Speaker 1: Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Zaren Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: How you doing?
Speaker 2: But I'm doing pretty good about you?
Speaker 3: Hey, pal, I'm good.
Speaker 2: Nice, you look good, you look like you're happy and uh,
Speaker 2: you got your energies all balanced.
Speaker 3: Yeah, same with you. You've got a great or say
Speaker 3: you have incredibly skin and a.
Speaker 2: Beautiful aura in the beds of my nails.
Speaker 3: Christine listen, Yes, you know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 4: I do. So you want to be pointed out to
Speaker 4: me a while back, this like couple that they're like
Speaker 4: your crazy erratic friend or what it's like an Instagram
Speaker 4: meme or these two comedians. Oh yeah, come in telling
Speaker 4: a story?
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Oh god, I wish I could remember what they're called, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't remember them either.
Speaker 3: It's type B front now something else.
Speaker 4: But yeah, your friend who's like always just coming in
Speaker 4: with like you did wait what and they're very casual
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 3: And the guy, the one guy is always there's always
Speaker 3: one that involves Wells Fargo Bank. Yeah, I'll find it
Speaker 3: somewhere because I got to watch the.
Speaker 4: Yeah baby can get the interns of puzzing on Instagram. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: so I thought of that. With this story about this
Speaker 4: girl named Caitlyn Maxwell. She's twenty two years old from smalltown, Mississippi,
Speaker 4: a place called Ellesville, population forty six hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: two souls.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So she was out driving her twenty seventeen Dodge Challenger, Okay, yep,
Speaker 4: and it was about nine forty PM when she got
Speaker 4: pulled over by the police. So you kind of got
Speaker 4: a picture going right so far I do. So it
Speaker 4: turns out that that wasn't it. When the police got
Speaker 4: up to the driver's side window, they found that old
Speaker 4: Caitlyn Maxwell, twenty two years old, in her twenty seventeen
Speaker 4: Dodge Challenger, was driving buck naked among us.
Speaker 3: You you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: That's not all, Elizabeth, because then the officers noticed a
Speaker 4: strong odor of recently smoked marijuana. So she's driving around
Speaker 4: high buck naked in her twenty seventeen she.
Speaker 3: Thinks, she says, Matthew McConaughey, right, and.
Speaker 2: Then the cops looked down and they noticed a glock
Speaker 2: handgun at her feet.
Speaker 3: Oh dear, oh, at her feet, at.
Speaker 4: Her feet the driver's side and her feet like in
Speaker 4: the footwell. And then there was another glock wedge between
Speaker 4: the passenger seat and the center console, like she didn't
Speaker 4: get done hiding it. The cops were like, do you
Speaker 4: mind popping your trunk? So they pop her trunk and
Speaker 4: then they find a third glock and two AR fifteen's
Speaker 4: that had been outfitted with this special switch that makes
Speaker 4: them fully automatic.
Speaker 2: Was very illegal. So the cops are like, where did
Speaker 2: you get this? Like armory of weaponry, and please, here's
Speaker 2: a towel. Put this on while we talk to you.
Speaker 2: And then they find out.
Speaker 4: She's like, well, my boyfriend he uses a three D
Speaker 4: printer and he makes these switches. And the cops are like,
Speaker 4: where's your boyfriend lives? And they go to her boyfriend's
Speaker 4: house and then they arrest him too, for making the
Speaker 4: illegal three D printed switches.
Speaker 2: Stocks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly like machine gun conversion kids basically. And so
Speaker 4: he also had a small arsenal at his place, you know.
Speaker 4: Luckily apparently he was clothed. So yeah, I thought I
Speaker 4: thought of those Instagram couple which I was driving my
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen Touch Challenger and I got pulled over, and
Speaker 4: then that's not the story at all.
Speaker 3: Offense to dudes who drive a Dodge Challenger. We like
Speaker 3: your chaotic energy. But you know, it's it's a.
Speaker 4: Car that says, you know, like the Dodge hell Cat.
Speaker 4: There's a few of them. It just says like, I'm
Speaker 4: not afraid of you, officers.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what.
Speaker 3: That is ridiculous. And you want to know what else
Speaker 3: is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: Please? I got the time.
Speaker 3: Selling lies, holding hateful rallies, and scanning people left and right,
Speaker 3: only to wind up penniless and alone. That's ridiculous and satisfying,
Speaker 3: if I do say so myself.
Speaker 2: You just said it.
Speaker 3: This is Ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous
Speaker 3: caper's hests and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder
Speaker 3: free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Oh you damn right.
Speaker 3: Hmmm that the crooked politician is a total trope, you know,
Speaker 3: But all the same, they do ridiculous things, and when
Speaker 3: you're in the thick of them, it's hard to find
Speaker 3: it funny. But time softens it a little, and at
Speaker 3: least we hope and we can find the humor in audacious, opportunistic, vulgar,
Speaker 3: narcissistic grift.
Speaker 2: We can at some point there's a lot of grift
Speaker 2: for the milk exactly.
Speaker 3: At least I'm hoping that's the case for us in
Speaker 3: the future with regard to our current state of things,
Speaker 3: and the case for us today with someone from more
Speaker 3: than one hundred years ago.
Speaker 4: Oh some distance to the comedy is it? It's comedy.
Speaker 4: Is a tragedy plus timing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it equals comedy. The guy has a name that
Speaker 3: sounds made up to American ears, Horatio Bottomly Bottomly. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: it's like something I would do in the credits. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: Horatio Bottomly. He ends the world in East London in
Speaker 3: eighteen sixty and the world did not really roll out
Speaker 3: the welcome.
Speaker 2: Matt for this, hey, mister Bottomley.
Speaker 3: No, his father was a tailor's cutter and also a
Speaker 3: serious alcoholic.
Speaker 2: And in that order, I hope.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, well he wound up in an asylum with
Speaker 3: the tremors and all, and he died when Horatio was
Speaker 3: just three.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's quite the blow.
Speaker 3: His mother followed shortly after passing away, and so he
Speaker 3: was an orphan by the time it was five. Oh man,
Speaker 3: so funny, huh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, somebody contact Dickens.
Speaker 3: So there was how one interesting branch of the family tree.
Speaker 3: His mother's side sat squarely in the Victorian radical left.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: His uncle was George Jacob Holyoake, the man who coined
Speaker 3: the terms secularism and jingoism. Oh really he did both.
Speaker 4: Love jingo Is and also I love his work with
Speaker 4: mounts like Mount Holio.
Speaker 3: Mount Holyo exactly. Maybe. He also co founded the National
Speaker 3: Secular Society. He ran a rationalist socialist journal. He paled
Speaker 3: around with the atheist liberal MP Charles Bradlaw, and he
Speaker 3: later became a fixture of the cooperative movement, which I
Speaker 3: talked about before. So young Horatio lived with him for
Speaker 3: a time.
Speaker 2: Guy had somebody, yeah, and somebody so interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But then he was packed off to this really
Speaker 3: grim Birmingham orphanage. It didn't last long, no, but he
Speaker 3: lived there for five years at the orphanage, and then
Speaker 3: he ran away when he was fourteen to go live
Speaker 3: with an aunt. Four years with the uncles Angela, Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3: And so then what follows is the string of just
Speaker 3: dead end jobs. At one point he does an apprenticeship
Speaker 3: in wood engraving. That was a bust. But then he
Speaker 3: got this gig as an office boy at a City
Speaker 3: of London's solicitors firm. Okay, and then there's something clicked.
