Wednesday 18 July 2012

Do we ever learn?

Flicking through the internet tonight i came across a story,  the story was nearly 200 years old but could so easily been written in todays press.

This is the piece in London24 :

"A Romford banker fled the country in 1828, leaving a trail of misery behind him.
Rowland Stephenson entered the family bank, Remingtons, when he left school – Eton of course – and lived a lavish lifestyle.
Around 1816, he bought Marshalls, a small country house off North Street Romford.
He spent huge sums furnishing the house - £20,000 on art work alone.
Although there was no railway to London, Stephenson managed to commute – and was often seen on horseback riding through Romford at 8 a.m.
Marshalls became famous for its glittering weekend parties, which were long remembered in Romford.
But Stephenson always rounded up his guests and made them attend St Edwards’s Church in the Market Place on Sundays"

It then goes on to say :

"Romford shopkeepers had been happy to extend credit to such a wealthy customer, even though Stephenson was slow in settling his bills.
The “fugitive banker”, as he was nicknamed, left many local businesses with big debts.
Stephenson was declared bankrupt, expelled from parliament (where he had never made a speech) and his properties sold."

 That was nearly 200 years ago ( although it appears at least they took some action against the crook unlike these days where we bail them out).

2 comments:

  1. In my finance days, I used to go to our Romford branch quite regularly. They would all go to the Crown on London Road on a Friday lunchtime and everyone would buy a complete round of drinks for the 10 or more in the group. The tables would be groaning with yet-to-be-drunk pints. One of the number, perversely, drank Campari so he would have ten large flute glasses of the red stuff which made for a really surreal appearance.

    God did they drink! The parties were another thing again. They obviously had no inhibitions with all that drink and openly fornicated with any of the female staff, guests and customers that wanted to join in. Surprisingly to me, many did. Being rather a private person, I kept out of that aspect of things but I stumbled into a room once where I could see a TV flickering. Thought I would watch the news...

    Turned out there were ten people in there, all naked - all shagging - with a porn movie playing in the background.

    Whilst I am sure this must go on in many places, I have not experienced anything like this since. Unlimited extraversion is supposed to be compensated for in some other form and I wondered what that could be. I put it down to the air in the outer reaches of East London...

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