JEAMES OF BUCKLEY SQUARE.
A Heligy.
Come, all ye gents vot cleans the plate,
Come, all ye ladies maids so fair—
Vile I a story vil relate
Of cruel Jeames of Buckley Square.
A tighter lad, it is confest,
Never valked vith powder in his air,
Or vore a nosegay in his breast,
Than andsum Jeames of Buckley Square.
O Evns! it vas the best of sights,
Behind his Master’s coach and pair,
To see our Jeames in red plush tights,
A driving hoff from Buckley Square.
He vel became his hagwiletts,
He cocked his at with such an hair;
His calves and viskers vas siech pets,
That hall loved Jeames of Buckley Square.
He pleased the hup stairs folks as vell,
And o! I vithered vith despair,
Misses vould ring the parler bell,
And call up Jeames in Buckley Square.
Both beer and sperrits he abhord,
(Sperrits and beer I can’t a bear,)
You would have thought he vas a lord,
Down in our All in Buckley Square.
Last year he visper’d, “Mary Hann,
Ven I’ve an ‘under’d pound to spare,
To take a public is my plan,
And leave this hojous Buckley Square.”
O how my gentle heart did bound,
To think that I his name should bear.
“Dear Jeames,” says I, “I’ve twenty pound,”
And gev him them in Buckley Square.
Our master vas a City Gent,
His name’s in railroads everywhere;
And lord, vot lots of letters vent
Betwigst his brokers, and Buckley Square.
My Jeames it was the letters took,
And read ‘em all, (I think it’s fair),
And took a leaf from Master’s book,
As hothers do in Buckley Square.
Encouraged with my twenty pound,
Of which poor I was unaware,
He wrote the Companies all round,
And signed hisself from Buckley Square.
And how John Porter used to grin,
As day by day, share after share,
Came railway letters pouring in,
J. Plush, Esquire, in Buckley Square.
Our servants’ All was in a rage—
Scrip, stock, curves, gradients, bull and bear,
With butler, coachman, groom and page,
Vas all the talk in Buckley Square.
But O! imagine vat I felt
Last Vensdy veek as ever were;
I gits a letter, which I spelt
“Miss M. A. Hoggins, Buckley Square.”
He sent me back my money true—
He sent me back my lock of air,
And said, “My dear, I bid ajew
To Mary Hann and Buckley Square.
Think not to marry, foolish Hann,
With people who your betters are;
James Plush is now a gentleman,
And you—a cook in Buckley Square.
I’ve thirty thousand guineas won,
In six short months, by genus rare;
You little thought what Jeames was on,
Poor Mary Hann, in Buckley Square.
I’ve thirty thousand guineas net,
Powder and plush I scorn to vear;
And so, Miss Mary Hann, forget
For hever Jeames, of Buckley Square.”
But, joking apart, there is no exaggeration in Jeames. Look at a “Return to the Order of the Honourable the House of Commons, dated 8th April 1845, for an Alphabetical list of the Names, Description, and Place of Abode of all Persons subscribing to the Amount of £2000 and upwards to any Railway Subscription Contract deposited in the Private Bill Office during the present Session of Parliament,” and amongst the names will be found many of the leading nobility, large manufacturing firms, names well known in commerce and literature, mingled together in a most heterogeneous manner. The same columns shew a combination of peers and printers, vicars and vice-admirals, spinsters and half-pay officers, M.P.’s and special pleaders, professors and cotton spinners, gentlemen’s cooks and Q.C.’s, attorney’s clerks and college scouts, waiters at Lloyd’s, relieving officers and excisemen, barristers and butchers, Catholic priests and coachmen, editors and engineers, dairymen and dyers, braziers, bankers, beer sellers and butlers, domestic servants, footmen and mail guards, and almost every calling under the sun.
These, it must be remembered, were subscribers for £2000 and upwards; those who subscribed for less, were supposed to be holders of £21,386,703, 6s. 4d. in Stock.
The first blow given to this frightful gambling was on Thursday, 16th Oct. 1845, when the Bank of England raised its Discount, which had such a disastrous effect, that by Saturday, people began to be alarmed, and, as Mr Francis describes the situation, “Money was scarce, the price of stock and scrip lowered; the confidence of the people was broken, and a vision of a dark future on every face. Advertisements were suddenly withdrawn from the papers; names of note were seen no more as provisional committee men; distrust followed the merchant to the mart, and the jobber to the Exchange. The new schemes ceased to be regarded; applications ceased to be forwarded; premiums were either lowered, or ceased to exist. Bankers looked anxiously to the accounts of their customers; bill brokers scrutinised their securities; and every man was suspicious of his neighbour.
“But the distrust was not confined to projected lines. Established Railways felt the shock, and were reduced in value. Consols fell one and a half per cent.; Exchequer Bills declined in price, and other markets sympathised. The people had awoke from their dream, and trembled. It was a national alarm.
