74 Facts About Horatio Bottomley

Horatio William Bottomley was an English financier, journalist, editor, newspaper proprietor, swindler, and Member of Parliament.

Horatio Bottomley is best known for his editorship of the popular magazine John Bull, and for his nationalistic oratory during the First World War.

Horatio Bottomley's career came to a sudden end when, in 1922, he was convicted of fraud and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment.

Horatio Bottomley overreached with an ambitious public flotation of his company, which led to his first arraignment on fraud charges in 1893.

Horatio Bottomley subsequently amassed a fortune as a promoter of shares in gold-mining companies.

In 1906 Horatio Bottomley entered parliament as the Liberal Party member for Hackney South.

The outbreak of war in 1914 revived his fortunes; as a journalist and orator, Horatio Bottomley became a leading propagandist for the war effort, addressing well over 300 public meetings.

Horatio Bottomley's influence was such that it was widely expected that he would enter the War Cabinet, although he received no such offer.

In 1918, having been discharged from bankruptcy, Horatio Bottomley re-entered parliament as an Independent member.

Horatio Bottomley was born on 23 March 1860, at 16 Saint Peter's Street, Bethnal Green in London, the second child and only son of William King Horatio Bottomley, a tailor's cutter, and Elizabeth, nee Holyoake.

William Horatio Bottomley died in 1864 and Elizabeth a year later.

Some biographers have emphasised the cruelty and humiliation of his time there; while discipline was certainly harsh, Horatio Bottomley received a useful basic education, and won prizes for sporting activities.

In 1874, when Horatio Bottomley was 14 and due to leave the orphanage, he ran away without waiting for the formalities.

Horatio Bottomley soon gave up his apprenticeship, and after a series of humdrum jobs found work in the offices of a City firm of solicitors.

Horatio Bottomley came into closer contact with the Holyoake circle, where he acted as an unpaid assistant in the group's publishing activities.

Horatio Bottomley met Bradlaugh, who encouraged the young man to read more widely and introduced him to the ideas of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley and John Stuart Mill.

Horatio Bottomley was strongly influenced by Bradlaugh, whom he considered his political and spiritual mentor.

In 1880 Horatio Bottomley married Eliza Norton, the daughter of a debt collector.

Horatio Bottomley's biographers have tended to regard this early, unambitious marriage as a mistake on his part; she was not equipped, intellectually or socially, to help him advance in the world.

Horatio Bottomley's competence impressed his employers sufficiently for them, in 1883, to offer him a partnership, and the firm became Walpole and Bottomley.

Horatio Bottomley produced a sister-paper, the Battersea Hansard, covering that borough's local parliament, before merging the two into The Debater.

In 1886 Horatio Bottomley's company acquired its own printing works through a merger with the printing firm of MacRae and Co.

At the age of 26, Horatio Bottomley became the company's chairman.

Horatio Bottomley accepted, and although defeated by Henry Stephens, the ink magnate, fought a strong campaign which won him a congratulatory letter from William Gladstone.

Horatio Bottomley boosted the company's credentials by persuading several notable City figures to join the company's board of directors.

The trial began in the High Court of Justice on 30 January 1893, before Sir Henry Hawkins; Horatio Bottomley conducted his own defence.

Horatio Bottomley did not deny this, insisting that use of nominees was an accepted commercial practice and that his actual profits had been much smaller than reported; his expenses, he said, had been enormous.

Horatio Bottomley was helped in his case by the slackness with which the prosecution presented its evidence, and their failure to call key witnesses.

Horatio Bottomley was further helped by the indulgence which Hawkins showed him, and by his own convincing oratory.

The Hansard Union case, far from damaging Horatio Bottomley's reputation, had left a general impression that he was a financial genius.

Horatio Bottomley avoided the stigma of bankruptcy by arranging a scheme of repayment with his creditors, and swiftly embarked on a new career promoting Western Australian gold mining shares.

Horatio Bottomley took numerous mistresses, whom he visited in several discreet flats in different districts of London.

Horatio Bottomley called it "The Dicker", and over the years extended and developed it into a large country mansion, where he entertained extravagantly.

Horatio Bottomley had retained his parliamentary ambitions and in 1890, before the Hansard Union crash, had been adopted as the Liberal candidate for North Islington.

Horatio Bottomley ceased his operations, and resumed his earlier role of newspaper proprietor.

The paper was not a financial success, and Horatio Bottomley sold it in 1904.

Horatio Bottomley had not given up altogether on speculative money-making schemes, and in 1905 began an association with the financier Ernest Hooley.

Horatio Bottomley later made a substantial out-of-court settlement of an action brought by investors who had bought worthless shares in the canal.

Horatio Bottomley proposed rational reforms of the betting industry and of licensing hours and the introduction of state Old Age Pensions.

Horatio Bottomley drew the government's attention to the long hours worked by domestic servants, and introduced a private bill limiting the working day to eight hours.

