Share Trading, Fraud and the Crash of 1929

2    Clarence finds his feet

In 1910, Hatry’s financial position was desperate, but he had identified a way out: the London Stock Exchange.

Before the 1914–1918 war, the stock exchange was not the gentlemanly club that some imagine: it more resembled the Wild West.¹ Periodically it was consumed by passionate trading in which fortunes could be made or lost as investors became desperate either not to miss out on a ‘good thing’ or to avoid being left holding a stock that had begun to look like a turkey. Trading on the exchange’s floor was the preserve of its members, but they were surrounded by a community of people who could not trade on the exchange’s floor but hoped to profit in some way from its trading. None became more notorious than the ...