Whitaker Wright
| James Whitaker Wright | |
|---|---|
Drawing of Whitaker Wright, 1904
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| Born |
9 February 1846 Stafford, England |
| Died | 26 January 1904 (aged 57) London |
| Cause of death | Suicide |
| Criminal charge | Fraud |
| Criminal penalty | seven years imprisonment |
| Criminal status | convicted |
| Spouse(s) | Anna Edith Weightman |
| Parent(s) | James Wright, Matilda Whitaker |
| Conviction(s) | 26 January 1904 |
James Whitaker Wright (9 February 1846 – 26 January 1904) was a company promoter and swindler, who committed suicide at the Royal Courts of Justice in London immediately following his conviction for fraud.
The eldest of five children, he was the son of James Wright, a Methodist Minister, and Matilda Whitaker, a tailor's daughter. He was born in Stafford, and spent his early years in various parts of England with his father. In 1861, according to the census of that year, he was a printer in Ripon. Between 1866 and 1868, he was a Methodist preacher himself, but retired due to ill health. He was also the elder brother of John Joseph Wright, who invented the reversible trolley pole, transmitting electricity from an overhead wire to the motors of a tram or trolleybus.
On the death of his father in 1870, the family emigrated to Toronto, Canada. Wright then travelled to Philadelphia, US where he met and married Anna Edith Weightman in 1878. Wright made a fortune by promoting silver-mining companies in Leadville, Colorado, and Lake Valley, New Mexico, although none of the companies made money for the shareholders.
Wright returned to England, and promoted a multitude of Australian and Canadian mining companies on the London market.
Wright's career as a swindler peaked in the 1890s, when he formed the London and Globe Company which floated a variety of stock and bond issues dealing with mining. Wright called some of these stocks "consols", the term used by the British government for state bond issues that were solid and reliable. He loaded the directorships of his companies with Peers of the Realm; for instance, the Chairman of the London and Globe Company was the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, a former Viceroy of India. This served the purpose both of impressing the public and attracting wealthy investors. Wright also sought to make a place for himself in late Victorian English Society. Besides a mansion at Lea Park, Surrey, where he had a smoking room built beneath a roof aquarium, Wright also owned the yacht Sybarita which beat the yacht Meteor (which belonged to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany) before the Royal Yacht Squadron.
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