Horatio Bottomley privately confided to the journalist Frank Harris that his ambition was to become Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Alongside his parliamentary duties, Horatio Bottomley was engaged in launching his biggest and boldest publishing venture, the weekly news magazine John Bull, half of the initial capital for which was provided by Hooley.

Horatio Bottomley persuaded Julius Elias, managing director of Odhams Limited, to handle the printing, but chaotic financial management meant that Odhams were rarely paid.

Once again Horatio Bottomley succeeded in obscuring the details and, by the power of his courtroom oratory, persuaded the court that the summons should be dismissed.

Horatio Bottomley successfully sued the secretary of the Anti-Gambling League for suggesting that many of the prizewinners were John Bull nominees or employees, but received only a farthing in damages.

In 1913 Horatio Bottomley met a Birmingham businessman, Reuben Bigland, and together they began running large-scale sweepstakes and lotteries, operated from Switzerland to circumvent English law.

Horatio Bottomley initially misread the international crisis that developed during the summer of 1914.

At the "Great War Rally" at the Royal Albert Hall on 14 January 1915, Horatio Bottomley was fully in tune with the national temper when he proclaimed: "We are fighting all that is worst in the world, the product of a debased civilisation".

Lawrence, who detested Horatio Bottomley, thought that he represented the national spirit and that he might become prime minister.

In March 1915 Horatio Bottomley began a regular weekly column for the Sunday Pictorial.

Horatio Bottomley criticized the neutrality policy of the United States, arguing the USA was using the war to increase its economic power at the expense of the European powers.

Horatio Bottomley launched a series of attacks on President Woodrow Wilson that lasted until the US entered the war in 1917.

Horatio Bottomley hoped that these morale-boosting activities would lead to a formal government position, but although from time to time there were rumours of a Cabinet post, no appointment was announced.

Horatio Bottomley suggested that the war would guarantee that "things will never be the same again" and the status of women be profoundly changed.

In May 1919 Horatio Bottomley announced the formation of his "People's League", which he hoped would develop into a fully fledged political party with a programme opposing both organised labour and organised capital.

Horatio Bottomley was, at least for a year or so, a diligent parliamentarian who spoke on a range of issues, and from time to time teased the government as when, during the Irish Troubles, he asked whether, "in view of the breakdown of British rule in Ireland, the government will approach America with a view to her accepting the mandate for the government of that country".

In July 1919 Horatio Bottomley announced his "Victory Bonds Club", based on the government's latest issue of Victory Bonds.

Horatio Bottomley had ambitions to become a press baron, to rival such as the Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook.

The papers were not financially successful, and in 1921 Horatio Bottomley closed the Telegram and changed the name of the National News to Sunday Illustrated.

The paper languished, while Horatio Bottomley lost the large income and readership that went with the Pictorial.

Horatio Bottomley's fortunes declined further when, in 1920, Odhams revoked the pre-war partnership agreement and took full control of John Bull.

Horatio Bottomley's position worsened when he fell out with Bigland, after refusing to finance his former associate's scheme for turning water into petrol.

The preliminary hearing, at Bow Street Magistrates' Court in October 1921, at which Horatio Bottomley's methods were revealed, proved disastrous to his credibility.

The libel trial began on 23 January 1922; to prevent further damaging disclosures in court, Horatio Bottomley's lawyers offered no evidence, and Bigland was discharged.

Horatio Bottomley's trial began on 19 May 1922, before Mr Justice Salter.

The Leader of the House, Sir Austen Chamberlain, read out a letter in which Horatio Bottomley insisted that, however unorthodox his methods, he had not been guilty of conscious fraud; he accepted that his predicament was entirely his own fault.

Horatio Bottomley spent the first year of his sentence in Wormwood Scrubs where he sewed mailbags, and the remainder in Maidstone Prison where, although conditions were squalid, he was given lighter work.

Horatio Bottomley was released on 29 July 1927, after serving just over five years, and returned to The Dicker, still his family home, owned at the time of his bankruptcy by his son-in-law, Jefferson Cohn.

Horatio Bottomley raised sufficient capital to start a new magazine, John Blunt, as a rival to John Bull, but the new venture lasted little more than a year before closing, having lost money from the start.

Horatio Bottomley's last public venture was an engagement at the Windmill Theatre in September 1932, where he performed a monologue of reminiscences that, according to Symons, puzzled rather than amused his audience.

Horatio Bottomley died at the Middlesex Hospital on 26 May 1933 at the age of 73, and his body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium a few days later.

Horatio Bottomley's obituaries dwelt on the common theme of wasted talent: a man of brilliant natural abilities, destroyed by greed and vanity.

The Straits Times of Singapore thought that Horatio Bottomley could have rivalled Lloyd George as a national leader: "Though he deserved his fate, the news of his passing will awaken the many regrets for the good which he did when he was Horatio Bottomley the reformer and crusader and the champion of the bottom dog".

Searle speculates that Horatio Bottomley was protected from prosecution because of his knowledge of wider scandals in the government, particularly after Lloyd George's coalition assumed power in 1916.