Railway Adventures and Anecdotes: Extending over More Than Fifty Years

by Unknown

IMMENSE FRAUD ON THE GREAT-NORTHERN RAILWAY.

In the Annual Register for 1856, November 14th, we read, “Another fraud connected with the transfer of shares and stock, but on a far grander scale, and by a much more pretentious criminal, has been discovered.

“Of late some strange discrepancies had been observed in the accounts of the Great-Northern Railway Company, and in particular that the amount paid for dividends considerably exceeded the rateable proportion to the capital stock. An investigation was directed. The registrar of shares, Mr. Leopold Redpath, expressed a decided opinion that the investigation into his department would be useless, and, on its being pressed, absconded. The investigation developed a long-continued system of frauds of vast amount, to the amount, it was said, of nearly £250,000.

“Mr. Leopold Redpath passed in society as a gentleman of ample means, great taste, and possessed of the Christian virtue of charity in no common degree. He had a house in Chester Terrace, handsomely furnished, and a “place” at Weybridge complete with every luxury that wealth could procure; gave good dinners with excellent wines; kept good horses and neat carriages. He was a governor of Christ’s Hospital, the St. Ann’s Schools, and subscribed freely to the most useful charities of London. His appointment on the Great-Northern was worth £300 per annum; but it was supposed that this was only of consequence to Mr. Redpath as affording him a regular occupation and an opportunity of operating in the share-market, in which he was known to have extensive dealings. The directors of the railway appear to have been perfectly aware that their servant was living far beyond his salary, but they considered him to be a very successful speculator. Upon this splendid bubble being blown up, Redpath fled to Paris; but, finding that the French authorities were not inclined to protect him, he returned to London and surrendered himself.

“The mode in which this gigantic swindler had committed his frauds is simple enough. Having charge of the books in which the stock of the company is registered, he altered the sum standing in the name of some bonâ fide stockholder to a much larger sum, generally by placing a figure before it, by which simple means £500 became £1,500, or £2,500, or any larger number of thousands. The surplus stock thus created Redpath sold in the stock-market, forging the name of the supposed transferer, transferring the sum to the account of the supposed transferee in the register, and either attesting it himself, or causing it to be attested by a young man, his protegé and tool, but who appears to have been free from guilty cognizance. In some instances the fraud was but the more direct course of making a fictitious entry of stock, and then selling it. By these processes the number of shareholders and the amount of stock on the company’s register became greatly magnified, while, as the bonâ fide holders of stock remained credited with their proper investments, there was no occasion for suspicion on their part. How Redpath dealt with subsequent transfers of the fictitious stock does not appear. The prisoner was subjected

to repeated examination before the police magistrates, when this prodigious falsification was thoroughly sifted, and the prisoner was finally committed for trial at the Central Criminal Court in the following year. It is said that the value of the leases, furniture, and articles of taste in Redpath’s house in Chester Terrace is estimated at £30,000, and at Weybridge at a still larger sum. It is also said that Redpath and Robson, whose forged transfer of Crystal Palace shares has been recorded in this chronicle, were formerly fellow clerks.

“Lionel Redpath was tried, January 16th, 1857, at the Central Criminal Court, and, being found guilty, was sentenced to transportation for life. At the same time a junior clerk in his office, Charles Kent, was also charged as his partner in the crime. It appeared that Kent had acted on many occasions as attesting witness to the forged transfers which Redpath had employed to carry out his ends; but, as no guilty knowledge on the part of the former was shown, he was acquitted.

“The railway company at first attempted to repudiate the forged stock which Redpath had put into circulation, but pressing remonstrances, not unaccompanied by threats, having been made by the Committee of the Stock Exchange, they consented to acknowledge it. Then came the question by whom the loss was to be borne; a question which was not solved until after considerable litigation. The directors asserted that it ought to be paid out of the current income of the year, and so it was ultimately decided. This led to a further question between the guaranteed shareholders and the rest of the company. For the diminution of the year’s earnings caused by taking up the fictitious stock being so great as to render it impossible to satisfy the guaranteed dividends out of the residue, it was contended on the part of the holders of those shares that, by the provisions of the deed of settlement, the deficiency ought to be made up out of the next year’s profits, so that the guarantee that they should receive their specified dividends was not clogged with the condition in case a sufficient amount of earnings in each year was made to pay them. This dispute led to a Chancery suit, the decree in which was in favour of the holders of the guaranteed shares.”

A LOST TICKET.

“Now, then, make haste there, will you, an’ give up your ticket,” exclaimed a railway guard to a bandsman in the Volunteers returning from a review. “Didna I tell ye I’ve lost it?” “Nonsense, man; feel in your pockets, you cannot hae lost it.” “Can I no?” was the drunken reply; “man, that’s naething, I’ve lost the big drum!”