Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/235

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
SWINDLING BANKS—PARK WALL.
219

the miscreant number, and to perform his part in the ruin and seduction of others, and to perpetuate a disreputable set, who piey upon the commercial distresses of the country, and take advantage of the ill-disguised necessity there is for the distressed manufacturers making sale of their goods to any bidders.

Some swindlers set up their banks in town and country, issuing their notes payable to bearer on demand and otherwise. One of them, very celebrated for advertising "money advanced on annuities," and for his debaucheries, kept a —— bank (so written over his door) for twenty years at Hyde Park wall, at the sight of which any reasonable persons might burst their sides with laughter; but within the low walls whereof, many unthinking persons have been duped of their property. But that bank, without capital, which promised fairest in modern times, was that of Hartsinck, and Co., the corner of Birchin Lane, Cornhill, called the "security bank." Next in high sounding firm was the Piccadilly bank, Sir John William Thomas Lathrop Murray, Bart, and Co. who is now on his journey across "the herring pond" for no good. If that be not enough for the reader, let him be told that Jew King was concerned in the transaction.