The Nitrate King: A Biography of ''Colonel'' John Thomas North (Studies of the Americas)

THE NITRATE KING

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PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS A History of the British Presence in Chile: From Bloody Mary to Charles Darwin and the Decline of British Influence. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

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STUDIES OF THE A MERICAS edited by

Maxine Molyneux Institute for the Study of the Americas University of London School of Advanced Study Titles in this series are multidisciplinary studies of aspects of the societies of the hemisphere, particularly in the areas of politics, economics, history, anthropology, sociology, and the environment. The series covers a comparative perspective across the Americas, including Canada and the Caribbean as well as the United States and Latin America. Titles in this series published by Palgrave Macmillan: Cuba’s Military 1990–2005: Revolutionary Soldiers during Counter-Revolutionary Times By Hal Klepak The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America Edited by Rachel Sieder, Line Schjolden, and Alan Angell Latin America: A New Interpretation By Laurence Whitehead Appropriation as Practice: Art and Identity in Argentina By Arnd Schneider America and Enlightenment Constitutionalism Edited by Gary L. McDowell and Johnathan O’Neill Vargas and Brazil: New Perspectives Edited by Jens R. Hentschke When Was Latin America Modern? Edited by Nicola Miller and Stephen Hart Debating Cuban Exceptionalism Edited by Bert Hoffman and Laurence Whitehead Caribbean Land and Development Revisited Edited by Jean Besson and Janet Momsen Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic Edited by Nancy Priscilla Naro, Roger Sansi-Roca, and David H. Treece Democratization, Development, and Legality: Chile, 1831–1973 By Julio Faundez The Hispanic World and American Intellectual Life, 1820–1880 By Iván Jaksic´ The Role of Mexico’s Plural in Latin American Literary and Political Culture: From Tlatelolco to the “Philanthropic Ogre” By John King Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico Edited by Matthew Butler Reinventing Modernity in Latin America: Intellectuals Imagine the Future, 1900–1930 By Nicola Miller

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The Republican Party and Immigration Politics: From Proposition 187 to George W. Bush By Andrew Wroe The Political Economy of Hemispheric Integration: Responding to Globalization in the Americas Edited by Diego Sánchez-Ancochea and Kenneth C. Shadlen Ronald Reagan and the 1980s: Perceptions, Policies, Legacies Edited by Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies Wellbeing and Development in Peru: Local and Universal Views Confronted Edited by James Copestake The Federal Nation: Perspectives on American Federalism Edited by Iwan W. Morgan and Philip J. Davies Base Colonies in the Western Hemisphere, 1940–1967 By Steven High Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin America? Societies and Politics at the Crossroads Edited by John Burdick, Philip Oxhorn, and Kenneth M. Roberts Visual Synergies in Fiction and Documentary Film from Latin America Edited by Miriam Haddu and Joanna Page Cuban Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution, and Goals By John M. Kirk and H. Michael Erisman Governance after Neoliberalism in Latin America Edited by Jean Grugel and Pía Riggirozzi Modern Poetics and Hemispheric American Cultural Studies By Justin Read Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective Edited by Gareth A. Jones and Dennis Rodgers The Origins of Mercosur By Gian Luca Gardini Belize’s Independence & Decolonization in Latin America: Guatemala, Britain, and the UN By Assad Shoman Post-Colonial Trinidad: An Ethnographic Journal By Colin Clarke and Gillian Clarke The Nitrate King: A Biography of “Colonel” John Thomas North By William Edmundson

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The Nitrate King A Biography of “Colonel” John Thomas North

