one could hear the speeches. 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:40.400 What are we talking? Steel sold like it's on the 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:41.480 bottom like tap dance. 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:46.080 Yeah, so you just have like Gregory Hines out there's. 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:50.800 A glover that's a big Brobinson. 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:54.360 Once he gets into the alas of Commons. He was 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:59.560 such a compelling and magnetic speaker that other MP's made 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:01.800 a point of never missing him if he seems to 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:04.760 be his gift. Yeah, yeah, So he held that seat 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:05.760 until nineteen twelve. 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:07.840 I think that the people would also like quote from him, 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:09.240 Like they want to hear what he's going to do, 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:10.320 and they pull some rhetoric. 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:12.400 Now no, I think they're just like, just enjoy this guy. 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:14.200 Yeah, just like a good showman exactly. 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:17.359 So. The New York Times described him as quote an 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:21.840 effective orator and possesses personal magnetism, which has enabled him 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:24.399 to retain his seat in Parliament in spite of the 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:28.359 notoriety he has gained through his financial record. So like 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:33.200 he radiates this boozy warmth of like a saloon regular, 0:17:33.960 --> 0:17:36.240 and so much so that one writer claimed that he 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:40.600 inspired the loud, incorrigible toad of toad haul in the 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:43.320 wind of the will. Oh wow, it's the only writer 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:46.720 to say that, And it's cute but incorrect. But you know, 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:49.480 I see where he's going with it. So we've got 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:55.919 this loud mouth, shady bankruptcy loving, litigious course, showman, businessman 0:17:56.040 --> 0:18:00.320 slash politician. He's amusing to people. He's a character, and 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:03.840 he's only gonna get worse. It sounds va Yeah, let's 0:18:03.840 --> 0:18:06.440 stop here for some ads, and when we return, we'll 0:18:06.440 --> 0:18:29.680 see what else this guy has up his sleeve. Zaren 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:39.040 Horatio bottom Le ratio. This guy not your man. He 0:18:39.160 --> 0:18:42.960 launched John Bull, which was a jingoistic, I mean, it's 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:50.080 a family term, chauvinistic, crude penny weekly, pitched at working 0:18:50.160 --> 0:18:55.240 men who liked beer sports that it is. It was 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:58.399 like an early lad mag and he wrote most of 0:18:58.400 --> 0:18:59.040 it himself. 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:02.159 Was he think he was connected enough to He is 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:04.720 really jocular and I guess he does have the gift 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:06.520 of gab. So you didn't get that on paper. 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:08.720 Yeah, he realized, like, this is what people want, So 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:14.520 he serves up this cocktail of salacious gossip, genuine investigative journalism, 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:21.040 really loud, opinionated commentary, and lurid exposees of sexual depravity 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:23.200 and degradation in name for John Bull. 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:25.320 So you get like this connection to Okay. 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:28.639 Yeah, so his old the World, the Flesh and the 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:32.160 Devil column got pride of place. He brings it back 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:36.000 at the front of every issue. But the gossip in it. 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:41.920 Now he had this credibility now because it's coming from 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:45.720 a sitting MP is writing this, so people are like, well, 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:47.800 maybe I will listen to what he's saying. It's like 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:51.639 old timey tweets. And so since everything was a hustle, 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:55.639 each copy had a unique serial number, and ten of 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:59.639 those numbers would win small prizes announced in the next issue. 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:02.240 That made sure readers just kept buying papers. 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:03.479 So it's also a raffle. 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:05.840 Essentially, everyone likes to think they're about to come into 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:09.119 some money, yes, and so it's like a rolling raffle. 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:10.520 I read it and I could win. 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:12.760 And I could win. And then there were the sweepstakes. 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:15.760 So this was a regular John Bull feature and in 0:20:15.840 --> 0:20:21.240 all likelihood frequently rigged. So British law was, let's say, inconvenient. 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:25.960 So he ran the sweepstakes out of Switzerland. The first 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:30.359 one offered fifteen thousand pounds on the nineteen thirteen Derby. 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:34.920 How much fifteen thousand pounds? Now, there's something significant about 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:38.879 that race. There was a tragedy. A suffragette died running 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:41.920 in front of the King's horse. Oh, a protest. 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:42.680 Move I've seen this reference. 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:45.920 Yeah, and so this threw the whole result into chaos. 