Speaker 3: He became genuinely fascinated by the law, and he read
Speaker 3: up on it obsessively, and the knowledge would prove professionally
Speaker 3: useful later. So he learned Pittman's shorthand and he moved
Speaker 3: to a firm that transcribed court proceedings. Now, Pittman's shorthand
Speaker 3: is a writing system that was invented by Sir Isaac Pittman.
Speaker 3: Oh there it is, I know, in eighteen thirty seven.
Speaker 3: So it was designed to let people write as fast
Speaker 3: as someone speaks, and so you don't spell words out
Speaker 3: letter by letter. It's like sounds using simple strokes, curves, dots, dashes.
Speaker 2: Is that the keyboard that a court reporter uses.
Speaker 3: I think it is.
Speaker 2: It leads to those.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's basically phonetic rather than alphabetic. So knee and
Speaker 3: ned start with the same symbol because they start with
Speaker 3: the same sound.
Speaker 2: Yeah alphabet.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Meanwhile, okay, So Bottomly he reconnected with Uncle George,
Speaker 3: who introduced him to that atheist liberal MP, Charles bradlaw Right.
Speaker 3: He liked Bottomly. Bradlaugh liked Bottomly enough to bring him
Speaker 3: into his political orbit, and that connection got the liberals attention.
Speaker 3: They're like, who's this Bottomly kid.
Speaker 2: And his ambitious orphans everything we love.
Speaker 3: And he's great at transcribing. In age eighty seven, Bottomly
Speaker 3: stood as their candidate in the Hornsey by election.
Speaker 2: Oh, they really loved him on the ballot.
Speaker 3: They were like warm for his form. Yeah, so Bottomly
Speaker 3: he's short on cash.
Speaker 2: That's not new to him in politics.
Speaker 3: He had to be clever, so he convinced his opponent HC.
Speaker 3: Stevens of Stephen's Ink I n K so like an
Speaker 3: eight company you to lend him the money for his
Speaker 3: own campaign.
Speaker 2: He got his opponent to pay for his campaign.
Speaker 3: Which he did. Yeah he did.
Speaker 2: Did his opponent think, I mean easily beat you?
Speaker 3: So it's kind of like did Stevens won the seat
Speaker 3: and then Bottomley never paid him back. He was like,
Speaker 3: got you, suck. They both got what they wanted, right,
Speaker 3: But now everyone knows who Bottomly is. He's got his
Speaker 3: name out there.
Speaker 2: Gotcha.
Speaker 3: Around around this time, he also married a woman named Eliza,
Speaker 3: which he'd go on to have a daughter with a
Speaker 3: girl named Florence. Like business wise, things are moving fast
Speaker 3: for Horatio. By the mid eighteen eighties, he was a
Speaker 3: founding partner in this big publishing firm, and before the
Speaker 3: end of the decade he'd landed a contract to publish Hansward,
Speaker 3: which is Parliament's official record of debates. Oh okay and
Speaker 3: so eighteen eighty eight. He then went on to co
Speaker 3: found The Financial Times, where he briefly employed this sub
Speaker 3: editor named Alfred Harmsworth. Hasworth was the future Lord Northcliffe
Speaker 3: and the eventual press baron of the Daily Mail.
Speaker 4: Oh thanks did yeah?
Speaker 3: Good on? So Bottomly's he that fund he overreached almost
Speaker 3: immediately he had a falling out with a business partner
Speaker 3: that cost him his magazines. In May of eighteen ninety one,
Speaker 3: he had like floated hanswerd publishing union in the stock
Speaker 3: market and then it just the publishing unit just collapsed
Speaker 3: under a bunch of debt over one hundred thousand pounds,
Speaker 3: So that's nearly fifteen million dollars in today's money and
Speaker 3: debt went quote missing. Oh and I like you first
Speaker 3: had to do the UK inflation calculator, then the currency.
Speaker 3: So Bottomley gets charged with conspiracy to defraud. Everyone assumes
Speaker 3: that he's going to get convicted. He's going to get
Speaker 3: this long sentence well, I mean and partly because he
Speaker 3: defended himself. He didn't hire a solicitor, didn't hire a lawyer.
Speaker 3: That's not a good move, no, not for something this big.
Speaker 3: But he charmed the judge into his corner and then
Speaker 3: he watched as the jury acquitted him in minutes.
Speaker 2: The jury and the judge went for it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, everyone loves them stars born baby.
Speaker 4: Oh he's a future politicians ever, I heard of one.
Speaker 3: Eighteen ninety three old boy went bankrupt, doesn't and yet
Speaker 3: he escaped it in classic fashion. So he paid off
Speaker 3: creditors with these sketchy shares in Australian gold mines that
Speaker 3: didn't like, I mean, if we're going to be full disclosure,
Speaker 3: they didn't really exist yet.
Speaker 2: Oh, so they were going to be mine futures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so he founded the Joint Stock Trust and
Speaker 3: Institute to float these gold mining ventures. They're like fifty
Speaker 3: companies in all, and most of them were like basically
Speaker 3: like someone went out and dug a hole in the ground.
Speaker 4: They're like, that's my company, and the company is a
Speaker 4: shell company in terms of like the PaperWorks the company.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so the vast no, no, the vast majority
Speaker 3: went into liquidation and then they were like quietly quote
Speaker 3: reconstructed under new names. And then bottom would get all
Speaker 3: these burned shareholders of the dead company to buy into
Speaker 3: the shiny new one at a steep discount.
Speaker 2: He'd burn him again. Oh yeah, I thought, you get
Speaker 2: them together and just like sue the former company that need.
Speaker 3: Taking well and sometimes though like by accident, really it
Speaker 3: would it would work. So he had shares in the
Speaker 3: Great Boulder Minds that he'd picked up at two shillings
Speaker 3: eventually hit thirteen pounds.
Speaker 2: Whoa, that's a big lift.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so the trust's stated purpose was to enrich shareholders,
Speaker 3: obviously through these subsidiaries, but it's really enriching Bottomly. So
Speaker 3: even the money meant to repay his original creditors mostly
Speaker 3: arrived in the form of you know, you guessed it,
Speaker 3: shares in yet another linked company. One defrauded investor, this guy,
Speaker 3: mister Platt. He showed up at Bottomly's flat with a
Speaker 3: gun and he threatened to shoot him unless his money
Speaker 3: was returned. And Bottomly is like turns on the charm.
Speaker 3: He's like, let me show you how it's done. Just
Speaker 3: like absolutely just bedazzles this guy. He pulls out Champagne.
Speaker 3: By the end of the evening.
Speaker 2: He gives them like the full con price.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he had not only kept Platt's original money,
Speaker 3: but then he talked him into writing a fresh check
Speaker 3: for four thousand pounds.
Speaker 2: Got more.
Speaker 3: This guy's amazing. Another Mark, Robert Masters. This was a
Speaker 3: wealthy retired Indian civil service official. He put ninety thousand
Speaker 3: pounds into that worthless Bottomly paper, ninety thousand pounds. He
Speaker 3: then fled London in shame and kept the lost secret.
