The Mystery of Overend & Gurney

Commemorating a hundred and fifty years since the first financial scandal in Victorian London

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A hundred and fifty years ago, on Friday, 10 May 1866, Overend, Gurney & Co. Limited, the City of London's leading discount house - with a turnover second only to that of the Bank of England - closed its doors and suspended all payments, provoking a 'panic without parallel in the financial history of England'. Horrified shareholders learned that the bank had catastrophic debts which, calculated at today's values, would be equivalent to GBP1 billion. There were massive repercussions and within three months of what quickly became known as 'Black Friday', more than two hundred other companies had collapsed. The failure of Overend, Gurney & Co. Limited provoked sensational publicity, debates in Parliament and culminated in a dramatic criminal trial. But why did the bank that was once dubbed 'the greatest instrument of credit in the kingdom' collapse so suddenly? It was controlled by members of the Gurney family, who were wealthy and respectable Quakers from East Anglia. Why did these men, whose religion warns against 'the deceitfulness of riches', display such Dickensian greed, off-loading their depositors' money into increasingly foolish and desperate ventures?In this fast-moving account of an amazing story, Geoffrey Elliott brilliantly evokes the City of London in the mid-Victorian period and populates it with a cast of true-life characters including the bird-watching banker John Henry Gurney, the wily share promoter Albert Grant, the vengeful Adam Thom and the Greek novelist and reckless entrepreneur Stefanos Xenos, whose first-hand observations of events enrich the story.
The result is an entertaining and intriguing portrait of a period in history and the most comprehensive account of a scandal that shook the Victorian financial world to its foundations.