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:49.920 Not really a good way to start the sweepstakes, but whatever, 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:53.440 he just keeps going. So rigged or not. These sweepstakes, 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:57.520 they hauled in around two hundred and seventy thousand pounds 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:02.399 for bottom Lank in one later draw. The announced twenty 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:05.720 five thousand pounds winner, which is like five million dollars. Yeah, 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:10.440 I imagined was a blind widow from Toulouse named Madame Glucad. 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:12.000 Does she exists, Well, she. 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:16.000 Was actually the sister of like one of Bottomly's little cronies, 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:19.640 and so there's this huge burst of publicity. Oh my god, 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:22.879 she want all this money. She vanished and she it 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:26.639 was reported, well, no, she was fleeing this avalanche of 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:29.399 marriage proposals, so she had to go under tract he 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:33.040 it looks when they actually looked at the books, she 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:35.280 got paid two hundred and fifty pounds for her trouble. 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:39.359 That's like fifty g's today, and then Bottomly kept the rest. 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:43.399 And the Swiss is the one sanctioning this legally. Is 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:48.320 there anything the Swiss care about? Money clocks, chocolate and money. 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:53.960 Clocks, chocolate, money and knives. There's a woman's spinoff magazine, 0:21:54.040 --> 0:22:00.440 Missus Bull, that got launched in nineteen ten. Lady Bull. Yeah, 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:03.600 it died quickly. It's it's better than it didn't take off. 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:10.920 So the bills eventually arrived, though, and in nineteen twelve 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:14.280 one of his mining stock victims sued successfully. 0:22:14.400 --> 0:22:17.359 Oh and bodily got a bunch of them in the course. 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:20.720 Oh yeah, but he couldn't pay. Plus he was at 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:23.960 this point two hundred and thirty three thousand pounds in debt. 0:22:24.440 --> 0:22:27.360 So he goes bankrupt a second time, and he had 0:22:27.400 --> 0:22:34.000 to surrender his parliamentary seat bankrupt. So his spending habits 0:22:34.000 --> 0:22:36.760 didn't help this whole thing. Because he owned a stable 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:42.000 of racehorses, even though he had no eye whatsoever for horseflesh, 0:22:42.640 --> 0:22:45.159 you know, to saying that. Okay, so most of them 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:48.280 were just duds, and he was known to bet and 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:51.360 lose the modern equivalent of like hundreds of thousands of 0:22:51.400 --> 0:22:54.600 dollars in a single day at the track. What yeah, 0:22:54.600 --> 0:22:57.480 he was just he went nuts. So he had gambling debts. 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:03.480 Imagine being on horse, No cannot, I cannot. He actually, 0:23:03.800 --> 0:23:06.080 of all his debts, the gambling debts were the only 0:23:06.119 --> 0:23:09.000 ones that he felt he was honor bound to pay. 0:23:09.080 --> 0:23:09.760 Or scared about it. 0:23:09.840 --> 0:23:12.560 We're scared of the hard bed coming at him. Yeah. 0:23:12.880 --> 0:23:16.440 So despite this lack of horse racing acumen, he kept 0:23:16.480 --> 0:23:18.679 at it, and he looked for ways to put his 0:23:18.680 --> 0:23:20.880 thumb on the scale in like the most successful way 0:23:20.920 --> 0:23:25.400 possible at the track. Zaren closed your eyes. I want 0:23:25.440 --> 0:23:37.040 you to picture it. It's nineteen thirteen. You are in 0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:42.000 the seaside resort town of Blankenberg's, Belgium. You're visiting, but 0:23:42.160 --> 0:23:45.520 you're at work. Really, you're a lady in waiting to Sophie, 0:23:45.640 --> 0:23:50.200 Duchess of Hohenburg, wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. 0:23:50.960 --> 0:23:54.760 The couple loved vacation here in Blankenberge, and you certainly 0:23:54.800 --> 0:23:57.480 don't mind it either. After this trip, the next one 0:23:57.480 --> 0:24:00.680 you'll take his next summer in Sarajevo. You here, it's 0:24:00.800 --> 0:24:04.560 beautiful there, But for now you are in a special 0:24:04.560 --> 0:24:07.000 wing of the Grand Hotel de ban and Del family. 0:24:07.800 --> 0:24:12.119 The Archduke's sister, arch Duchess Elizabeth Amalie of Austria and 0:24:12.280 --> 0:24:17.040 her husband, Prince Alois of Liechtenstein and his niece arch 0:24:17.119 --> 0:24:21.240 Duchess Marie Valerie of Austria are also there. The group 0:24:21.320 --> 0:24:24.000 of them have gone this morning to attend daily services 0:24:24.040 --> 0:24:26.760 at church. The Duchess told you to take the day 0:24:26.800 --> 0:24:29.000 off and be back in the early afternoon. She wants 0:24:29.040 --> 0:24:30.880 you to get out and see the town, get some air. 0:24:31.359 --> 0:24:34.119 You won't argue with that. As you stroll down these 0:24:34.280 --> 0:24:37.520 charming streets, peeking in shop windows and enjoying this bit 0:24:37.560 --> 0:24:40.640 of free time, you see a sign horse race. It's 0:24:40.680 --> 0:24:43.600 about to start down the promenade any minute now. You 0:24:43.760 --> 0:24:46.520 do so love going to the track. You make it 0:24:46.560 --> 0:24:48.919 to the track just as the jockeys are preparing to 0:24:48.960 --> 0:24:51.720 get to the gates. You can hear the waves crashing 0:24:51.760 --> 0:24:55.040 on the shore. In the distance. There's a rotund man 0:24:55.119 --> 0:24:58.360 in an ill fitting suit addressing all six of the jockeys. 