Speaker 3: And then years later, like his memory is failing, and
Speaker 3: he gets one of Bottomly's mailers offering to make his
Speaker 3: old victims whole, so he gives Bottomly another forty two
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. He died penniless and then he has daughter
Speaker 3: sued Bottomly in nineteen eleven and she won. But then
Speaker 3: Bottomly was like, that's fantastic, but I'm about to go
Speaker 3: bankrupt again, so you're never gonna see a penny of that.
Speaker 2: You can't pay that judgment horrible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he just loves bankruptcies.
Speaker 2: Sorry pockets.
Speaker 3: When a judge ruled against him and then council branded
Speaker 3: him the cleverest thief in the Empire, bottomly was like unmoved.
Speaker 3: He stood up and demanded that the jury condemn his
Speaker 3: accusers as the most disreputable blackmailers around.
Speaker 2: How dare they?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Between eighteen ninety three and nineteen twenty two, he
Speaker 3: appeared in court like one hundred and twenty different cases
Speaker 3: bankruptcy's debt claims, you name it was. He tanked, absolutely not,
Speaker 3: had no effect.
Speaker 2: He's doing like five years.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. So with a track record like that, it
Speaker 3: makes sense that politics would be his next move. Of course,
Speaker 3: So he lost an election bid in nineteen hundred and
Speaker 3: a newspaper called him a fraudulent company promoter and share
Speaker 3: pusher during the campaign, so he sued the paper for libel.
Speaker 3: Once again, he represented himself, and once again he was victorious.
Speaker 3: He got awarded one thousand pounds in damages for being
Speaker 3: described with what history would later confirm is absolutely perfect accuracy.
Speaker 3: And they're descriptions, yes, exactly. So around nineteen around nineteen
Speaker 3: oh two, he bought a struggling London evening newspaper, The Sun.
Speaker 3: No I should know, it's not the same tabloid Sun
Speaker 3: that exists today, but laying the groundwork for tabloids to come,
Speaker 3: he gave it a gossip column that he wrote himself
Speaker 3: under the title The World, the Flesh and the Devil. Wow, right,
Speaker 3: and he just like positively dished on the great and
Speaker 3: good of politics, law finance. It was not a big
Speaker 3: hit and.
Speaker 4: Was it accurate at all in terms of gossip level.
Speaker 4: He's making stuff ups.
Speaker 2: He's inventors.
Speaker 3: How do you know this? So the sun is floundering.
Speaker 3: He sells it in nineteen oh four, and you know
Speaker 3: he's kind of running out of money. Nineteen oh six,
Speaker 3: he finally wins a seat in parliament, so he's running.
Speaker 4: He keeps running, so he's like whatever, like yeah, over
Speaker 4: four and then finally he wins.
Speaker 3: His fast exactly so he gets voted in as Liberal
Speaker 3: MP for Hackney South.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've actually heard of this, right, Okay, there we.
Speaker 3: Are, and you know where we are. One of his
Speaker 3: campaign tactics was hiring men in steel sold boots, not
Speaker 3: steel toad, steel sold boots to stomp around outside of
Speaker 3: his opponent's rallies so that no one could hear the speeches.
Speaker 4: What are we talking? Steel sold like it's on the
Speaker 4: bottom like tap dance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you just have like Gregory Hines out there's.
Speaker 2: A glover that's a big Brobinson.
Speaker 3: Once he gets into the alas of Commons. He was
Speaker 3: such a compelling and magnetic speaker that other MP's made
Speaker 3: a point of never missing him if he seems to
Speaker 3: be his gift. Yeah, yeah, So he held that seat
Speaker 3: until nineteen twelve.
Speaker 4: I think that the people would also like quote from him,
Speaker 4: Like they want to hear what he's going to do,
Speaker 4: and they pull some rhetoric.
Speaker 3: Now no, I think they're just like, just enjoy this guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like a good showman exactly.
Speaker 3: So. The New York Times described him as quote an
Speaker 3: effective orator and possesses personal magnetism, which has enabled him
Speaker 3: to retain his seat in Parliament in spite of the
Speaker 3: notoriety he has gained through his financial record. So like
Speaker 3: he radiates this boozy warmth of like a saloon regular,
Speaker 3: and so much so that one writer claimed that he
Speaker 3: inspired the loud, incorrigible toad of toad haul in the
Speaker 3: wind of the will. Oh wow, it's the only writer
Speaker 3: to say that, And it's cute but incorrect. But you know,
Speaker 3: I see where he's going with it. So we've got
Speaker 3: this loud mouth, shady bankruptcy loving, litigious course, showman, businessman
Speaker 3: slash politician. He's amusing to people. He's a character, and
Speaker 3: he's only gonna get worse. It sounds va Yeah, let's
Speaker 3: stop here for some ads, and when we return, we'll
Speaker 3: see what else this guy has up his sleeve. Zaren
Speaker 3: Horatio bottom Le ratio. This guy not your man. He
Speaker 3: launched John Bull, which was a jingoistic, I mean, it's
Speaker 3: a family term, chauvinistic, crude penny weekly, pitched at working
Speaker 3: men who liked beer sports that it is. It was
Speaker 3: like an early lad mag and he wrote most of
Speaker 3: it himself.
Speaker 2: Was he think he was connected enough to He is
Speaker 2: really jocular and I guess he does have the gift
Speaker 2: of gab. So you didn't get that on paper.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he realized, like, this is what people want, So
Speaker 3: he serves up this cocktail of salacious gossip, genuine investigative journalism,
Speaker 3: really loud, opinionated commentary, and lurid exposees of sexual depravity
Speaker 3: and degradation in name for John Bull.
Speaker 2: So you get like this connection to Okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so his old the World, the Flesh and the
Speaker 3: Devil column got pride of place. He brings it back
Speaker 3: at the front of every issue. But the gossip in it.
Speaker 3: Now he had this credibility now because it's coming from
Speaker 3: a sitting MP is writing this, so people are like, well,
Speaker 3: maybe I will listen to what he's saying. It's like
Speaker 3: old timey tweets. And so since everything was a hustle,
Speaker 3: each copy had a unique serial number, and ten of
Speaker 3: those numbers would win small prizes announced in the next issue.
Speaker 3: That made sure readers just kept buying papers.
Speaker 2: So it's also a raffle.
Speaker 3: Essentially, everyone likes to think they're about to come into
Speaker 3: some money, yes, and so it's like a rolling raffle.
Speaker 2: I read it and I could win.
Speaker 3: And I could win. And then there were the sweepstakes.
Speaker 3: So this was a regular John Bull feature and in
Speaker 3: all likelihood frequently rigged. So British law was, let's say, inconvenient.
Speaker 3: So he ran the sweepstakes out of Switzerland. The first
Speaker 3: one offered fifteen thousand pounds on the nineteen thirteen Derby.
Speaker 3: How much fifteen thousand pounds? Now, there's something significant about
Speaker 3: that race. There was a tragedy. A suffragette died running
Speaker 3: in front of the King's horse. Oh, a protest.
Speaker 2: Move I've seen this reference.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so this threw the whole result into chaos.
Speaker 3: Not really a good way to start the sweepstakes, but whatever,
Speaker 3: he just keeps going. So rigged or not. These sweepstakes,
Speaker 3: they hauled in around two hundred and seventy thousand pounds
Speaker 3: for bottom Lank in one later draw. The announced twenty
Speaker 3: five thousand pounds winner, which is like five million dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I imagined was a blind widow from Toulouse named Madame Glucad.
Speaker 2: Does she exists, Well, she.