William Edmundson

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THE NITRATE KING

Copyright © William Edmundson, 2011. All rights reserved. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–11280–3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Edmundson, William (Eddie) The nitrate king : a biography of “Colonel” John Thomas North / by William Edmundson. p. cm.— (Studies of the Americas) ISBN 978–0–230–11280–3 1. North, John Thomas, 1842–1896. 2. Businessmen—Great Britain— Biography. 3. Businessmen—Chile—Biography. 4. Businessmen—Peru— Biography. 5. Chile saltpeter industry—Chile—History—19th century. 6. Chile saltpeter industry—Peru—History—19th century. 7. Chile— Economic conditions—19th century. 8. Peru—Economic conditions— 19th century. 9. War of the Pacific, 1879–1884. 10. Chile— History—Revolution, 1891. I. Title. HD9585.S142N674 2010 338.7⬘6155364—dc22 [B]

2010037864

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: April 2011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

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To my late father, Tom Edmundson, who was the first to show me by example the importance of carrying out historical research, and to Jim Grindle, my secondary school teacher of English who influenced my life in so many ways, and encouraged me in my writing.

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Cover art and Image 0.1 “The Nitrate King.” Cromolithograph from Vanity Fair, by “Spy” (Lesley Ward), November 2, 1889.

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Contents

List of Illustrations

xi

Preface: John Thomas North, a reappraisal Juan Ricardo Couyoumdjian

xiii

Acknowledgments

xix

Timeline

xxi

Map of Northern and Central Chile

xxix

Prologue: He Would Be Called Quiet

xxxi

Introduction The Crafty Colonel (Anecdote)

1 6

Chapter 1 We Had Adventures of All Sorts I Want To Hear the Man Swear (Anecdote)

7 13

Chapter 2 I Was Better Acquainted Than Any Other Foreigner Free-Handed Hospitality (Anecdote)

15 22

Chapter 3 Don Juan Tomás North Who’s Chairman of This Meeting? (Anecdote)

25 35

Chapter 4 The Nitrate King Music Hall Song (Anecdote)

37 55

Chapter 5 The Grand Promotion Army Wild Rumours (Anecdote)

59 73

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CONT ENT S

Chapter 6 Colonel North Myth Making (Anecdote)

75 95

Chapter 7 The Sensation of the Hour A Little Nonsense (Anecdote)

97 104

Chapter 8 A Visit to the Nitrate Kingdom Millionaires at Play (Anecdote)

107 127

Chapter 9 A Millionaire Stripped Bare

129

Epilogue: I Have Enjoyed Myself Thoroughly

141

Appendix: Family tree of John Thomas North

143

Notes

149

Selected Bibliography

175

Index

183

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Illustrations

Map 0.1 Map of Northern and Central Chile

xxix

Images 0.1 I.1

3.1

4.1 4.2 6.1 6.2

8.1 8.2

“The Nitrate King.” Cromolithograph from Vanity Fair, by “Spy” (Lesley Ward), November 2, 1889. “Colonel John T. North, The Nitrate King.” Lithograph from Harper’s Weekly, February 6, 1892. Author not given Page from atlas: “Provincia de Tarapacá,” from Atlas de Chile, by Juan Türke. Ediciones Eduardo Cadot, Santiago, 1895 “Nitrate Works in Chile,” Melton Prior. The Illustrated London News, November 16, 1889, p. 623 “Fichas” (tokens) used in mining settlements in Chile (author’s collection) “Avery Hill, Eltham,” early twentieth-century postcard “Reopening of Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds: The Bishop of Ripon delivering the Address.” Holland Tringham, The Illustrated London News, September 21, 1895, p. 1 “Shipping nitrate at Pisagua, Chile,” Melton Prior. The Illustrated London News, January 24, 1891, p. 1 Hotel Métropole, London. Vintage Victorian print

viii

2

26 38 39 76

90 108 109

All illustrations are from the author’s personal collection. The map of northern and central Chile was prepared by the author and designed digitally by Daniel Edmundson.

