Читать книгу The Fatal Cup: Thomas Griffiths Wainewright and the strange deaths of his relations - John Price Williams - Страница 53

to it, but this was a blatant fraud against the Bank, for as long as the Bank held the trust fund it was accountable for it.

The Bank’s own inflation calculator puts the value of this in 2017 as an astonishing £245,000, but reckless expense and debt soon dissipated this enormous sum.

But then he must have thought that having got away with swindling the Bank of England once, he could do successfully do it again.

A year later, almost to the day, on May 17, 1824, Wainewright was back at the Bank with another power of attorney. Again the signatures of the trustees were forged and again the witnesses were bogus.

The Bank made no checks and paid out £3,000 (£302.000), which enabled him to drain entirely his

The forged signatures of the trustees and the fictional witnesses on the power of attorney that enabled the heavily-indebted Wainewright to defraud the Bank of England and drain the last of his grandfather’s bequest before fleeing to France.

National Archives

JOHN PRICE WILLIAMS

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