0:24:58.800 --> 0:25:01.720 He hands them each and en open barks out. Remember 0:25:02.080 --> 0:25:05.840 your first, your second, You there are third, your fourth? Hey, 0:25:05.960 --> 0:25:08.120 you listen to me, you're number five and you you're 0:25:08.200 --> 0:25:12.800 dead last? Got it? Curious? The horse's nay? You know 0:25:12.880 --> 0:25:15.439 a fixed race. When you see one, You're half tempted 0:25:15.480 --> 0:25:17.240 to go put some money on the first horse, but 0:25:17.320 --> 0:25:19.800 decide not to. That would be dirty money and it 0:25:19.840 --> 0:25:22.800 would bring only darkness with it. Despite what you are 0:25:22.880 --> 0:25:25.720 sure is the predetermined result of this race, you still 0:25:25.760 --> 0:25:28.520 opt to watch. You make your way into the stands 0:25:28.520 --> 0:25:31.680 and take a seat. Gruff men betting slips in hand, 0:25:31.760 --> 0:25:34.560 push their ways up to the railing. The horses take 0:25:34.600 --> 0:25:36.840 their spots at the gates. You look at the sky 0:25:36.960 --> 0:25:39.640 and you notice it's getting a little dark. Not rain, 0:25:39.880 --> 0:25:43.639 no fog. The fog is coming in. It's thick, and 0:25:43.680 --> 0:25:47.840 it's fast approaching. A foghorn sounds down the coast. By 0:25:47.920 --> 0:25:51.080 the time the starting pistol is shot, visibility. 0:25:50.520 --> 0:25:51.320 Is near zero. 0:25:51.960 --> 0:25:54.360 You can no longer see the gates, but you do 0:25:54.400 --> 0:25:57.320 hear the hammering of hoofs as they pass by. The 0:25:57.359 --> 0:26:01.080 betters shout and complain around the track the horses go. 0:26:01.160 --> 0:26:03.480 They need to complete three laps of this little track. 0:26:03.920 --> 0:26:06.120 You still can't see much, but you hear the horses 0:26:06.160 --> 0:26:09.240 and the impassioned cries of those with money riding on 0:26:09.280 --> 0:26:12.200 the steeds they can't see. As you hear what will 0:26:12.240 --> 0:26:14.399 be the third passing of the horses, you know that 0:26:14.480 --> 0:26:17.119 the end of the race is quickly approaching. The finish 0:26:17.200 --> 0:26:19.520 line is just down the track from where you're sitting. 0:26:19.920 --> 0:26:22.320 Whether you'll be able to see anything or not. Who knows? 0:26:22.680 --> 0:26:25.119 This will make for a great dinner anecdote, though you 0:26:25.160 --> 0:26:28.119 are sure of that. Just as the hoofs get louder 0:26:28.119 --> 0:26:31.560 and thunder your way, the fog parts sun fights through, 0:26:32.000 --> 0:26:34.720 you can see. And what you see is that the 0:26:34.760 --> 0:26:37.800 horses are not in any way in the order prescribed 0:26:37.840 --> 0:26:40.480 by that bellering man in the suit before the race, 0:26:40.880 --> 0:26:44.240 not one bit. They obviously couldn't see one another to 0:26:44.280 --> 0:26:48.080 figure out how to pace, they rode wine. You smirk 0:26:48.119 --> 0:26:51.760 to yourself and smug satisfaction for opting not to place 0:26:51.800 --> 0:26:54.119 a bed. The flags go up, and the men in 0:26:54.160 --> 0:26:57.239 the crowd shout and complain what kind of race was that? 0:26:57.400 --> 0:27:00.520 They yell, we couldn't see a thing. When you catch 0:27:00.560 --> 0:27:03.600 sight of the man in the suit, another gentleman approaches him. 0:27:03.800 --> 0:27:09.400 Bottomly Bottomly, he yells, what the devil happened? Bottomley's faces 0:27:09.520 --> 0:27:13.040 flush with anger. What happened? I'm out of fortune? Give 0:27:13.080 --> 0:27:16.800 me my champagne, he yells. You check the delicate watch 0:27:16.800 --> 0:27:20.160 you keep pinned inside your coat sleeve. You must get going. 0:27:20.680 --> 0:27:22.600 Time to get back to the hotel and prepare the 0:27:22.680 --> 0:27:27.680 duchess for dinner later that evening. What a day. Yes, 0:27:27.960 --> 0:27:30.919 this man tried to rig it and the fog was 0:27:31.240 --> 0:27:35.399 so thick. Uh huh, couldn't tell me, couldn't tell anything. 0:27:35.560 --> 0:27:39.200 Nobody knows anything. So it's like he can't even like successfully. 0:27:39.440 --> 0:27:42.560 That's like the most surefire way pay. All the jockeys 0:27:42.640 --> 0:27:43.879 inside the order can't do it. 0:27:44.160 --> 0:27:46.320 Guess you're basically running a play then with horses. 0:27:46.480 --> 0:27:50.760 Yes, exactly. So Bottomly's betting was busted, but John Bull 0:27:50.880 --> 0:27:54.640 kept booming. So between nineteen fourteen and nineteen eighteen it's 0:27:54.640 --> 0:27:58.640 sold between one and two million copies per issue. It 0:27:58.680 --> 0:28:02.720 was the most red magg in Britain, and the war 0:28:03.359 --> 0:28:08.960 handed Bottomly his greatest role yet professional patriot of course. Yes, 0:28:09.119 --> 0:28:12.480 so after the government declined his generous offer to serve 0:28:12.480 --> 0:28:18.080 as director of recruiting, he like appointed himself an unofficial one. 0:28:18.440 --> 0:28:25.400 He's like, I'm just going to go out and recruit boys. Yeah, yeah, exactly. 0:28:25.840 --> 0:28:29.639 So he staged these enormous rallies that whip crowds into 0:28:29.680 --> 0:28:34.200 like this froth of patriotic and anti German fervor. From 0:28:34.280 --> 0:28:37.280 late nineteen fifteen to the war's end, he delivered three 0:28:37.320 --> 0:28:40.760 hundred and forty lectures. He was averaging like two a 0:28:40.800 --> 0:28:46.000 week for three years. Tickets, Yeah, tickets were expensive, and 0:28:46.080 --> 0:28:48.680 after venue and travel costs, the rest of it went 0:28:48.760 --> 0:28:51.080 like right to him, He's making a ton of money. 0:28:52.360 --> 0:28:52.560 Yeah. 0:28:52.840 --> 0:28:56.880 His performances were literally metered to the box office. So 0:28:57.200 --> 0:29:01.760 if a Knight's take was under seventy five, audiences got 0:29:01.800 --> 0:29:05.800 a subdued like invocation of King and Empire and then 0:29:05.840 --> 0:29:09.520 the band would play the anthem or YMCA, I don't know. 0:29:10.040 --> 0:29:13.840 If the take cleared seventy five pounds, he'd go like 0:29:14.040 --> 0:29:18.640 full throated, like this crescendo about Britain standing shoulder to 0:29:18.800 --> 0:29:21.760 shoulder as the land of hope and glory, and then 0:29:21.800 --> 0:29:24.400 the band would like swell beneath him, and then the 0:29:24.480 --> 0:29:26.680 audience singing the anthem would just drown him out. 0:29:27.040 --> 0:29:28.520 Yes, Queen and Empire exactly. 0:29:29.760 --> 0:29:33.360 Yeah. So in early nineteen fifteen, Lord Norcliffe, remember the 0:29:33.400 --> 0:29:37.280 former sub editor Alfred Harmsworth, right Daily Mail baron and 0:29:37.320 --> 0:29:41.040 now owner of half a Fleet Street. He offered bottomly 0:29:41.240 --> 0:29:44.760 a column in the New Sunday Pictorial and bottom is 0:29:44.760 --> 0:29:47.200 a yeah, sure, I'll take a column, and so then 0:29:47.240 --> 0:29:50.320 he like submitted peace after piece that were just recycled 0:29:50.440 --> 0:29:54.640 pieces of his speeches yeah, his greatest hits, and that 0:29:54.640 --> 0:29:56.640 got him one hundred and fifty pounds in issues. So 0:29:56.680 --> 0:30:00.120 it was like twenty seven thousand dollars today being a 0:30:00.120 --> 0:30:08.240 is he man is dollars? Yeah? Yeah per one. 0:30:06.160 --> 0:30:07.880 Journals used to having money. 0:30:07.960 --> 0:30:12.000 Yeah, but now its dead. Uh so uh, he's busy, right, 0:30:12.080 --> 0:30:14.800 So he started farming out the actual writing to the 0:30:14.920 --> 0:30:21.760 John bullstaff. Wow, he's not even doing his He would approve, Yeah, 0:30:21.840 --> 0:30:23.800 he'd approve the copy and then put like a little 0:30:23.800 --> 0:30:25.880 personal flourish at the end, you know, riff a little 0:30:25.920 --> 0:30:30.000 to leave a little. He paid the ghost writers kept 0:30:30.040 --> 0:30:33.520 the healthy margin, demonstrating once again that the public will 0:30:33.520 --> 0:30:36.000 swallow anything with his name on it. If his name's 0:30:36.000 --> 0:30:39.840 on it, they're in. And so his anti German rhetoric, though, 0:30:40.000 --> 0:30:43.080 is like curdling into something genuinely disgusting. 