Speaker 3: Was actually the sister of like one of Bottomly's little cronies,
Speaker 3: and so there's this huge burst of publicity. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: she want all this money. She vanished and she it
Speaker 3: was reported, well, no, she was fleeing this avalanche of
Speaker 3: marriage proposals, so she had to go under tract he
Speaker 3: it looks when they actually looked at the books, she
Speaker 3: got paid two hundred and fifty pounds for her trouble.
Speaker 3: That's like fifty g's today, and then Bottomly kept the rest.
Speaker 4: And the Swiss is the one sanctioning this legally. Is
Speaker 4: there anything the Swiss care about? Money clocks, chocolate and money.
Speaker 3: Clocks, chocolate, money and knives. There's a woman's spinoff magazine,
Speaker 3: Missus Bull, that got launched in nineteen ten. Lady Bull. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it died quickly. It's it's better than it didn't take off.
Speaker 3: So the bills eventually arrived, though, and in nineteen twelve
Speaker 3: one of his mining stock victims sued successfully.
Speaker 2: Oh and bodily got a bunch of them in the course.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, but he couldn't pay. Plus he was at
Speaker 3: this point two hundred and thirty three thousand pounds in debt.
Speaker 3: So he goes bankrupt a second time, and he had
Speaker 3: to surrender his parliamentary seat bankrupt. So his spending habits
Speaker 3: didn't help this whole thing. Because he owned a stable
Speaker 3: of racehorses, even though he had no eye whatsoever for horseflesh,
Speaker 3: you know, to saying that. Okay, so most of them
Speaker 3: were just duds, and he was known to bet and
Speaker 3: lose the modern equivalent of like hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 3: dollars in a single day at the track. What yeah,
Speaker 3: he was just he went nuts. So he had gambling debts.
Speaker 3: Imagine being on horse, No cannot, I cannot. He actually,
Speaker 3: of all his debts, the gambling debts were the only
Speaker 3: ones that he felt he was honor bound to pay.
Speaker 2: Or scared about it.
Speaker 3: We're scared of the hard bed coming at him. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So despite this lack of horse racing acumen, he kept
Speaker 3: at it, and he looked for ways to put his
Speaker 3: thumb on the scale in like the most successful way
Speaker 3: possible at the track. Zaren closed your eyes. I want
Speaker 3: you to picture it. It's nineteen thirteen. You are in
Speaker 3: the seaside resort town of Blankenberg's, Belgium. You're visiting, but
Speaker 3: you're at work. Really, you're a lady in waiting to Sophie,
Speaker 3: Duchess of Hohenburg, wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.
Speaker 3: The couple loved vacation here in Blankenberge, and you certainly
Speaker 3: don't mind it either. After this trip, the next one
Speaker 3: you'll take his next summer in Sarajevo. You here, it's
Speaker 3: beautiful there, But for now you are in a special
Speaker 3: wing of the Grand Hotel de ban and Del family.
Speaker 3: The Archduke's sister, arch Duchess Elizabeth Amalie of Austria and
Speaker 3: her husband, Prince Alois of Liechtenstein and his niece arch
Speaker 3: Duchess Marie Valerie of Austria are also there. The group
Speaker 3: of them have gone this morning to attend daily services
Speaker 3: at church. The Duchess told you to take the day
Speaker 3: off and be back in the early afternoon. She wants
Speaker 3: you to get out and see the town, get some air.
Speaker 3: You won't argue with that. As you stroll down these
Speaker 3: charming streets, peeking in shop windows and enjoying this bit
Speaker 3: of free time, you see a sign horse race. It's
Speaker 3: about to start down the promenade any minute now. You
Speaker 3: do so love going to the track. You make it
Speaker 3: to the track just as the jockeys are preparing to
Speaker 3: get to the gates. You can hear the waves crashing
Speaker 3: on the shore. In the distance. There's a rotund man
Speaker 3: in an ill fitting suit addressing all six of the jockeys.
Speaker 3: He hands them each and en open barks out. Remember
Speaker 3: your first, your second, You there are third, your fourth? Hey,
Speaker 3: you listen to me, you're number five and you you're
Speaker 3: dead last? Got it? Curious? The horse's nay? You know
Speaker 3: a fixed race. When you see one, You're half tempted
Speaker 3: to go put some money on the first horse, but
Speaker 3: decide not to. That would be dirty money and it
Speaker 3: would bring only darkness with it. Despite what you are
Speaker 3: sure is the predetermined result of this race, you still
Speaker 3: opt to watch. You make your way into the stands
Speaker 3: and take a seat. Gruff men betting slips in hand,
Speaker 3: push their ways up to the railing. The horses take
Speaker 3: their spots at the gates. You look at the sky
Speaker 3: and you notice it's getting a little dark. Not rain,
Speaker 3: no fog. The fog is coming in. It's thick, and
Speaker 3: it's fast approaching. A foghorn sounds down the coast. By
Speaker 3: the time the starting pistol is shot, visibility.
Speaker 2: Is near zero.
Speaker 3: You can no longer see the gates, but you do
Speaker 3: hear the hammering of hoofs as they pass by. The
Speaker 3: betters shout and complain around the track the horses go.
Speaker 3: They need to complete three laps of this little track.
Speaker 3: You still can't see much, but you hear the horses
Speaker 3: and the impassioned cries of those with money riding on
Speaker 3: the steeds they can't see. As you hear what will
Speaker 3: be the third passing of the horses, you know that
Speaker 3: the end of the race is quickly approaching. The finish
Speaker 3: line is just down the track from where you're sitting.
Speaker 3: Whether you'll be able to see anything or not. Who knows?
Speaker 3: This will make for a great dinner anecdote, though you
Speaker 3: are sure of that. Just as the hoofs get louder
Speaker 3: and thunder your way, the fog parts sun fights through,
Speaker 3: you can see. And what you see is that the
Speaker 3: horses are not in any way in the order prescribed
Speaker 3: by that bellering man in the suit before the race,
Speaker 3: not one bit. They obviously couldn't see one another to
Speaker 3: figure out how to pace, they rode wine. You smirk
Speaker 3: to yourself and smug satisfaction for opting not to place
Speaker 3: a bed. The flags go up, and the men in
Speaker 3: the crowd shout and complain what kind of race was that?
Speaker 3: They yell, we couldn't see a thing. When you catch
Speaker 3: sight of the man in the suit, another gentleman approaches him.
Speaker 3: Bottomly Bottomly, he yells, what the devil happened? Bottomley's faces
Speaker 3: flush with anger. What happened? I'm out of fortune? Give
Speaker 3: me my champagne, he yells. You check the delicate watch
Speaker 3: you keep pinned inside your coat sleeve. You must get going.
Speaker 3: Time to get back to the hotel and prepare the
Speaker 3: duchess for dinner later that evening. What a day. Yes,
Speaker 3: this man tried to rig it and the fog was
Speaker 3: so thick. Uh huh, couldn't tell me, couldn't tell anything.
Speaker 3: Nobody knows anything. So it's like he can't even like successfully.
Speaker 3: That's like the most surefire way pay. All the jockeys
Speaker 3: inside the order can't do it.
Speaker 2: Guess you're basically running a play then with horses.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. So Bottomly's betting was busted, but John Bull
Speaker 3: kept booming. So between nineteen fourteen and nineteen eighteen it's
Speaker 3: sold between one and two million copies per issue. It
Speaker 3: was the most red magg in Britain, and the war
Speaker 3: handed Bottomly his greatest role yet professional patriot of course. Yes,
Speaker 3: so after the government declined his generous offer to serve
Speaker 3: as director of recruiting, he like appointed himself an unofficial one.
