Fortune's Spear

Gerard Lee Bevan was the model of an Edwardian swell - arrogant, smooth, well-connected and highly cultured. He married money and influence - his wife Sophie Kenrick was a cousin of the future prime minister Neville Chamberlain - and over the years he kept a string of showgirl mistresses. But his was a success built on fraud and deception, and eventually Bevan could sustain the fiction no longer. After a series of desperate swerves, he fled the country on 8 February 1922, abandoning his family and leaving his stockbroking and insurance empire in ruins. Thus began an extraordinary flight across Europe - disguised as a Frenchman, using a stolen passport, with his mistress at his side. His subsequent arrest in Vienna, and the Old Bailey trial that followed, would shock the entire country. 'Fortune's Spear' is a parable of the way in which the prospect of easy money draws risk-takers in every era into a spiral of greed and deceit. Bevan may have been forgotten, but he richly deserves to be remembered. Drawing on c ontemporary evidence and told with novelistic flair, Martin Vander Weyer's gripping biography brings him vividly to life.

Auteur

Martin Vander Weyer

Contenu

Bevan Family Tree viii Kenrick/Chamberlain Family Tree x Sonnet II xiii INTRODUCTION: The Making of a Fraudster 1 CHAPTER ONE: A Kensington Wedding Capital and Industry 15 Pillars of Society 18 The Playing Fields of Eton 27 Hollow-ware and Oddwork 33 CHAPTER TWO: On 'Change The Black Sheep 41 The Junior Partner 46 Bad Examples 52 The Senior Partner 57 CHAPTER THREE: At Home Upper Grosvenor Street 71 The Veiled Politician 75 City Magnate and Don Juan 83 At Littlecote 86 CHAPTER FOUR: The City Equitable A Wartime Opportunity 93 Lords on the Board 97 Crack Oarsmen 107 A Nine Years' Wonder 111 CHAPTER FIVE: The Post-Armistice Boom The Lucky Englishman 117 A Craze for Speculation 122 Eminently Healthy 136 Wily Dundonians 139 Partners and Directors, 1918 - 22 147 CHAPTER SIX: Boom Turns to Bust Back from Brazil 149 The Twin Bastions 153 A False Prospectus 157 Hand-to-Mouth 161 CHAPTER SEVEN: Flight Ordered Abroad 169 Proofs of Debt 174 'Parle francais couramment' 179 All is Squared 182 CHAPTER EIGHT: Capture An Inspector Calls 193 'My Poor Wife!' 201 Homeward Bound 208 And Whose the Fault? 211 CHAPTER NINE: Trial At the Guildhall 216 Who was 'Someone?' 233 Window-dressing 238 Muddled Away 242 CHAPTER TEN: Misfeasance Mansell in the Dock 249 Wilful Neglect? 255 An Historic Judgment 262 Stung by a Tart 272 CHAPTER ELEVEN: Family Matters The Prison Librarian 279 Decree Absolute 282 The Bogus Major 287 Sheila's Wedding 290 CHAPTER TWELVE: Last Years What Happened to Hatry? 293 Russet and Asp 298 The PPRS 305 A Pauper's Grave 315 Exile 321 Acknowledgments 323 Bibliography 325 Index 329