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Preface John Thomas North, a reappraisal

In 1973, British prime minister Edward Heath denounced the activi-

ties of Roland “Tiny” Rowland, a mining entrepreneur, as the “unacceptable face of capitalism.” In not quite the same words, this rebuke has long been levied at John Thomas North, another mining entrepreneur, nitrate in his case, both by his contemporaries and by laterday historians. At the same time as Rowland was gathering public opprobrium in the United Kingdom, Dr. Harold Blakemore, whose classic work on President José Manuel Balmaceda of Chile and John Thomas North was published the following year,1 shed light on the career of the latter, and his involvement, or rather noninvolvement, in the Chilean Revolution of 1891, which led to the downfall and suicide of the former. Given the central thesis of his monograph, Dr. Blakemore was mainly interested in the Chilean dimension of North’s activities rather than in the man himself and his entrepreneurial endeavors elsewhere. It is here that William Edmundson makes his most significant contributions. There is new information on his early life and his activities on the West Coast prior to becoming “the nitrate king.” He reexamines the rationale behind the decision of the Chilean authorities to return the nitrate properties to the owners of the corresponding deeds issued by the Peruvian government, in lieu of payment for their expropriation, and to instead impose a heavy tax on exports. More importantly, he provides some insights into his relations with the firm of the brothers William and John Lockett, who were instrumental in launching the Liverpool Nitrate Company, the first of a series of similar enterprises. Edmundson also goes into some detail on North’s later ventures, including coal mines in Wales, rubber in Africa, gold mining in Australia, and others. Although the available data on these is in many cases sketchy, the penchant of North to get involved in litigation suggests that his business methods continued to generate controversy.

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P R E FA C E

As for the man himself, we get a fuller picture of his outgoing personality, and his outbursts of generosity that were probably genuine, but were consciously put to good use in self-promotion. There is also more than something of the Victorian nouveau riche in him, which grated with some of his contemporaries, while he cultivated the image of a “country boy made good” and was personally generous. Little wonder, then, that during his visit to Chile in 1889, he was beset by numerous petitions from the locals wherever he stayed. The author provides a good assessment of the way North made his fortune. His partnership with Robert Harvey, who was Inspector General of Nitrates first under the Peruvian and then the Chilean government, provided him with inside information on the merits and estimated worth of the different nitrate oficinas, the deeds of which were being sold at a heavy discount on the market at that time. It is also likely that Harvey was privy to information regarding the future policy of the Chilean government regarding the nitrate industry, although the partners would still have made a very good profit if the plans for expropriation had been carried through and the certificates repaid at face value. Not paying them when the government had the means to do so was not an option in those times. The purchases of the certificates were financed with loans provided by John Dawson, the Iquique manager of the Banco de Valparaíso, a Chilean concern with important local British shareholders. Many have felt that these funds could have been better employed making loans to Chilean entrepreneurs instead of being lent to foreign speculators, which added insult to injury, but banks, even today, are not moved by such sentimental considerations. Edmundson does not hint at any impropriety in these operations, but the reader wonders whether any collateral was given against these loans and what was the reaction of the Valparaíso board to these operations. In any case, it is worthwhile noting that Dawson ended up by working in North’s bank. In truth, this is only half, and the lesser half, of the story. North was not the only one who bought nitrate certificates as speculation. His real contribution to the growth and modernization of the Chilean nitrate industry was organizing nitrate companies in England, that bought the certificates from North and Harvey at inflated prices and then raised money to buy and install new machinery, and to obtain working capital by issuing bonds. These bonds and shares were sold to the public, providing the promoters with a very handsome profit. There were additional benefits for the promoters: seats on the board of directors, as well as commissions to be made by becoming local agents, (collecting fees for local purchases, from shipping,

