A Most Deliberate Swindle

How Edwardian Fraudsters Pulled the Plug on the Electric Bus and Left Our Cities Gasping for Breath

by Mick Hamer

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Pub Date Oct 01 2018 | Archive Date Feb 27 2018

RedDoor Publishing | RedDoor Press

History

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Description

On a warm April morning in 1906 a crowd of expectant correspondents from London's leading newspapers gathered at the Hotel Cecil in the Strand to view the new wonder of the age—the electrobus. This clean, green machine was gearing up to take on the noisy, polluting petrol vehicle, which was just starting to replace the horse-drawn omnibus and surely had the potential to be a game changer in terms of what it would mean to Londoners and other city-dwellers who were already choking on petrol fumes. Disastrously though, the London Electrobus Company was in the grip of a gang of greedy and fraudulent financiers, who systematically conned shareholders, looted the company's coffers and drove the promise of the electrobus into the ground. Rammed with fascinating characters and vividly capturing the Edwardian era, A Most Deliberate Swindle uncovers one of the biggest frauds in history and reveals why a century later this historic scam has left us all gasping for breath.

On a warm April morning in 1906 a crowd of expectant correspondents from London's leading newspapers gathered at the Hotel Cecil in the Strand to view the new wonder of the age—the electrobus...

Advance Praise

'That London could have had electric buses a hundred years ago is extraordinary enough, but as Mick Hamer recounts with great panache, the reason it didn't is even more extraordinary. This is a great tale, expertly told' – Michael Palin

Available Editions

EDITION	Other Format
ISBN	9781910453421
PRICE	$16.95 (USD)

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Featured Reviews

Deborah W, Reviewer

"A Most Deliberate Swindle" is a well-researched historical true crime story. This interesting tale started in April 1906 with a company promising to run battery-powered buses in London. This was at a time when the new petrol-powered buses were not popular due to the smell and noise. There were also steam-powdered buses vying to be the technology to replace horse-drawn vehicles. Though the battery-powered buses were very popular, they were also more expensive to build. However, they may have become the norm if the company first promoting the buses hadn't been a fraud.

This is the story of the technology, the fraud going on at that time, and the main players who carried off this is astounding fraud. They managed to keep people interested and sending them money even after the company was exposed as a fraud. The company didn't shut down its buses until the early 1910s when new technologies offered better cons. Overall, I'd highly recommend this interesting and cautionary tale to those interested in stocks and new technologies.