I assumed - not without Schadenfreude - that their in-house catnappers were busy avoiding larger, more dangerous animals.
Evidently, the bank no longer had the wherewithal to put pressure on journalists and historians. When Box Brothers fell, several hastily researched articles about the bank’s history appeared in the papers. The offending reference consisted of a footnote in a chapter about nineteenth-century brothelkeepers. When I got home, Crippen was back, with a triangle snipped out of her ear. Then I saw ‘no further legal action’ did not mean ‘no further action’. I first read ‘if the offending material is not removed, no further legal action will be taken’ as a mistyping.
GLIMS ON THE STUFF MAFIA SAYING SERIAL
The next day, my Female Serial Killers seminar was interrupted by a special messenger making a recorded delivery of a lawyers’ letter which suggested I delete any mention of Box Brothers from my forthcoming book. When I came home, the flat was still locked but Crippen was gone. When I left for work, Crippen was locked in the flat. While my A History of Silence: Victorian Crimes Against and By Women was in proof, my cat went missing. Clients were expected to set aside their habitual larceny in dealing with the bank, just as the brothers made no moral judgement about business brought to them.īefore the crash, my dealings with Box Brothers were limited. Their simple philosophy was scrupulous honesty. Lawrence and Harrington Box, the founders, would have been aghast at the decline from the standards set in their day. Or not… since it seems the management were not above dipping into the till to pay for Dame Philomela’s passion for airships or Colin’s white rap label. The house’s oldest service was the most confidential and secure storage facility in the City of London - which is to say, a box to keep the jewels or paintings (or, in several cases, people) out of sight until the heat died down.Īt the time of writing, the Moorgate premises remain under twenty-four-hour armed guard as suits and countersuits regarding access to the safety deposit vault (where it is rumoured the trophies of several famous, unsolved thefts are to be found) are argued. As their still-live website euphemistically has it, Box Brothers’ twenty-first-century speciality was ‘offshore wealth management’ - which is to say, getting the loot out of the country. Their client list ranged from underworld gangs (and, from the 1960s on, terrorist cells) with enormous turnovers to conceal to lowly smash-and-grab merchants with bloodied cash deposits to make. For nearly a century and a half, Box Brothers provided financial services (no questions asked) to law-breakers great and small. Founded in 1869, the family-owned business maintained premises in Moorgate, Gibraltar and Bermuda. Only after the CEO’s indictment could Box Brothers be called in print what it was, and always had been: the criminals’ bank. No one has ever been charged with his murder, or those of two other bank officers found dead in the next six weeks. Autopsy determined that Colin’s head had been sawn off and used as a football. Press speculation that he had done a runner ended when his body was discovered in the boot of a burned-out Volvo on Havengore Island, Essex. A warrant was also issued for her nephew, Colin Box. The private bank collapsed shortly after the arrest of Dame Philomela Box, Chief Executive Officer, on charges of fraudulent dealing. Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’UrbervillesĮven during the global crisis which broke more famous financial institutions, the failure of Box Brothers was noisy. But now Kim Newman sheds light on the secret history of "Basher" Moran and the "Napoleon of Crime" and how they came together to solve the unsolvable and even change the course of history itself…all in the name of profit and, sometimes, occasional sheer bloody-mindedness. Genre: det_history Professor Moriarty The Hound of the D'Urbervilles Kim NewmanĪnyone who has ever read a story about the legendary Holmes and Watson has heard of Professor Moriarty and Sebastian Moran.
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