Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/Usury and usurers
USURY AND USURERS.
The newspaper readers must often notice a certain class of advertisements in some of the London papers announcing that “Officers on full pay, clergymen, reversioners of real or personal property, and heirs to landed estates can be confidentially advised on loans for long or short periods on liberal terms. Address X. Y. Z., &c.”
It is in vain that Hogarth painted his wonderful pictures of the Rake’s Progress, and that the oft-told tales of ruin appear in the annals of the Insolvent Court; for, in spite of these constant warnings, there are numbers of young men—and middle-aged men too—who will drink their fill of pleasure at any price. The simple act of writing his name across a little strip of stamped paper will furnish young Scapegrace with horses, carriages, opera-boxes, Richmond dinners, and drags for the races—in fact, with the aid of bill discounters, he can procure for himself a prominent place in the fashionable world.
The bill discounter has nothing to do but to sit quietly in his handsomely furnished chambers ready to receive his victims, like a spider in its web watching for flies. Let us christen the fashionable bill discounter Mr. Lasher: I never knew any one of that name, so it is a harmless coinage. His chambers are at the West End, and are generally artfully arranged, so that the client going in never meets the man who is coming out. Lasher’s habits are expensive. His horses and carriages are showy; his house in the suburbs of London is gorgeously furnished, and Mrs. Lasher’s diamonds sparkle brilliantly as she sits at the head of her table on grand days when Lasher entertains some of his customers.
If Lasher is not an attorney, he is sure to have a brother or relative of some kind who is; and when poor Prodigal comes home with nothing to show for his riotous living but a writ in the action of Lasher v. Prodigal, the family solicitor has only to glance at the attorney’s name on the back of the writ to see whether Lasher’s, or Mordecai’s, or Israel Solomon’s gang have robbed the unhappy defendant.
Probably the most frequent victims of bill discounters are young fellows in the army. If a youngster takes a fancy to cards, billiards, racing, and similar expensive amusements, it will be a long time before he discovers that all is vanity; and unless he has the purse of Fortunatus, he must fall into the hands of the bill discounters. Nor is the temptation of raising money confined to London. The leading bill discounters have agents in every garrison in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and no doubt in the colonies too. It seems but yesterday that poor Greenhorn, captain in Her Majesty’s 200th Regiment, came to the writer hereof with a writ in his hand for a very large sum for which a certain Mr. Mordecai had sued him. Now I took great interest in Greenhorn’s affairs, as I had known him from boyhood, and on more than one previous occasion I had saved him from the Philistines.
Of course poor Greenhorn (he is dead now, and his bones rest many thousand miles away from England) was enthusiastically repentant. “Indeed, old fellow,” he said, “I would have kept my word, and would not have touched another bill; and I never did till that infernal Lasher came into my quarters at and began chaffing, and forced a hundred on me.”
It was the old, old story. The first transaction of the new lot of bills was a bill for 100l. at two months for 90l. down; then came a second bill at the expiration of two months for 100l. for 70l. down, the deduction of 30l. being accounted for as follows: interest on original bill for two months longer, 10l.; interest on new bill for the current two months, 10l.; and bonus on renewal of bill No. 1, 10l. When bills one and two became due, Lasher of course was short of cash, but turned over poor Greenhorn to Mordecai—an inferior shark who takes the leavings of the bigger fish—and Mordecai had taken up the two bills and had advanced 40l. for a new bill of 300l. at two months’ date, so that poor Greenhorn had paid exactly 100l. for 200l. for six months, being at the rate of cent. per cent.
It was the beginning of the long vacation when my unhappy client came to me with the writ, and I promised him a respite till the 24th of October, by appearing for him to the action, which would stop proceedings till term. Greenhorn’s delight at this respite was refreshing to witness. From the slough of despond he rose to the seventh heaven of boisterous spirits. “Would I dine with him at Greenwich? No? At Richmond? No? Well, then, he would dine with me. He would have a lark, by Jove: he would chaff Mordecai till he was as mad as a hatter: he would paint the Jew’s door a different colour every night: he would pay up on the 24th—no, on the 23rd, by Jove, and sell them all.”
I took Greenhorn to the Cock. The worthy William (whom Tennyson has immortalised), the best of waiters, got us the finest steak and the best bottle of port which the Cock could produce. We showed Greenhorn “the farthing,”[1] and told him about Pepys and Mrs. Knipp coming there to supper. It was all new to him.
“What a jolly old fireplace!—what splendid port! He would bring Slasher of ours, and Crasher of the Light Bobs to dinner there.”