Speaker 3: He's like, I'm just going to go out and recruit boys. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So he staged these enormous rallies that whip crowds into
Speaker 3: like this froth of patriotic and anti German fervor. From
Speaker 3: late nineteen fifteen to the war's end, he delivered three
Speaker 3: hundred and forty lectures. He was averaging like two a
Speaker 3: week for three years. Tickets, Yeah, tickets were expensive, and
Speaker 3: after venue and travel costs, the rest of it went
Speaker 3: like right to him, He's making a ton of money.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: His performances were literally metered to the box office. So
Speaker 3: if a Knight's take was under seventy five, audiences got
Speaker 3: a subdued like invocation of King and Empire and then
Speaker 3: the band would play the anthem or YMCA, I don't know.
Speaker 3: If the take cleared seventy five pounds, he'd go like
Speaker 3: full throated, like this crescendo about Britain standing shoulder to
Speaker 3: shoulder as the land of hope and glory, and then
Speaker 3: the band would like swell beneath him, and then the
Speaker 3: audience singing the anthem would just drown him out.
Speaker 2: Yes, Queen and Empire exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So in early nineteen fifteen, Lord Norcliffe, remember the
Speaker 3: former sub editor Alfred Harmsworth, right Daily Mail baron and
Speaker 3: now owner of half a Fleet Street. He offered bottomly
Speaker 3: a column in the New Sunday Pictorial and bottom is
Speaker 3: a yeah, sure, I'll take a column, and so then
Speaker 3: he like submitted peace after piece that were just recycled
Speaker 3: pieces of his speeches yeah, his greatest hits, and that
Speaker 3: got him one hundred and fifty pounds in issues. So
Speaker 3: it was like twenty seven thousand dollars today being a
Speaker 3: is he man is dollars? Yeah? Yeah per one.
Speaker 2: Journals used to having money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but now its dead. Uh so uh, he's busy, right,
Speaker 3: So he started farming out the actual writing to the
Speaker 3: John bullstaff. Wow, he's not even doing his He would approve, Yeah,
Speaker 3: he'd approve the copy and then put like a little
Speaker 3: personal flourish at the end, you know, riff a little
Speaker 3: to leave a little. He paid the ghost writers kept
Speaker 3: the healthy margin, demonstrating once again that the public will
Speaker 3: swallow anything with his name on it. If his name's
Speaker 3: on it, they're in. And so his anti German rhetoric, though,
Speaker 3: is like curdling into something genuinely disgusting.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's getting so prejudiced and bias, it's like beyond.
Speaker 3: He told readers that if they found out that there
Speaker 3: was a German waiter serving their soup, they had to
Speaker 3: hurl the soup in his face, and that if like
Speaker 3: a German clerk at the next desk was there, that
Speaker 3: they should empty the ink pot over his head and
Speaker 3: it's just yeah, like just basically harass him. He he
Speaker 3: called for the extermination of ordinary Germans, so he's like
Speaker 3: ramping it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. He argued that not the Kaiser, the German
Speaker 2: German people.
Speaker 3: He argued that Germans living in Britain should be badged
Speaker 3: whenever they left home and then deported as soon as
Speaker 3: you know they could be It's like he's laying out
Speaker 3: the Nazi blueprint. Yes, yeah, and the Germans. This actually
Speaker 3: is kind of interesting. So in print he declared that
Speaker 3: an unnatural beast could not be naturalized, it had to
Speaker 3: be exterminated. So he's just dehumanizing.
Speaker 2: Specifically Germans.
Speaker 3: And within days of that article, anti German riots just
Speaker 3: irrupt across Britain. So he's just lighting the fires. But
Speaker 3: don't forget is the biggest publication in Britain.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's also very macho, and you're getting an
Speaker 4: audience that has already kind of like exactly, let's just
Speaker 4: say full of themselves.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, so like top hatted bankers they got together
Speaker 3: at the stock exchange steps to say all right, no
Speaker 3: Germans should remain in the city. So it wasn't just
Speaker 3: like the working people. He's got everybody top down. Smithfield
Speaker 3: porters wore signs around their necks refusing to trade with Germans.
Speaker 3: Patriotism is like excellent for business. I guess major firms
Speaker 3: grew so nervous of bottomly that they bought ads in
Speaker 3: John Bull to advertise their Britishness. He had businesses bending
Speaker 3: the knee. So two brands, Lions and Bovril, they both
Speaker 3: used his pages to insist that every one of their
Speaker 3: directors was British, and then De la Ruepenn's they ran
Speaker 3: an ad that kind of insinuated that their rival Waterman's
Speaker 3: was selling through an Austrian firm, and that prompted Watermans
Speaker 3: to then go and buy a full page rebuttal.
Speaker 2: We had nothing to do with the Austrian Hungarian Empire exactly.
Speaker 3: So John Bull even ignited a film world scandal by
Speaker 3: accusing the makers of this epic biopic the life Story
Speaker 3: of David Lloyd George of German Sympathies and the Ideal
Speaker 3: Film Company was the production company. They sued and they
Speaker 3: won in January nineteen nineteen, but the film never saw
Speaker 3: daylight because parties acting for Lloyd George himself then Prime Minister,
Speaker 3: and a Bottomly acquaintance. They bought up all the prints
Speaker 3: for twenty thousand pounds. Wow. So nineteen seventeen, the War
Speaker 3: Office accepted Bottomley's proposal for like a morale boosting tour
Speaker 3: of the Western Front. Yes, and it was judged enough
Speaker 3: of a success with the troops that he was sent
Speaker 3: to review the Grand Fleet.
Speaker 2: See's like I had that hateful Bob Hope.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or hateful Bob Hope is a good one. So
Speaker 3: the Sunday pictorial they chipped in one thousand pounds toward expenses,
Speaker 3: even though he was traveling on official bus business and
Speaker 3: hosted by the Army the entire time, so he's double
Speaker 3: dipping kind of like a golf trip. So the tour
Speaker 3: did reveal one genuine hardship of trench life. There was
Speaker 3: tragically a champagne shortage, so Bottomly he was like visibly listless.
Speaker 3: His letters home were just like subdued. He didn't have
Speaker 3: his like vigor.
Speaker 2: So wait, this man is drinking that much.
Speaker 3: Champagne that he was running on champagne. He was offered
Speaker 3: a drink in the officer's mess and he was like,
Speaker 3: I don't drink anything but the very driest champagne and
Speaker 3: turned it down, and there just wasn't any of the
Speaker 3: very driest champagne.
Speaker 4: I've never, by the way, considered somebody who could be
Speaker 4: a champagne alcoholic. That's all they drink, and they get
Speaker 4: mean if they don't have it.
Speaker 3: They get too much sullen if he doesn't have it.
Speaker 3: But you know, he's braver than the troops really just
Speaker 3: to be there without his champers. I need a quick
Speaker 3: break from this guy. Okay, let's listen to some ads
Speaker 3: and when we get back rock Bottomly.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: Near the end of World War One, the government issued
Speaker 3: new war saving certificates, and Bottomly is like, what's that
Speaker 3: smell opportunity? Smell in the air. So, through John Bull,
Speaker 3: he invited the public to send him money. Your money
Speaker 3: in your head, buy certificates on their behalf.