0:30:43.360 --> 0:30:47.000 Oh, it's getting so prejudiced and bias, it's like beyond. 0:30:47.120 --> 0:30:49.600 He told readers that if they found out that there 0:30:49.640 --> 0:30:51.960 was a German waiter serving their soup, they had to 0:30:52.040 --> 0:30:54.840 hurl the soup in his face, and that if like 0:30:54.880 --> 0:30:58.320 a German clerk at the next desk was there, that 0:30:58.360 --> 0:31:01.600 they should empty the ink pot over his head and 0:31:01.640 --> 0:31:04.680 it's just yeah, like just basically harass him. He he 0:31:05.120 --> 0:31:10.320 called for the extermination of ordinary Germans, so he's like 0:31:10.480 --> 0:31:11.040 ramping it. 0:31:11.200 --> 0:31:14.680 Oh yeah. He argued that not the Kaiser, the German 0:31:15.040 --> 0:31:15.800 German people. 0:31:16.040 --> 0:31:18.920 He argued that Germans living in Britain should be badged 0:31:19.120 --> 0:31:23.120 whenever they left home and then deported as soon as 0:31:23.320 --> 0:31:25.959 you know they could be It's like he's laying out 0:31:26.000 --> 0:31:30.320 the Nazi blueprint. Yes, yeah, and the Germans. This actually 0:31:30.360 --> 0:31:35.040 is kind of interesting. So in print he declared that 0:31:35.120 --> 0:31:38.360 an unnatural beast could not be naturalized, it had to 0:31:38.400 --> 0:31:42.120 be exterminated. So he's just dehumanizing. 0:31:43.000 --> 0:31:46.320 Specifically Germans. 0:31:46.440 --> 0:31:49.720 And within days of that article, anti German riots just 0:31:49.840 --> 0:31:53.160 irrupt across Britain. So he's just lighting the fires. But 0:31:53.280 --> 0:31:56.080 don't forget is the biggest publication in Britain. 0:31:56.160 --> 0:31:58.680 Yeah, and it's also very macho, and you're getting an 0:31:58.680 --> 0:32:03.640 audience that has already kind of like exactly, let's just 0:32:03.680 --> 0:32:04.920 say full of themselves. 0:32:05.000 --> 0:32:09.560 Yes, yes, so like top hatted bankers they got together 0:32:09.640 --> 0:32:12.360 at the stock exchange steps to say all right, no 0:32:12.480 --> 0:32:14.719 Germans should remain in the city. So it wasn't just 0:32:14.760 --> 0:32:18.520 like the working people. He's got everybody top down. Smithfield 0:32:18.560 --> 0:32:24.080 porters wore signs around their necks refusing to trade with Germans. 0:32:24.240 --> 0:32:28.800 Patriotism is like excellent for business. I guess major firms 0:32:28.880 --> 0:32:32.440 grew so nervous of bottomly that they bought ads in 0:32:32.560 --> 0:32:37.720 John Bull to advertise their Britishness. He had businesses bending 0:32:37.720 --> 0:32:42.520 the knee. So two brands, Lions and Bovril, they both 0:32:42.600 --> 0:32:45.520 used his pages to insist that every one of their 0:32:45.560 --> 0:32:49.320 directors was British, and then De la Ruepenn's they ran 0:32:49.360 --> 0:32:52.640 an ad that kind of insinuated that their rival Waterman's 0:32:53.040 --> 0:32:57.080 was selling through an Austrian firm, and that prompted Watermans 0:32:57.080 --> 0:33:00.040 to then go and buy a full page rebuttal. 0:33:00.240 --> 0:33:02.800 We had nothing to do with the Austrian Hungarian Empire exactly. 0:33:03.160 --> 0:33:06.800 So John Bull even ignited a film world scandal by 0:33:06.840 --> 0:33:10.400 accusing the makers of this epic biopic the life Story 0:33:10.440 --> 0:33:14.560 of David Lloyd George of German Sympathies and the Ideal 0:33:14.600 --> 0:33:17.640 Film Company was the production company. They sued and they 0:33:17.760 --> 0:33:20.720 won in January nineteen nineteen, but the film never saw 0:33:20.840 --> 0:33:25.920 daylight because parties acting for Lloyd George himself then Prime Minister, 0:33:26.400 --> 0:33:29.680 and a Bottomly acquaintance. They bought up all the prints 0:33:29.680 --> 0:33:35.640 for twenty thousand pounds. Wow. So nineteen seventeen, the War 0:33:35.720 --> 0:33:41.080 Office accepted Bottomley's proposal for like a morale boosting tour 0:33:41.160 --> 0:33:44.440 of the Western Front. Yes, and it was judged enough 0:33:44.440 --> 0:33:46.280 of a success with the troops that he was sent 0:33:46.320 --> 0:33:47.720 to review the Grand Fleet. 0:33:47.840 --> 0:33:50.000 See's like I had that hateful Bob Hope. 0:33:50.200 --> 0:33:53.520 Yeah, or hateful Bob Hope is a good one. So 0:33:53.720 --> 0:33:57.480 the Sunday pictorial they chipped in one thousand pounds toward expenses, 0:33:57.960 --> 0:34:00.440 even though he was traveling on official bus business and 0:34:00.480 --> 0:34:03.360 hosted by the Army the entire time, so he's double 0:34:03.400 --> 0:34:06.280 dipping kind of like a golf trip. So the tour 0:34:06.360 --> 0:34:10.640 did reveal one genuine hardship of trench life. There was 0:34:10.760 --> 0:34:16.920 tragically a champagne shortage, so Bottomly he was like visibly listless. 0:34:17.360 --> 0:34:20.680 His letters home were just like subdued. He didn't have 0:34:20.800 --> 0:34:21.680 his like vigor. 0:34:21.920 --> 0:34:23.880 So wait, this man is drinking that much. 0:34:24.520 --> 0:34:28.040 Champagne that he was running on champagne. He was offered 0:34:28.040 --> 0:34:30.239 a drink in the officer's mess and he was like, 0:34:30.360 --> 0:34:34.000 I don't drink anything but the very driest champagne and 0:34:34.080 --> 0:34:36.560 turned it down, and there just wasn't any of the 0:34:36.680 --> 0:34:37.800 very driest champagne. 0:34:37.840 --> 0:34:40.440 I've never, by the way, considered somebody who could be 0:34:40.480 --> 0:34:44.600 a champagne alcoholic. That's all they drink, and they get 0:34:44.640 --> 0:34:45.680 mean if they don't have it. 0:34:45.719 --> 0:34:49.359 They get too much sullen if he doesn't have it. 0:34:49.400 --> 0:34:51.400 But you know, he's braver than the troops really just 0:34:51.440 --> 0:34:54.759 to be there without his champers. I need a quick 0:34:54.760 --> 0:34:57.239 break from this guy. Okay, let's listen to some ads 0:34:57.239 --> 0:35:00.040 and when we get back rock Bottomly. 0:35:21.440 --> 0:35:22.040 Elizabeth. 0:35:22.400 --> 0:35:25.360 Near the end of World War One, the government issued 0:35:25.760 --> 0:35:30.239 new war saving certificates, and Bottomly is like, what's that 0:35:30.320 --> 0:35:34.800 smell opportunity? Smell in the air. So, through John Bull, 0:35:35.120 --> 0:35:39.000 he invited the public to send him money. Your money 0:35:39.000 --> 0:35:41.320 in your head, buy certificates on their behalf. 0:35:41.400 --> 0:35:42.720 If it's so loose in your pocket. 0:35:42.840 --> 0:35:45.120 Yeah, He's like, and you know what, I'll buy this 0:35:45.280 --> 0:35:48.280 the certificates for you, and then we're gonna have prizes 0:35:48.400 --> 0:35:52.560 drawn for lucky winners. And there's always the sweepstakes. There's 0:35:52.560 --> 0:35:56.200 always some crazy. So the scheme was like. 0:35:55.680 --> 0:35:58.799 He offers a sweepstakes on top of the saving certificate. 