The Day They Hanged a Banker

A miscellany of tales of fraud from the 19th century onwards, which show that whatever we just lived through during the crisis of 2008, our forebears got shafted just the same. There have been Black Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays -- there isn't a day of the week that does not have a shadow over it, as greedy bankers, money magicians and downy-faced chancers seek to fleece investors. From the man that invented a country in Central America just so that he could lure pioneers to buy plots in a swamp, to the humble clerk -- by day -- who was a millionaire in the evenings and the weekends, to the man who was Ponzi before Ponzi. British crooks, American crooks, French crooks -- they're all here. Many of the stories are amusing, some are poignant. One at least is tragic, when a society banker caught robbing his clients had the dubious honour of being the last banker hanged in England.