Speaker 2: If it's so loose in your pocket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, He's like, and you know what, I'll buy this
Speaker 3: the certificates for you, and then we're gonna have prizes
Speaker 3: drawn for lucky winners. And there's always the sweepstakes. There's
Speaker 3: always some crazy. So the scheme was like.
Speaker 4: He offers a sweepstakes on top of the saving certificate.
Speaker 4: So that where they're like, oh, I definitely gonna play
Speaker 4: the one rhyme, also be a winner.
Speaker 3: Exactly, I'm going to pay for the war and and
Speaker 3: so then he The thing is is that he aimed
Speaker 3: for like fifty pounds to come in. He took in
Speaker 3: nearly double that everyone's just like, take my money please.
Speaker 3: Winning numbers were published, but winners' names were not. So
Speaker 3: there's that between this scheme and like his lecture profits.
Speaker 3: He had collected enough money to discharge his bankruptcy and
Speaker 3: become eligible for parliament again.
Speaker 2: Because he was back to the red yeah, yeah for
Speaker 2: the black.
Speaker 3: And so in nineteen eighteen he was voted back in
Speaker 3: for Hackney South this time is a right wing independent
Speaker 3: Oh okay, yeah, And so I mean that's how he's
Speaker 3: being politically.
Speaker 2: No, it makes a lot of sense. But I mean
Speaker 2: the voters just don't give like there's nothing right.
Speaker 3: No, I mean that's it.
Speaker 2: You can get both sides of the because it's purely
Speaker 2: personality exactly.
Speaker 3: So he won a majority with nearly eighty percent of
Speaker 3: the vote.
Speaker 2: Dang.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He became a leading voice of the quote anti
Speaker 3: waste campaign. So this was a vaguely from now it
Speaker 3: was a fight over the direction of conservative economics. So
Speaker 3: at his peak he had this like loose caucus of
Speaker 3: like ten to twelve independent MP's and they were trying
Speaker 3: to build a party positions to the right of the Conservatives. Okay,
Speaker 3: so the scheme that finally sank him.
Speaker 4: What was their stance, like we should only pay poor
Speaker 4: people in food they don't get money, not even that.
Speaker 3: It's like if you know, it's God judging you. I
Speaker 3: don't know. That's usually how that goes. So what sank
Speaker 3: him was Victory bonds Club.
Speaker 2: Victory bond, yes, like.
Speaker 3: The hair club. He launched it in nineteen nineteen. The
Speaker 3: government was selling victory bonds at five pounds each.
Speaker 2: So you going to rebuild the nation and off wards
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they really needed bonds.
Speaker 2: But instead of like we did it during the war,
Speaker 2: the liberty bonds.
Speaker 3: We had, our liberty bonds went after.
Speaker 2: Total this is specifically victory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like we've won, we need to and we are
Speaker 3: just so it's like for four hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 3: today is you know, five pounds then, and Bottomley and
Speaker 3: John Bull wrote that like that's absolutely unaffordable for working people.
Speaker 3: Come on, do you have a solution, Horatio, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Of course, he's like, I'm going to buy the bonds
Speaker 3: in bulk, and then I'm gonna split them up, and
Speaker 3: I'm going to sell readers one pound stakes, and of
Speaker 3: course I'm also going to have prizes.
Speaker 2: It's like Bitcoin. With prizes you can.
Speaker 3: Get exactly exactly, So like subscribers, you're going to be
Speaker 3: entered into this annual prize draw worth up to twenty
Speaker 3: thousand pounds funded by the interest one point seven million
Speaker 3: dollars today. So he promised full refunds on demand, of course,
Speaker 3: and he swore he would take nothing for administration of.
Speaker 2: The fund trust.
Speaker 3: The response was overwhelming, of course, so overwhelming that actually
Speaker 3: administering it would have been a full time job, which
Speaker 3: is presumably why he didn't even bother. So instead the
Speaker 3: money he bought luxury cars, more thoroughbreds, He had mistresses
Speaker 3: at like flats around London. He went all in. So
Speaker 3: the paper trail, once investigators pulled it, was spectacular. Between
Speaker 3: September nineteen nineteen May nineteen twenty, the club cut bottomly
Speaker 3: eight checks for one thousand pounds or more, plus seven
Speaker 3: more between one thousand pounds and twenty five thousand pounds
Speaker 3: to his inner circle. Oh wow, his horse trainer got
Speaker 3: one thousand pounds beaks. Yeah, there's this fixer, James Kerr,
Speaker 3: he got ten grand. Thirty grand was wired to Paris
Speaker 3: under the authority of Laura Rodgers, who the police figured
Speaker 3: was his mistress and had had a child with him.
Speaker 3: Forty eight hundred pounds in cash went to an actress
Speaker 3: named Peggy Primrose.
Speaker 2: Another mistress.
Speaker 3: Eleven hundred pounds to an entourage member, Charles.
Speaker 2: Remember what do you do for he's an entrage Remember.
Speaker 3: He's like the Champagne carrier. One hundred pounds to a bookie,
Speaker 3: twenty pounds to an Italian restaurant. Quick note on Peggy Primrose,
Speaker 3: please so. Lady Peggy Primrose was the daughter of Archibald
Speaker 3: Philip Primrose, fifth Earl of Rosebery, not the fish, can
Speaker 3: you believe it? The liberal statesman who served as British
Speaker 3: Prime Minister eighteen ninety four to eighteen ninety five. And
Speaker 3: that's her dad. And then Hannah de ross Child, who
Speaker 3: had been the richest woman in Britain.
Speaker 2: Oh snack.
Speaker 3: Lady Peggy was one of the first female Justices of
Speaker 3: the Peace in London. She got appointed to magistrate in
Speaker 3: nineteen nineteen after they passed the Sexist Qualification Act of
Speaker 3: nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 2: She's think the first female judge is actually.
Speaker 3: Bottom Lee's Peggy Primrose was another Peggy.
Speaker 2: You didn't borrow the name.
Speaker 3: I went down a long rabbit hole and then like
Speaker 3: it made a U turn. Yeah. So she was a
Speaker 3: chorus girl and an aspiring musical comedy actress, and she
Speaker 3: was also a long time mistress of bottom Lenkait. I'm
Speaker 3: like this just does not mean now, and the who's.
Speaker 2: For him?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And then all of a sudden like hold on,
Speaker 3: hold on, and then's I'll see also Peggy. Okay, I gotcha.
Speaker 3: It would have been way funnier if it was Lady Peggy.
Speaker 3: But alas, all right, So back to the club payouts.
Speaker 3: Club money held in Bottomly's own name also bought sheares
Speaker 3: in John Bull itself, steaks and race courses at Plumpton
Speaker 3: and in Brussels an antique shop lease on Victoria Street,
Speaker 3: a factory that was supposed to be producing John Bull
Speaker 3: fountain pens that doesn't none of it. Bought a decommissioned
Speaker 3: German submarine, the Deutschland, and it like briefly toured around
Speaker 3: and then they scrapped it, and twenty five thousand pounds
Speaker 3: was sent to the official receiver to settle creditors of
Speaker 3: his previous bankruptcy. So he's using all these people's wore
Speaker 3: money to pay his creditors. A solicitor named Edmund Bell
Speaker 3: later put the club's total intake at one million, one
Speaker 3: hundred and seventy two nine and thirty nine pounds back then. Yeah,
Speaker 3: about a third of that went to just Bottomley's personal use.