0:35:59.080 --> 0:36:00.719 So that where they're like, oh, I definitely gonna play 0:36:00.719 --> 0:36:02.640 the one rhyme, also be a winner. 0:36:02.440 --> 0:36:04.680 Exactly, I'm going to pay for the war and and 0:36:04.760 --> 0:36:07.560 so then he The thing is is that he aimed 0:36:07.600 --> 0:36:11.319 for like fifty pounds to come in. He took in 0:36:11.360 --> 0:36:14.440 nearly double that everyone's just like, take my money please. 0:36:14.800 --> 0:36:19.160 Winning numbers were published, but winners' names were not. So 0:36:19.400 --> 0:36:23.600 there's that between this scheme and like his lecture profits. 0:36:24.080 --> 0:36:28.359 He had collected enough money to discharge his bankruptcy and 0:36:28.600 --> 0:36:30.719 become eligible for parliament again. 0:36:30.680 --> 0:36:32.360 Because he was back to the red yeah, yeah for 0:36:32.480 --> 0:36:32.840 the black. 0:36:33.640 --> 0:36:36.239 And so in nineteen eighteen he was voted back in 0:36:36.280 --> 0:36:39.600 for Hackney South this time is a right wing independent 0:36:40.120 --> 0:36:42.880 Oh okay, yeah, And so I mean that's how he's 0:36:42.920 --> 0:36:43.880 being politically. 0:36:43.920 --> 0:36:45.239 No, it makes a lot of sense. But I mean 0:36:45.719 --> 0:36:47.759 the voters just don't give like there's nothing right. 0:36:47.840 --> 0:36:48.880 No, I mean that's it. 0:36:49.040 --> 0:36:50.560 You can get both sides of the because it's purely 0:36:50.640 --> 0:36:51.840 personality exactly. 0:36:52.239 --> 0:36:56.400 So he won a majority with nearly eighty percent of 0:36:56.440 --> 0:36:56.880 the vote. 0:36:57.360 --> 0:36:57.680 Dang. 0:36:57.800 --> 0:37:01.200 Yeah. He became a leading voice of the quote anti 0:37:01.280 --> 0:37:05.399 waste campaign. So this was a vaguely from now it 0:37:05.440 --> 0:37:08.799 was a fight over the direction of conservative economics. So 0:37:08.960 --> 0:37:12.279 at his peak he had this like loose caucus of 0:37:12.360 --> 0:37:15.560 like ten to twelve independent MP's and they were trying 0:37:15.560 --> 0:37:19.600 to build a party positions to the right of the Conservatives. Okay, 0:37:19.760 --> 0:37:21.799 so the scheme that finally sank him. 0:37:21.880 --> 0:37:23.520 What was their stance, like we should only pay poor 0:37:23.560 --> 0:37:26.160 people in food they don't get money, not even that. 0:37:26.239 --> 0:37:28.840 It's like if you know, it's God judging you. I 0:37:28.880 --> 0:37:32.280 don't know. That's usually how that goes. So what sank 0:37:32.400 --> 0:37:34.560 him was Victory bonds Club. 0:37:34.960 --> 0:37:36.080 Victory bond, yes, like. 0:37:36.040 --> 0:37:39.239 The hair club. He launched it in nineteen nineteen. The 0:37:39.239 --> 0:37:42.680 government was selling victory bonds at five pounds each. 0:37:42.760 --> 0:37:45.920 So you going to rebuild the nation and off wards 0:37:46.000 --> 0:37:46.440 or whatever. 0:37:46.800 --> 0:37:48.799 Yeah, they really needed bonds. 0:37:48.480 --> 0:37:50.160 But instead of like we did it during the war, 0:37:50.239 --> 0:37:51.200 the liberty bonds. 0:37:51.160 --> 0:37:53.000 We had, our liberty bonds went after. 0:37:53.520 --> 0:37:56.120 Total this is specifically victory. 0:37:56.360 --> 0:37:58.879 Yeah, like we've won, we need to and we are 0:37:59.200 --> 0:38:02.280 just so it's like for four hundred and fifty dollars 0:38:02.320 --> 0:38:06.560 today is you know, five pounds then, and Bottomley and 0:38:06.680 --> 0:38:10.400 John Bull wrote that like that's absolutely unaffordable for working people. 0:38:11.080 --> 0:38:14.920 Come on, do you have a solution, Horatio, Oh my god. 0:38:14.960 --> 0:38:17.400 Of course, he's like, I'm going to buy the bonds 0:38:17.400 --> 0:38:19.920 in bulk, and then I'm gonna split them up, and 0:38:19.960 --> 0:38:23.480 I'm going to sell readers one pound stakes, and of 0:38:23.520 --> 0:38:25.640 course I'm also going to have prizes. 0:38:26.800 --> 0:38:29.359 It's like Bitcoin. With prizes you can. 0:38:29.280 --> 0:38:33.799 Get exactly exactly, So like subscribers, you're going to be 0:38:33.880 --> 0:38:37.160 entered into this annual prize draw worth up to twenty 0:38:37.239 --> 0:38:40.880 thousand pounds funded by the interest one point seven million 0:38:40.960 --> 0:38:45.920 dollars today. So he promised full refunds on demand, of course, 0:38:45.960 --> 0:38:48.759 and he swore he would take nothing for administration of. 0:38:48.719 --> 0:38:49.520 The fund trust. 0:38:50.120 --> 0:38:55.240 The response was overwhelming, of course, so overwhelming that actually 0:38:55.360 --> 0:38:58.560 administering it would have been a full time job, which 0:38:58.760 --> 0:39:02.799 is presumably why he didn't even bother. So instead the 0:39:02.880 --> 0:39:08.719 money he bought luxury cars, more thoroughbreds, He had mistresses 0:39:08.719 --> 0:39:12.680 at like flats around London. He went all in. So 0:39:12.760 --> 0:39:17.560 the paper trail, once investigators pulled it, was spectacular. Between 0:39:17.640 --> 0:39:21.560 September nineteen nineteen May nineteen twenty, the club cut bottomly 0:39:21.760 --> 0:39:25.920 eight checks for one thousand pounds or more, plus seven 0:39:26.000 --> 0:39:29.040 more between one thousand pounds and twenty five thousand pounds 0:39:29.040 --> 0:39:32.600 to his inner circle. Oh wow, his horse trainer got 0:39:32.920 --> 0:39:37.080 one thousand pounds beaks. Yeah, there's this fixer, James Kerr, 0:39:37.200 --> 0:39:40.960 he got ten grand. Thirty grand was wired to Paris 0:39:41.080 --> 0:39:45.440 under the authority of Laura Rodgers, who the police figured 0:39:45.520 --> 0:39:50.360 was his mistress and had had a child with him. 0:39:51.000 --> 0:39:54.120 Forty eight hundred pounds in cash went to an actress 0:39:54.200 --> 0:39:55.960 named Peggy Primrose. 0:39:55.560 --> 0:39:56.719 Another mistress. 0:39:56.960 --> 0:39:59.880 Eleven hundred pounds to an entourage member, Charles. 0:40:01.120 --> 0:40:03.480 Remember what do you do for he's an entrage Remember. 0:40:03.840 --> 0:40:08.080 He's like the Champagne carrier. One hundred pounds to a bookie, 0:40:08.520 --> 0:40:13.320 twenty pounds to an Italian restaurant. Quick note on Peggy Primrose, 0:40:13.680 --> 0:40:17.239 please so. Lady Peggy Primrose was the daughter of Archibald 0:40:17.320 --> 0:40:21.719 Philip Primrose, fifth Earl of Rosebery, not the fish, can 0:40:21.760 --> 0:40:24.600 you believe it? The liberal statesman who served as British 0:40:24.640 --> 0:40:27.399 Prime Minister eighteen ninety four to eighteen ninety five. And 0:40:28.160 --> 0:40:30.520 that's her dad. And then Hannah de ross Child, who 0:40:30.560 --> 0:40:31.960 had been the richest woman in Britain. 0:40:32.120 --> 0:40:33.080 Oh snack. 0:40:33.320 --> 0:40:35.960 Lady Peggy was one of the first female Justices of 0:40:36.000 --> 0:40:38.400 the Peace in London. She got appointed to magistrate in 0:40:38.480 --> 0:40:41.960 nineteen nineteen after they passed the Sexist Qualification Act of 0:40:42.040 --> 0:40:42.720 nineteen nineteen. 