“Words are weak to express the fears and feelings which prevailed. There was no village too remote to escape the shock, and there was, probably, no house in town, some occupant of which did not shrink from the morrow. The Statesman started to find his new Bank Charter so sadly, and so suddenly tried: the peer, who had so thoughtlessly invested, saw ruin opening to his view. Men hurried with bated breath to their brokers; the allottee was uneasy and suspicious: the provisional committee man grew pale at his fearful responsibility: directors ceased to boast their blushing honours, and promoters saw their expected profits evaporate. Shares, which, the previous week, were a fortune, were, the next, a fatality to their owners. The reputed shareholders were not found when they were wanted: provisional committee men were not more easy of access.
“One Railway advertised the names and addresses of thirty—none of whom were to be heard of at the residences ascribed to them. Letters were returned to the Post Office, day after day. Nor is this to be wondered at, when it is said that, on one projected line, only £60 was received for deposits which should have yielded £700,000.
“It was proved in the Committee of the House of Commons, that one subscription list was formed of ‘lame ducks of the Alley’; and that, in another, several of the Directors, including the Chairman, had, also, altered their several subscriptions to the amount of £100,000, the very evening on which the list was deposited, and that five shillings a man was given to any one who would sign for a certain number of shares.
“Nothing more decidedly marked the crisis which had arrived, than the fact that every one hastened to disown railways. Gentlemen who had been buried in prospectuses, whose names and descriptions had been published under every variation that could fascinate the public, who had figured as committee men, and received the precious guineas for their attendance, were eager to assure the world that they were ignorant of this great transgression. Men, who, a month before, had boasted of the large sums they had made by scrip, sent advertisements to papers denying their responsibility, or appealed to the Lord Mayor to protect their characters. Members of Parliament who had remained quiet under the infliction, while it was somewhat respectable, fell back upon their privileges when they saw their purses in danger. There is no doubt that an unauthorised use of names was one feature of fraudulent Companies, and that, amid a list of common names, it was thought a distinguished one might pass unnoticed. The complaints, therefore, of those who were thus unceremoniously treated were just; but the great mass of denials emanated from persons who, knowingly, encountered the risk, and meanly shrunk from the danger.
“It is the conviction of those who are best informed that no other panic was ever so fatal to the middle class. It reached every hearth, it saddened every heart in the metropolis. Entire families were ruined. There was scarcely an important town in England, but what beheld some wretched suicide. Daughters, delicately nurtured, went out to seek their bread; sons were recalled from academies; households were separated: homes were desecrated by the emissaries of the law. There was a disruption of every social tie. The debtor’s jails were peopled with promoters; Whitecross Street was filled with speculators; and the Queen’s bench was full to overflowing. Men who had lived comfortably and independently, found themselves suddenly responsible for sums they had no means of paying. In some cases they yielded their all, and began the world anew; in others, they left the country for the continent, laughed at their creditors, and defied pursuit. One gentleman was served with four hundred writs: a peer, similarly pressed, when offered to be relieved from all liabilities for £15,000, betook himself to his yacht, and forgot, in the beauties of the Mediterranean, the difficulties which had surrounded him. Another gentleman, who, having nothing to lose, surrendered himself to his creditors, was a director of more than twenty lines. A third was Provisional Committee man to fifteen. A fourth, who commenced life as a printer, who became an insolvent in 1832, and a bankrupt in 1837, who had negotiated partnerships, who had arranged embarrassed affairs, who had collected debts, and turned his attention to anything, did not disdain, also, to be a railway promoter, a railway director, or to spell his name in a dozen different ways.”
But a notice of the Railway Mania would be very incomplete without mention of George Hudson, the Railway King. He was born at Howsham, a village near York, in March 1800, was apprenticed to a draper in York, and subsequently became principal in the business; thus, early in life, becoming well off, besides having £30,000 left him by a distant relative. In 1837 he was Lord Mayor of York, and the same year was made Chairman of the York and North Midland Railway, which was opened in 1839. In 1841 he was elected Chairman of the Great North of England Company, and, afterwards held the same position in the Midland Railway Company. He speculated largely in Railways; and in the Parliamentary return, already alluded to (p. 270) his subscriptions appear as £319,835.
He came to London, and inhabited the house at Albert Gate, Knightsbridge (now the French Embassy) where he entertained the Prince Consort, and the aristocracy generally. He was elected M.P. for Sunderland in Aug. 1845, and again served as Lord Mayor of York in 1846. The Railway smash came, and year by year things went worse with him, until, early in the year 1849 he had to resign his chairmanship of the Eastern Counties (now Great Eastern), Midland, York, Newcastle and Berwick, and the York and North Midland Railway Companies. He went abroad, where he lived for some time, and tried, unavailingly, to retrieve his fortune. In July 1865 he was committed to York Castle for Contempt of the Court of Exchequer, in not paying a large debt, and was there incarcerated till the following October.
He fell so low, that in 1868 some friends took pity on him and raised a subscription for him, thus obtaining £4800, with which an annuity was purchased. He died in London, 14th Dec. 1871.
In conclusion, as a place for gambling, the Stock Exchange is of far greater extent than the Turf. The time bargains and options, without which the business of the Exchange would be very little, are gambling pure and simple, whilst the numerous bucket shops, with their advertisements and circulars, disseminate the unwholesome vice of gambling throughout the length and breadth of the land, enabling people to speculate without anyone being the wiser. It is needless to say, that, as on the Turf, they are the losers.