Speaker 3: So that's that whole amount. Sixty eight million pounds a day,
Speaker 3: which is ninety one point five million dollars, is how
Speaker 3: much he pulled in on that on the club, just
Speaker 3: the Bonds club. His undoing came from within though. So
Speaker 3: this former associate, Ruben Bigland, he developed this like sudden
Speaker 3: and ferocious conscious really and yeah, and about the open
Speaker 3: robbery of the poor. He's like, I just this isn't
Speaker 3: sitting right.
Speaker 2: I think Bottomly like screwed him or urged you across
Speaker 2: a line.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you asked that question. That's a good question.
Speaker 2: Say thank you.
Speaker 3: Elizabeth's actually that he had tried to get Bottomly to
Speaker 3: back a scheme that he had for converting water into
Speaker 3: gasoline via a chemical powder. Oh no, you know as
Speaker 3: you do.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so when Bottomley was like, I'm not backing that,
Speaker 3: he's like, you know what, I don't like that you
Speaker 3: robbed from the poor.
Speaker 2: That's my job.
Speaker 3: So Biglin starts publishing attack pamphlets. And we've talked before
Speaker 3: about attack pamphlets are the greatest best, and so the
Speaker 3: most elegant one that he did was called what Horatio
Speaker 3: Bottomly has done for his country and the wounded Soldiers.
Speaker 2: You have illustrations that had.
Speaker 3: A title page and then twenty four blank pages. That's
Speaker 3: what he's done for them.
Speaker 2: That's a cold disc right.
Speaker 3: Another pamphlet did have like detailed allegations, all of them true.
Speaker 3: Bottomley was like, I can't ignore this. This is not good.
Speaker 3: So what am I going to do? I'm gonna sue
Speaker 3: for criminal libel naturally, and he's like, he tried to
Speaker 3: extort me through three intermediaries before the nineteen any one
Speaker 3: by election. On day two of the trial, Biglin took
Speaker 3: the stand calmly narrates his entire history with Bottomly, and
Speaker 3: that's like the nineteen eighteen incident where Bottomly rigged a
Speaker 3: warstock combination draw so that Biglin could quote win one
Speaker 3: thousand pounds.
Speaker 4: Okay, so he's like, you know, brandishing the pen against
Speaker 4: himself too.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm lying. Let me tell you what I did,
Speaker 3: was I lying? Bottomly, was like, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: testify in my own case. And then they dismiss it outright,
Speaker 3: But you know, because he drew that, he brought the charges.
Speaker 3: But then the cops turn around and arrested Bottomly, They're like,
Speaker 3: we have all this testimony.
Speaker 2: Now what was his play there to bring the case
Speaker 2: and dismiss it?
Speaker 3: And he thought he always wins in court, and so
Speaker 3: he thought, you know what, like, yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 3: sue you for one hundred million dollars and you're gonna
Speaker 3: have to pay me out. And then they're like, no,
Speaker 3: this is ridiculous, this is a frivolous lawsuit. You're out
Speaker 3: of here. Then discovery, you know, you always have to
Speaker 3: worry about discovery. So when charged, he like booms out
Speaker 3: this plea most decidedly not guilty. And the trial then
Speaker 3: kicks off May nineteenth, nineteen twenty two. The central question
Speaker 3: was whether he had defrauded the patriotic ex soldiers who
Speaker 3: bought into his club.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and.
Speaker 3: So Bottomly He's like, no, those dear boys, the living
Speaker 3: and the dead alike, they knew I never betrayed him.
Speaker 3: So the prosecution was like, actually you did. Demonstrates that
Speaker 3: of the millions invested, almost nothing went toward actually purchasing
Speaker 3: the government bonds. Ye never bottom Most of it goes
Speaker 3: to Bottomley.
Speaker 2: So he screwed the soldiers, the government, and the people.
Speaker 3: And the people. And then because he's once again representing himself,
Speaker 3: they led him. He didn't have to sit in the dock.
Speaker 3: He sat with the lawyers and he had like his
Speaker 3: accountants next to him. So he's like running the show.
Speaker 3: He's got like that flare that he always has. He
Speaker 3: secured the judge's blessing for a daily fifteen minute adjournment
Speaker 3: so that he could go take a medicinal pint of champagne.
Speaker 2: Of champagne. I didn't even know they sold champagne, and
Speaker 2: by the pin.
Speaker 3: I don't think they did.
Speaker 2: And he just has like a big flask, like a.
Speaker 3: Pint glass from the pub and they just fill it
Speaker 3: with champagne.
Speaker 2: Well, must it be like to be drunk on champagne?
Speaker 2: Every day of your life.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, I think that's why you're
Speaker 3: wearing wall dry champagne, because otherwise all that sugar will
Speaker 3: give you. Oh yes, yeah, So the jury needed twenty
Speaker 3: eight minutes to convict him. Twenty eight minutes. He was
Speaker 3: found guilty on more than twenty fraud counts, sentenced to
Speaker 3: seven years hard labor, expelled from Parliament. He sent the
Speaker 3: House of Commons a farewell letter to be read out loud,
Speaker 3: and in it he like swears before God after two
Speaker 3: months of solitary confinement and all this like soul searching,
Speaker 3: He's like, I never made a penny from the clubs,
Speaker 3: just outright line, I swear to God. You're like okay.
Speaker 3: He thanked the house staff for like twelve years of courtesy,
Speaker 3: and then he said he was just a victim of
Speaker 3: an appalling miscarriage of justice.
Speaker 2: But he didn't go out attacking anyone.
Speaker 3: No, so prison did not agree with him. He seems
Speaker 3: like the was sixty two when he got locked up,
Speaker 3: totally out of shape, like an out of shape bigin.
Speaker 3: The wardens couldn't find a uniform to fit him. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: His wife, Eliza, daughter Florence, they visited.
Speaker 2: So he was carrying a lot of champagne.
Speaker 3: Wait, caring a lot of champagne. Wait. He could barely
Speaker 3: eat at first, he couldn't sleep, and because he's an alcoholic,
Speaker 3: he you know, was hit with the shock of like
Speaker 3: enforced abstinence.
Speaker 2: Oh so they're not letting him like you know, like Timber.
Speaker 3: No, no, no. He got released in nineteen twenty seven
Speaker 3: after five years, and then he immediately tried to recapture
Speaker 3: the magic with a new magazine, John Blunt, No, sir,
Speaker 3: not John Blaize, John Blunt, his few remaining friends, Jack
Speaker 3: he should have plus Peggy Primrose. They they're like, this
Speaker 3: is a really bad idea. Please don't do this. He's like,
Speaker 3: I don't care.
Speaker 2: I'm doing it.
Speaker 3: I'm going to do it. So he rehired the old
Speaker 3: John bullstaff. He rented out these expensive offices, launched June sixteenth,
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty eight, complete with the Revived the World, The
Speaker 3: Flesh and the Devil.
Speaker 2: Oh, of course you gotta have that.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not a magazine without that.
Speaker 2: He's known for it.