0:40:42.760 --> 0:40:44.680 She's think the first female judge is actually. 0:40:44.760 --> 0:40:47.240 Bottom Lee's Peggy Primrose was another Peggy. 0:40:49.480 --> 0:40:50.520 You didn't borrow the name. 0:40:50.960 --> 0:40:54.040 I went down a long rabbit hole and then like 0:40:54.160 --> 0:40:58.600 it made a U turn. Yeah. So she was a 0:40:58.640 --> 0:41:04.120 chorus girl and an aspiring musical comedy actress, and she 0:41:04.280 --> 0:41:10.120 was also a long time mistress of bottom Lenkait. I'm 0:41:10.120 --> 0:41:13.920 like this just does not mean now, and the who's. 0:41:15.239 --> 0:41:15.560 For him? 0:41:15.719 --> 0:41:17.160 Yeah? And then all of a sudden like hold on, 0:41:17.200 --> 0:41:21.680 hold on, and then's I'll see also Peggy. Okay, I gotcha. 0:41:22.440 --> 0:41:24.759 It would have been way funnier if it was Lady Peggy. 0:41:25.560 --> 0:41:28.560 But alas, all right, So back to the club payouts. 0:41:28.560 --> 0:41:32.520 Club money held in Bottomly's own name also bought sheares 0:41:32.560 --> 0:41:37.600 in John Bull itself, steaks and race courses at Plumpton 0:41:37.640 --> 0:41:41.880 and in Brussels an antique shop lease on Victoria Street, 0:41:42.480 --> 0:41:45.919 a factory that was supposed to be producing John Bull 0:41:45.960 --> 0:41:52.040 fountain pens that doesn't none of it. Bought a decommissioned 0:41:52.120 --> 0:41:56.320 German submarine, the Deutschland, and it like briefly toured around 0:41:56.360 --> 0:42:01.760 and then they scrapped it, and twenty five thousand pounds 0:42:01.800 --> 0:42:05.360 was sent to the official receiver to settle creditors of 0:42:05.400 --> 0:42:09.080 his previous bankruptcy. So he's using all these people's wore 0:42:09.239 --> 0:42:13.040 money to pay his creditors. A solicitor named Edmund Bell 0:42:13.360 --> 0:42:17.839 later put the club's total intake at one million, one 0:42:17.920 --> 0:42:22.040 hundred and seventy two nine and thirty nine pounds back then. Yeah, 0:42:22.120 --> 0:42:25.359 about a third of that went to just Bottomley's personal use. 0:42:26.640 --> 0:42:30.680 So that's that whole amount. Sixty eight million pounds a day, 0:42:30.680 --> 0:42:33.080 which is ninety one point five million dollars, is how 0:42:33.160 --> 0:42:35.520 much he pulled in on that on the club, just 0:42:35.719 --> 0:42:40.160 the Bonds club. His undoing came from within though. So 0:42:40.239 --> 0:42:45.040 this former associate, Ruben Bigland, he developed this like sudden 0:42:45.080 --> 0:42:49.720 and ferocious conscious really and yeah, and about the open 0:42:49.800 --> 0:42:52.319 robbery of the poor. He's like, I just this isn't 0:42:52.360 --> 0:42:52.799 sitting right. 0:42:52.920 --> 0:42:55.840 I think Bottomly like screwed him or urged you across 0:42:55.840 --> 0:42:56.280 a line. 0:42:56.560 --> 0:42:58.720 I'm glad you asked that question. That's a good question. 0:42:58.840 --> 0:42:59.440 Say thank you. 0:42:59.440 --> 0:43:03.960 Elizabeth's actually that he had tried to get Bottomly to 0:43:04.080 --> 0:43:07.120 back a scheme that he had for converting water into 0:43:07.160 --> 0:43:10.480 gasoline via a chemical powder. Oh no, you know as 0:43:10.520 --> 0:43:10.759 you do. 0:43:10.960 --> 0:43:11.160 Yeah. 0:43:11.320 --> 0:43:13.759 And so when Bottomley was like, I'm not backing that, 0:43:13.920 --> 0:43:15.480 he's like, you know what, I don't like that you 0:43:15.600 --> 0:43:16.399 robbed from the poor. 0:43:18.440 --> 0:43:19.359 That's my job. 0:43:20.280 --> 0:43:24.720 So Biglin starts publishing attack pamphlets. And we've talked before 0:43:24.719 --> 0:43:28.480 about attack pamphlets are the greatest best, and so the 0:43:28.520 --> 0:43:31.840 most elegant one that he did was called what Horatio 0:43:31.960 --> 0:43:34.920 Bottomly has done for his country and the wounded Soldiers. 0:43:35.719 --> 0:43:37.280 You have illustrations that had. 0:43:37.120 --> 0:43:40.919 A title page and then twenty four blank pages. That's 0:43:40.960 --> 0:43:41.920 what he's done for them. 0:43:42.080 --> 0:43:43.319 That's a cold disc right. 0:43:43.640 --> 0:43:48.200 Another pamphlet did have like detailed allegations, all of them true. 0:43:48.800 --> 0:43:51.399 Bottomley was like, I can't ignore this. This is not good. 0:43:51.480 --> 0:43:53.120 So what am I going to do? I'm gonna sue 0:43:53.120 --> 0:43:55.960 for criminal libel naturally, and he's like, he tried to 0:43:56.000 --> 0:44:00.399 extort me through three intermediaries before the nineteen any one 0:44:00.400 --> 0:44:04.479 by election. On day two of the trial, Biglin took 0:44:04.520 --> 0:44:09.000 the stand calmly narrates his entire history with Bottomly, and 0:44:09.040 --> 0:44:12.440 that's like the nineteen eighteen incident where Bottomly rigged a 0:44:12.480 --> 0:44:16.040 warstock combination draw so that Biglin could quote win one 0:44:16.080 --> 0:44:16.880 thousand pounds. 0:44:16.960 --> 0:44:20.440 Okay, so he's like, you know, brandishing the pen against 0:44:20.520 --> 0:44:21.040 himself too. 0:44:23.080 --> 0:44:26.879 But yeah, I'm lying. Let me tell you what I did, 0:44:27.040 --> 0:44:29.759 was I lying? Bottomly, was like, I'm not going to 0:44:29.840 --> 0:44:33.760 testify in my own case. And then they dismiss it outright, 0:44:34.960 --> 0:44:36.840 But you know, because he drew that, he brought the charges. 0:44:36.840 --> 0:44:39.759 But then the cops turn around and arrested Bottomly, They're like, 0:44:39.760 --> 0:44:41.120 we have all this testimony. 0:44:41.160 --> 0:44:43.239 Now what was his play there to bring the case 0:44:43.280 --> 0:44:43.800 and dismiss it? 0:44:43.880 --> 0:44:46.480 And he thought he always wins in court, and so 0:44:46.560 --> 0:44:48.680 he thought, you know what, like, yeah, I'm going to 0:44:48.800 --> 0:44:52.360 sue you for one hundred million dollars and you're gonna 0:44:52.400 --> 0:44:54.439 have to pay me out. And then they're like, no, 0:44:54.480 --> 0:44:57.279 this is ridiculous, this is a frivolous lawsuit. You're out 0:44:57.280 --> 0:45:00.560 of here. Then discovery, you know, you always have to 0:45:00.560 --> 0:45:04.799 worry about discovery. So when charged, he like booms out 0:45:04.800 --> 0:45:09.399 this plea most decidedly not guilty. And the trial then 0:45:09.560 --> 0:45:12.600 kicks off May nineteenth, nineteen twenty two. The central question 0:45:13.360 --> 0:45:17.239 was whether he had defrauded the patriotic ex soldiers who 0:45:17.360 --> 0:45:18.480 bought into his club. 0:45:18.760 --> 0:45:20.000 Oh yeah, and. 0:45:20.000 --> 0:45:23.800 So Bottomly He's like, no, those dear boys, the living 0:45:23.840 --> 0:45:26.759 and the dead alike, they knew I never betrayed him. 0:45:27.800 --> 0:45:32.319 So the prosecution was like, actually you did. Demonstrates that 0:45:32.440 --> 0:45:36.400 of the millions invested, almost nothing went toward actually purchasing 0:45:36.440 --> 0:45:39.480 the government bonds. Ye never bottom Most of it goes 0:45:39.480 --> 0:45:40.000 to Bottomley. 0:45:40.080 --> 0:45:42.719 So he screwed the soldiers, the government, and the people. 