The Mystery of Overend and Gurney
Geoffrey Elliott

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Entertaining and intriguing account of a period in history and a financial scandal that rocked the City of London

In May 1866, Overend and Gurney, the City of London's leading discount house - with a turnover second only to that of the Bank of England - suspended all payments and provoked a 'panic without parallel in the financial history of England'. Within three months of the event more than two hundred other companies had collapsed. Overend and Gurney itself had debts equivalent to £1 billion at today's values.

Remarkably, Overend and Gurney was controlled by a family of Quakers, whose religion warns against the 'deceitfulness of riches'. However, influenced by the speculative mania of the times, the directors offloaded their depositors' money into increasingly foolish and desperate ventures promising spectacular short-term profits that never materialised. When, inevitably, the house of cards came down, investors were outraged, fortunes were lost and the directors were put on trial. Business was suspended in financial centres across the world and the City of London would never be the same again.

In this entertaining and fast-moving account Geoffrey Elliott brilliantly evokes the City of London in the mid-Victorian period and populates it with a cast of true-life characters that could have come straight from the pages of 'Bleak House'.

'This entertaining account of the greatest upset of the Victorian City... is told with great pace and evident enjoyment by Geoffrey Elliot' Spectator

'Geoffrey Elliott, with refresing candour and witty asides, opens up mid-Victorian London and goes to the heart of the city's wheeler dealings, with Bills of Exchange, dodgy payouths and a gallery of brilliant characters' Islington Tribune

'This book has much to intrigue the reader and is written with style and vigour. The experience is not too far away from reading a Trollope novel with the added interest of the story being true.' Benefits & Compensation International