Speaker 3: So there was an initial circulation of five hundred thousands,
Speaker 3: you know, on the premise of he was like because
Speaker 3: he he advertises it, I'm going to expose the hideous
Speaker 3: torture in British prisons. Yes, now, But then the Home
Speaker 3: Secretary is like, oh you want to know the like
Speaker 3: hideous torture that he faced. Check this out. Here's his
Speaker 3: letter requesting Palmery nineteen oh six, Champagne and it was denied.
Speaker 3: That's that's the horrors that he saw.
Speaker 2: He wouldst ask.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So then the advertisers like, oh, I don't really
Speaker 3: want any part of this. Readers are like, this isn't
Speaker 3: any fun. Final issue ran September nineteen twenty nine, So
Speaker 3: you know it was like maybe almost a little over
Speaker 3: a year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the world is changing fast and twenty.
Speaker 3: Nine, yes, yes, so John Blunt collapses. This brings along
Speaker 3: bankruptcy number four. He transferred he had this mansion called
Speaker 3: the Dicker and he had transferred it to his son
Speaker 3: in law before a previous bankruptcy okay to you know,
Speaker 3: get it off his books, and he was living there,
Speaker 3: but then it was sold out from under him because
Speaker 3: his daughter had since divorced, and the ex son in
Speaker 3: law was like, I am not loyal to you and
Speaker 3: the creditors are coming, so I want nothing to do
Speaker 3: with this. I'm selling the joint. Oh so now he's homeless,
Speaker 3: he has nowhere to live. He moves into Peggy Primroses
Speaker 3: London flat and she tried to like work up this
Speaker 3: lecture tour for him to go on, but most towns
Speaker 3: had banned him. Yeah, his wife, Eliza, She died February
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty. He published a volume of prison poems called
Speaker 3: Songs of the Cell and it had a preface by
Speaker 3: Lord Alfred Douglas, who was an English poet, journalist and
Speaker 3: Oscar Wilde's lover.
Speaker 4: Oh and so in what do you like to read
Speaker 4: poems Songs.
Speaker 3: Of the Cell. In one poem it was about a
Speaker 3: young soldier who died in prison after being wounded in
Speaker 3: the war. And it actually showed some self reflection because
Speaker 3: he like pauses to wonder, kind of like half waking
Speaker 3: in the night, whether he had done right or wrong
Speaker 3: by sending that boy to France. And it's like pretty
Speaker 3: much the only recorded instance of the question occurring to him.
Speaker 2: Do you think that he also was meeting some soldiers
Speaker 2: who'd returned from the war and they get locked up
Speaker 2: and one of them actually did touch this.
Speaker 3: I think he really did I think he really heard
Speaker 3: their stories and it wasn't this boisterous like we're gonna
Speaker 3: bomb them all, get them out of here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's nobody to play to in prison.
Speaker 3: At that they had like one on one humanity of it.
Speaker 3: And then him realizing that kid's there, probably because like
Speaker 3: I got them all round. Yeah yeah, yeah. So he
Speaker 3: has no income. He's reduced to telling stories from his
Speaker 3: life on stage at Soho's wind Mill Theater, and he
Speaker 3: only did it for a few nights and then he
Speaker 3: collapsed with a heart attack. He recovered, and then he
Speaker 3: collapsed again a couple months later. He died in Middlesex
Speaker 3: hospital May twenty sixth, nineteen thirty three, aged seventy three.
Speaker 2: So his final bankruptcy was his heart.
Speaker 3: Yes. Yes. A month or so earlier he had applied
Speaker 3: to the British government for an old age pension of
Speaker 3: a few shillings a week and he was refused. Really,
Speaker 3: and the irony of that is that the old age
Speaker 3: pension law existed partly because of the works he had
Speaker 3: done as an MP. He really pushed for it and
Speaker 3: so you know, sorry, his obituary lamented the opportunities that
Speaker 3: he'd had. How sadly it was wasted, and how he
Speaker 3: might have been almost anything, but he had like this
Speaker 3: single fatal flaw of like being a greedy pig.
Speaker 2: There was that.
Speaker 3: His will asked that his ashes be scattered on the
Speaker 3: training gallops at Alfriston, near that near the Dicker in Sussex,
Speaker 3: and then the urn sat unclaimed for four years. In
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty seven, his nephew Bertie Dolman and Peggy Primrose,
Speaker 3: ever Loyle drove down finally granted him his last wish. So, Saron,
Speaker 3: what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 4: Well, they say you die to deaths ye, right, your
Speaker 4: physical death, and then the last time your name is spoken.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he's not dead yet. No, sadly he resurrected
Speaker 3: him and I apologized for that, But I.
Speaker 2: Mean, like, you get guys like this and like that.
Speaker 4: I'm sure there are a million whatever, some big number
Speaker 4: of much better Brits of this era.
Speaker 2: We could tell a story of maybe not for the show,
Speaker 2: but just.
Speaker 4: Tell a story of yeah, and they'd be like, oh,
Speaker 4: an beautiful examination of the human condition.
Speaker 2: And instead we.
Speaker 4: Get guys like this because they are just so outside
Speaker 4: oh yeah, so committed to the grift a lover of
Speaker 4: the it's so deep in the game of like let me,
Speaker 4: let me hold your money, and that we forever, even
Speaker 4: us as human beings now later unaffected by this man,
Speaker 4: still want to hear his story. That's how compelling his
Speaker 4: story is, which is a crazy irony under all of it.
Speaker 4: It really is, you.
Speaker 3: Know, history repeating itself over and over. We've talked about that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, so you have to learn it's definitely.
Speaker 2: A rhyming tune with our stuff today.
Speaker 3: It is it is. And with that, I I think
Speaker 3: I kind of need to talk back, Dave, do you mine?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I led.
Speaker 5: High Crime Squad. I love the gluzzy stats from the
Speaker 5: Sophie Lions episode, and I thought I could tell you
Speaker 5: about a senior prank done by some of my students
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty. Not a great year for students graduating
Speaker 5: that year. So for their senior prank, they resorted to
Speaker 5: sticking a bunch of hot dogs on skewers in the
Speaker 5: ground in front of the school, as if a field
Speaker 5: of hot dogs had popped up overnight, just just to
Speaker 5: feel the glizzies in front of the school. That was
Speaker 5: their senior prank, and I thought you would enjoy that
Speaker 5: visual image.
Speaker 3: That's amazing God when you think about Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: Do whatever you want and buffet. I love a prank.
Speaker 3: What if it's just like crows landing on it with
Speaker 3: Kingford Coals getting busy. Yeah, you just take the steak
Speaker 3: out ready to go. I love that. Thank you for that.
Speaker 3: That's it for today. You can find us online at
Speaker 3: ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on
Speaker 3: Blue Sky, Instagram, email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3: Most importantly, please leave a talk back on the iHeart
Speaker 3: app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
Speaker 3: and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Lord Dave Houston,
Speaker 3: nineteenth Earl of Gray. Our Ridiculous Assistant is owner of
Speaker 3: the original John Bull Letterpress, Terry Maldonado. Fong research is
Speaker 3: by Belgian fog conjurer Marissa Brown. The theme song is
Speaker 3: by Victory Bonds club members Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton.
Speaker 3: Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred producer Dave
Speaker 3: Cousten's wardrobe by Mister Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest hair
Speaker 3: and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are
Speaker 3: Ben more Like The Daily Fail, am I Right Bowlin
Speaker 3: and Noel Good One Dude Brown, QUI Say It One
Speaker 3: More Time?
Speaker 5: Crime.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts.
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