0:45:42.480 --> 0:45:46.320 And the people. And then because he's once again representing himself, 0:45:47.000 --> 0:45:48.799 they led him. He didn't have to sit in the dock. 0:45:48.920 --> 0:45:50.560 He sat with the lawyers and he had like his 0:45:50.600 --> 0:45:53.399 accountants next to him. So he's like running the show. 0:45:53.480 --> 0:45:56.640 He's got like that flare that he always has. He 0:45:56.800 --> 0:46:00.880 secured the judge's blessing for a daily fifteen minute adjournment 0:46:01.440 --> 0:46:05.440 so that he could go take a medicinal pint of champagne. 0:46:05.600 --> 0:46:08.440 Of champagne. I didn't even know they sold champagne, and 0:46:08.480 --> 0:46:09.080 by the pin. 0:46:09.239 --> 0:46:10.160 I don't think they did. 0:46:10.480 --> 0:46:14.000 And he just has like a big flask, like a. 0:46:13.960 --> 0:46:15.719 Pint glass from the pub and they just fill it 0:46:15.760 --> 0:46:16.280 with champagne. 0:46:16.320 --> 0:46:18.320 Well, must it be like to be drunk on champagne? 0:46:18.440 --> 0:46:19.680 Every day of your life. 0:46:20.000 --> 0:46:22.160 I don't know. I mean, I think that's why you're 0:46:22.200 --> 0:46:26.120 wearing wall dry champagne, because otherwise all that sugar will 0:46:26.120 --> 0:46:30.400 give you. Oh yes, yeah, So the jury needed twenty 0:46:30.440 --> 0:46:33.840 eight minutes to convict him. Twenty eight minutes. He was 0:46:33.880 --> 0:46:37.920 found guilty on more than twenty fraud counts, sentenced to 0:46:37.960 --> 0:46:42.000 seven years hard labor, expelled from Parliament. He sent the 0:46:42.040 --> 0:46:44.960 House of Commons a farewell letter to be read out loud, 0:46:45.400 --> 0:46:48.600 and in it he like swears before God after two 0:46:48.640 --> 0:46:52.160 months of solitary confinement and all this like soul searching, 0:46:52.640 --> 0:46:55.359 He's like, I never made a penny from the clubs, 0:46:55.680 --> 0:46:59.640 just outright line, I swear to God. You're like okay. 0:47:00.440 --> 0:47:03.440 He thanked the house staff for like twelve years of courtesy, 0:47:03.880 --> 0:47:05.800 and then he said he was just a victim of 0:47:05.840 --> 0:47:07.840 an appalling miscarriage of justice. 0:47:07.960 --> 0:47:09.720 But he didn't go out attacking anyone. 0:47:09.920 --> 0:47:13.320 No, so prison did not agree with him. He seems 0:47:13.360 --> 0:47:15.759 like the was sixty two when he got locked up, 0:47:16.000 --> 0:47:18.040 totally out of shape, like an out of shape bigin. 0:47:18.880 --> 0:47:22.400 The wardens couldn't find a uniform to fit him. Oh yeah, 0:47:22.440 --> 0:47:25.440 His wife, Eliza, daughter Florence, they visited. 0:47:25.520 --> 0:47:26.840 So he was carrying a lot of champagne. 0:47:26.840 --> 0:47:29.200 Wait, caring a lot of champagne. Wait. He could barely 0:47:29.239 --> 0:47:32.920 eat at first, he couldn't sleep, and because he's an alcoholic, 0:47:33.080 --> 0:47:35.120 he you know, was hit with the shock of like 0:47:35.400 --> 0:47:36.920 enforced abstinence. 0:47:37.000 --> 0:47:39.280 Oh so they're not letting him like you know, like Timber. 0:47:40.040 --> 0:47:43.279 No, no, no. He got released in nineteen twenty seven 0:47:43.320 --> 0:47:47.080 after five years, and then he immediately tried to recapture 0:47:47.120 --> 0:47:52.920 the magic with a new magazine, John Blunt, No, sir, 0:47:53.280 --> 0:47:58.759 not John Blaize, John Blunt, his few remaining friends, Jack 0:47:58.880 --> 0:48:03.000 he should have plus Peggy Primrose. They they're like, this 0:48:03.080 --> 0:48:06.000 is a really bad idea. Please don't do this. He's like, 0:48:06.080 --> 0:48:06.920 I don't care. 0:48:06.640 --> 0:48:07.279 I'm doing it. 0:48:07.320 --> 0:48:09.719 I'm going to do it. So he rehired the old 0:48:09.840 --> 0:48:14.840 John bullstaff. He rented out these expensive offices, launched June sixteenth, 0:48:14.880 --> 0:48:18.040 nineteen twenty eight, complete with the Revived the World, The 0:48:18.080 --> 0:48:19.120 Flesh and the Devil. 0:48:19.239 --> 0:48:20.799 Oh, of course you gotta have that. 0:48:20.920 --> 0:48:22.960 I mean, it's not a magazine without that. 0:48:23.120 --> 0:48:23.799 He's known for it. 0:48:23.960 --> 0:48:27.440 So there was an initial circulation of five hundred thousands, 0:48:28.600 --> 0:48:32.200 you know, on the premise of he was like because 0:48:32.239 --> 0:48:35.520 he he advertises it, I'm going to expose the hideous 0:48:35.560 --> 0:48:39.640 torture in British prisons. Yes, now, But then the Home 0:48:39.719 --> 0:48:43.440 Secretary is like, oh you want to know the like 0:48:43.600 --> 0:48:47.640 hideous torture that he faced. Check this out. Here's his 0:48:47.960 --> 0:48:52.920 letter requesting Palmery nineteen oh six, Champagne and it was denied. 0:48:53.360 --> 0:48:55.640 That's that's the horrors that he saw. 0:48:55.680 --> 0:48:56.600 He wouldst ask. 0:48:56.840 --> 0:48:59.120 Yeah. So then the advertisers like, oh, I don't really 0:48:59.120 --> 0:49:01.239 want any part of this. Readers are like, this isn't 0:49:01.239 --> 0:49:07.239 any fun. Final issue ran September nineteen twenty nine, So 0:49:07.560 --> 0:49:10.319 you know it was like maybe almost a little over 0:49:10.320 --> 0:49:10.640 a year. 0:49:10.840 --> 0:49:13.280 Yeah, and the world is changing fast and twenty. 0:49:13.120 --> 0:49:17.520 Nine, yes, yes, so John Blunt collapses. This brings along 0:49:17.880 --> 0:49:22.719 bankruptcy number four. He transferred he had this mansion called 0:49:22.760 --> 0:49:26.040 the Dicker and he had transferred it to his son 0:49:26.120 --> 0:49:29.360 in law before a previous bankruptcy okay to you know, 0:49:29.400 --> 0:49:31.919 get it off his books, and he was living there, 0:49:32.840 --> 0:49:34.799 but then it was sold out from under him because 0:49:34.800 --> 0:49:37.520 his daughter had since divorced, and the ex son in 0:49:37.600 --> 0:49:39.920 law was like, I am not loyal to you and 0:49:40.000 --> 0:49:42.200 the creditors are coming, so I want nothing to do 0:49:42.239 --> 0:49:45.680 with this. I'm selling the joint. Oh so now he's homeless, 0:49:45.680 --> 0:49:48.799 he has nowhere to live. He moves into Peggy Primroses 0:49:48.880 --> 0:49:51.480 London flat and she tried to like work up this 0:49:51.640 --> 0:49:54.040 lecture tour for him to go on, but most towns 0:49:54.080 --> 0:49:58.960 had banned him. Yeah, his wife, Eliza, She died February 0:49:59.040 --> 0:50:02.839 nineteen thirty. He published a volume of prison poems called 0:50:02.960 --> 0:50:06.120 Songs of the Cell and it had a preface by 0:50:06.160 --> 0:50:09.239 Lord Alfred Douglas, who was an English poet, journalist and 0:50:09.440 --> 0:50:10.480 Oscar Wilde's lover. 0:50:10.800 --> 0:50:12.879 Oh and so in what do you like to read 0:50:13.080 --> 0:50:15.920 poems Songs. 