Over a quiet pipe that evening (of course poor Greenhorn smoked cigars at about three guineas a pound), I took for my text William at the Cock, and preached a long sermon on the comfortable independence which that honest waiter made by the pennies of the customers, and I grew somewhat eloquent on the theme of cheap pleasures. I explained to Greenhorn that the dinner which we had eaten and wine which we had drunk at a cost of a few shillings, could not be surpassed in quality at any hotel where we should have paid a guinea. I went further than this, and conspired with Jones, Brown, and Robinson, to join us at a pool of billiards, when we hired a private room, and played our usual stake of sixpenny pool and twopence a ball, so that the losers could only lose a shilling a game. Greenhorn was obliged to admit that the pleasure was as great as if the stakes had been half guinea pool and a crown a ball.
I never saw him after that night. It was clear that the effect of my preaching on economy had taken no root, for his last words were a pressing invitation to Jones, Brown, and Robinson—“three capital fellows, by Jove!”—to come and stay for a week—the garrison races were coming off, and there would be a drag every day and a champagne lunch.
Every man has his fate before him, and poor Greenhorn’s turn came. He did not chaff Mordecai till he was as mad as a hatter, nor did he paint the Jew’s door, nor did he pay up and “sell them all, by Jove!” for the next communication which I received from Greenhorn was early in the month of November, and the letter was dated “County Jail.”
The poor captain was repentant again, “he would never touch another bill, he would exchange and go back to India; he felt a changed man already. Would I write to the governor for him?”
Of course I did as my client wished, but before I could get an answer from “the governor”—who had paid Greenhorn’s debts three times before—I received another letter from Greenhorn, written in the highest spirits. “A regular trump,” he wrote; “Israel Solomon, a very respectable fellow, had paid debt and costs, and he was free again.”
Speaking from memory, I think that I am within the mark when I say that Mr. Israel Solomon’s little bill was somewhere about the rate of 400 per cent. It was managed on this wise: Israel Solomon paid half Mordecai’s claim, and poor Greenhorn gave fresh bills for the balance to Mordecai, and bills for the whole amount of debt and costs to Israel Solomon. Matters were now really serious; Greenhorn’s father came forward at once on my representation of the desperate state of affairs. I had not the winding up of the Jews; Mr. Fogey, the family solicitor, had the conduct of the business; and I believe, to the day of his death, old Greenhorn thought that I had a hand in leading his son into extravagance, although my books show, to this day, that I never saw the colour of Greenhorn’s money for any professional services even, for I loved the youngster “for auld lang syne,” and tried to keep his boat upright. At my instigation, however, threats of conspiring to defraud were made against Israel Solomon, Mordecai, and Jacob Shylock, the legal adviser of those gentlemen, who was somewhat anxious that the Law Institution should not be too curious about the arrangements which he had made in settling the price of Esau’s potage. The upshot of the matter was, that the claims of the gang were equitably adjusted, and they received no more than the money which was actually advanced, and some twenty or thirty pounds amongst them. Greenhorn left England clear of debts, and died on foreign service.
Now, with the exception of a trifling variation of names and places, the above is an honest description of one of many cases which have come under the immediate notice of the writer hereof, and is “on all fours”—as the legal phrase runs—with hundreds of cases which are daily, nay, hourly occurring. The victims of the bill-discounters are by no means the worst of their species. Many a cautious hypocrite manages to keep clear of debt himself, and flatters poor Prodigal, and drinks his champagne, and wins his money, and still contrives to keep up an outward appearance of respectability, taking good care to forsake him as soon as he is safe within the walls of the Queen’s Bench.
How the fashionable world would stare if an omniscient fairy were to enter any public assembly, either at church, opera, ball, concert, or even the houses of the legislature, and tap with her wand every man who had dealings with Mr. Lasher, or—worse still—with the Mordecais or Israel Solomons. The names of the victims is Legion. The Lasher school fear nothing but exposure, but their dealings being only with men who are reasonably solvent, they seldom come before the public. The smaller fry of usurers relieve the large houses of their clients as soon as they have been tightly squeezed, and this latter class do not care for exposure. They do not mind appearing before the Insolvent Court, and stating, with some degree of negative honesty, that they lend their money at a great risk, and play for an enormous stake.
Under the present state of things the bill discounting attorneys and professional usurers can afford to ride their blood-horses and give champagne dinners, even if one debt in three turns out bad; but if interest was kept at a maximum of twenty per cent., there must not be more than one bad debt in seven to enable the money lenders to make their profit.
The Sowerbys, and Bloundel Bloundels, and Demeaces, are irreclaimable scoundrels, and these pages are not meant for them; but if this number of Once a Week should fall in the way of any young fellow who is in the hands of the Jews, let him go at once to Paterfamilias, and make a clean breast of his troubles. As Foker remarked in Pendennis: “The governor will blow like a grampus, but he will get his wind again.” And I honestly hope that “the governor” will have the moral courage to tender the exact amount of debt and five per cent. interest to Lasher, Mordecai, or Israel Solomon, as the case may be; and in case of refusal fearlessly confide his sorrows to the tender mercies of a British Jury.
- ↑ One of the old copper tokens which were issued by the landlord of the “Cock ale-house” before the Fire of London.