0:50:15.520 --> 0:50:18.319 Of the Cell. In one poem it was about a 0:50:18.360 --> 0:50:20.880 young soldier who died in prison after being wounded in 0:50:20.920 --> 0:50:23.960 the war. And it actually showed some self reflection because 0:50:23.960 --> 0:50:26.920 he like pauses to wonder, kind of like half waking 0:50:26.960 --> 0:50:29.440 in the night, whether he had done right or wrong 0:50:29.520 --> 0:50:33.080 by sending that boy to France. And it's like pretty 0:50:33.120 --> 0:50:36.600 much the only recorded instance of the question occurring to him. 0:50:36.680 --> 0:50:40.200 Do you think that he also was meeting some soldiers 0:50:40.239 --> 0:50:42.880 who'd returned from the war and they get locked up 0:50:42.920 --> 0:50:44.719 and one of them actually did touch this. 0:50:44.880 --> 0:50:47.440 I think he really did I think he really heard 0:50:47.480 --> 0:50:51.520 their stories and it wasn't this boisterous like we're gonna 0:50:51.520 --> 0:50:53.279 bomb them all, get them out of here. 0:50:53.320 --> 0:50:55.080 Yeah, there's nobody to play to in prison. 0:50:55.120 --> 0:50:57.400 At that they had like one on one humanity of it. 0:50:57.480 --> 0:51:00.440 And then him realizing that kid's there, probably because like 0:51:00.560 --> 0:51:03.920 I got them all round. Yeah yeah, yeah. So he 0:51:03.960 --> 0:51:07.520 has no income. He's reduced to telling stories from his 0:51:07.560 --> 0:51:11.319 life on stage at Soho's wind Mill Theater, and he 0:51:11.360 --> 0:51:13.000 only did it for a few nights and then he 0:51:13.040 --> 0:51:15.880 collapsed with a heart attack. He recovered, and then he 0:51:15.920 --> 0:51:18.680 collapsed again a couple months later. He died in Middlesex 0:51:18.719 --> 0:51:22.239 hospital May twenty sixth, nineteen thirty three, aged seventy three. 0:51:22.440 --> 0:51:24.160 So his final bankruptcy was his heart. 0:51:24.320 --> 0:51:28.000 Yes. Yes. A month or so earlier he had applied 0:51:28.400 --> 0:51:31.759 to the British government for an old age pension of 0:51:31.800 --> 0:51:34.640 a few shillings a week and he was refused. Really, 0:51:34.680 --> 0:51:37.680 and the irony of that is that the old age 0:51:37.719 --> 0:51:41.080 pension law existed partly because of the works he had 0:51:41.120 --> 0:51:44.319 done as an MP. He really pushed for it and 0:51:44.360 --> 0:51:49.440 so you know, sorry, his obituary lamented the opportunities that 0:51:49.520 --> 0:51:52.160 he'd had. How sadly it was wasted, and how he 0:51:52.239 --> 0:51:55.000 might have been almost anything, but he had like this 0:51:55.120 --> 0:51:58.120 single fatal flaw of like being a greedy pig. 0:51:58.960 --> 0:51:59.880 There was that. 0:52:01.200 --> 0:52:04.160 His will asked that his ashes be scattered on the 0:52:04.200 --> 0:52:08.960 training gallops at Alfriston, near that near the Dicker in Sussex, 0:52:09.760 --> 0:52:13.800 and then the urn sat unclaimed for four years. In 0:52:13.880 --> 0:52:18.560 nineteen thirty seven, his nephew Bertie Dolman and Peggy Primrose, 0:52:18.600 --> 0:52:22.879 ever Loyle drove down finally granted him his last wish. So, Saron, 0:52:22.920 --> 0:52:24.120 what's your ridiculous takeaway? 0:52:24.520 --> 0:52:28.520 Well, they say you die to deaths ye, right, your 0:52:28.600 --> 0:52:31.520 physical death, and then the last time your name is spoken. 0:52:31.880 --> 0:52:36.120 Yeah, yeah, he's not dead yet. No, sadly he resurrected 0:52:36.160 --> 0:52:37.960 him and I apologized for that, But I. 0:52:37.880 --> 0:52:40.480 Mean, like, you get guys like this and like that. 0:52:40.600 --> 0:52:44.440 I'm sure there are a million whatever, some big number 0:52:44.560 --> 0:52:46.439 of much better Brits of this era. 0:52:46.560 --> 0:52:49.120 We could tell a story of maybe not for the show, 0:52:49.120 --> 0:52:49.440 but just. 0:52:49.400 --> 0:52:51.239 Tell a story of yeah, and they'd be like, oh, 0:52:51.280 --> 0:52:53.520 an beautiful examination of the human condition. 0:52:53.600 --> 0:52:54.319 And instead we. 0:52:54.280 --> 0:52:56.880 Get guys like this because they are just so outside 0:52:56.920 --> 0:52:59.799 oh yeah, so committed to the grift a lover of 0:52:59.800 --> 0:53:02.480 the it's so deep in the game of like let me, 0:53:02.560 --> 0:53:06.000 let me hold your money, and that we forever, even 0:53:06.080 --> 0:53:09.319 us as human beings now later unaffected by this man, 0:53:09.400 --> 0:53:12.239 still want to hear his story. That's how compelling his 0:53:12.320 --> 0:53:15.160 story is, which is a crazy irony under all of it. 0:53:15.160 --> 0:53:16.319 It really is, you. 0:53:17.960 --> 0:53:22.759 Know, history repeating itself over and over. We've talked about that. Yeah, 0:53:22.800 --> 0:53:25.759 you know, so you have to learn it's definitely. 0:53:25.440 --> 0:53:27.600 A rhyming tune with our stuff today. 0:53:27.680 --> 0:53:31.359 It is it is. And with that, I I think 0:53:31.400 --> 0:53:34.320 I kind of need to talk back, Dave, do you mine? 0:53:38.719 --> 0:53:43.960 Oh my god, I led. 0:53:47.920 --> 0:53:50.680 High Crime Squad. I love the gluzzy stats from the 0:53:50.680 --> 0:53:53.600 Sophie Lions episode, and I thought I could tell you 0:53:53.680 --> 0:53:56.080 about a senior prank done by some of my students 0:53:56.160 --> 0:53:59.360 in twenty twenty. Not a great year for students graduating 0:53:59.400 --> 0:54:02.160 that year. So for their senior prank, they resorted to 0:54:02.840 --> 0:54:05.600 sticking a bunch of hot dogs on skewers in the 0:54:05.600 --> 0:54:07.520 ground in front of the school, as if a field 0:54:07.560 --> 0:54:10.600 of hot dogs had popped up overnight, just just to 0:54:10.640 --> 0:54:12.640 feel the glizzies in front of the school. That was 0:54:12.680 --> 0:54:15.040 their senior prank, and I thought you would enjoy that 0:54:15.120 --> 0:54:15.960 visual image. 0:54:16.920 --> 0:54:20.240 That's amazing God when you think about Yeah, that's. 0:54:22.239 --> 0:54:25.160 Do whatever you want and buffet. I love a prank. 0:54:25.920 --> 0:54:29.200 What if it's just like crows landing on it with 0:54:29.480 --> 0:54:33.160 Kingford Coals getting busy. Yeah, you just take the steak 0:54:33.160 --> 0:54:38.680 out ready to go. I love that. Thank you for that. 0:54:38.680 --> 0:54:40.680 That's it for today. You can find us online at 0:54:40.760 --> 0:54:43.520 ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on 0:54:43.560 --> 0:54:47.360 Blue Sky, Instagram, email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. 0:54:47.360 --> 0:54:51.560 Most importantly, please leave a talk back on the iHeart 0:54:51.600 --> 0:54:57.360 app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton 0:54:57.400 --> 0:55:00.480 and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Lord Dave Houston, 0:55:00.640 --> 0:55:04.239 nineteenth Earl of Gray. Our Ridiculous Assistant is owner of 0:55:04.239 --> 0:55:08.200 the original John Bull Letterpress, Terry Maldonado. Fong research is 0:55:08.239 --> 0:55:11.840 by Belgian fog conjurer Marissa Brown. The theme song is 0:55:11.880 --> 0:55:15.440 by Victory Bonds club members Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. 0:55:15.600 --> 0:55:18.719 Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred producer Dave 0:55:18.760 --> 0:55:22.200 Cousten's wardrobe by Mister Guy of Beverly Hills. 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