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P R E FA C E

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and insurance), which were given to the firm of North & Jewell of Iquique. The need for new machinery is a key issue, because of the transformations in the technology for processing caliche or nitrate ore, brought about by the adaptation of the Shanks soda-making process to the nitrate industry introduced by James Humberstone shortly before the War of the Pacific. The use of modern machinery meant lower production costs and greater profit, which, in turn, made it possible for the new companies to pay good dividends. The promise of high yields was essential to attract prospective buyers for the shares, and the first of North’s nitrate companies—the Liverpool Nitrate Company—paid handsome dividends indeed, throughout its existence. Most other companies organized by North also provided a reasonable income to the shareholders, although the capital gains benefited mainly the original promoters. In the text accompanying the print of North published in Vanity Fair, “Jehu Junior” writes a brief biographical sketch of North, whose merit was having “invented nitrates.”2 The phrase could not be more apt. His real contribution to the development of the nitrate industry was financing its expansion with money collected from the British public. The path that he opened was followed by British merchant houses operating in nitrates, such as Antony Gibbs & Sons, which organized at least three companies, and by two German concerns, Gildemeister & Co and Weber & Co., who controlled the Rosario and Amelia Nitrate Companies, respectively. “Nitrates” became a category of Latin American shares on the London Stock Exchange, in the same vein as railways, banking, and shipping. However, by the second decade of the twentieth century, the incorporation of nitrate companies in the United Kingdom had ceased to be convenient for tax reasons. New concerns from then on were organized under Chilean law, even if local British capital was involved, while other companies originally based in London or Liverpool were taken over by Chileans, or foreigners residing in Chile, and their tax domicile transferred to Chile, where income tax was not levied until 1924. The dubious reputation of John Thomas North with the West Coast business community in his time, and among later-day historians, owes something to the fact that most of his Chilean companies seem to have required monopoly conditions to prosper. This may sound hard, but it should be borne in mind that the nitrate industry as a whole constituted a natural monopoly for Chile, which was later undermined by the competition from other nitrogen products. In Britain, North was accused of “talking up,” if not manipulating, the price of the shares

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P R E FA C E

of those companies which he had organized and in which he still had an interest, in order to sell his stock to the public at a good price—not easy in the case of companies with inflated capital. To maintain their profitability he organized the first ‘nitrate combination’ or cartel to restrict production and raise prices. Restricting production ran counter to the interests of the Chilean government, whose chief source of revenue was the tax on nitrate exports. Not surprisingly, Balmaceda blamed the British for this state of affairs and expressed his desire for greater Chilean participation in this sector of the economy. Marxist historians have argued that Balmaceda had wanted to nationalize the nitrate industry and was hindered from doing so by British capitalism, and by North in particular, who contributed to his defeat—an accusation that William Edmundson declares not proven. While the succeeding “nitrate combinations” organized to restrict production benefited all nitrate companies, they were usually shortlived, both because a new or existing low-cost producer would break ranks to gain market share, and because the government was in a position to sell unworked nitrate fields to newcomers attracted by the good market prices. The case was very different with two of the other companies held by North; the Nitrate Railways Company, which owned the line joining the nitrate oficinas of Tarapacá to the ports of Iquique and Pisagua, and the Tarapacá Waterworks Company, which supplied drinking water to the former town. The high and discriminatory tariffs charged by the railway created much hostility, both among the owners of the oficinas affected by the higher expense, and with the government. Although two producers, the Agua Santa and Junin companies, managed to obtain authorization to build their own line to the coast, and a couple of others made different transport arrangements to avoid using the Nitrate Railways, its monopoly—granted originally by the Peruvian government—was initially upheld in Chilean courts until the decision by the Council of State in September 1889 that the courts had no jurisdiction over the issue. However, the position of the railway company was not invulnerable because the new nitrate fields developed in the province of Antofagasta were outside its catchment area, and also because its rates had to allow its captive producers to make a profit, else they would close down and stop using the railway. The Waterworks Company, which had arranged to become the sole supplier to the town of Iquique, soon had a running feud with the municipality and the residents on account of its high rates and poor service. The result was that the company was reluctant to finance the expansion of its network, due to the uncertainty of its position, while the local authorities tried to

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P R E FA C E

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establish a parallel service, but for many years did not have the money to do so until the central government stepped in. The company was actually bought out in 1954, although by that time it had ceased to have much relevance, in the face of a competing service. It is clear from this book that North had already lost interest in the nitrate industry before his early death. It is also evident that North’s ability lay in discovering opportunities to make money. At heart, he was a financier, creating or buying companies, and selling them; more interested in capital gains than in the steady profit that comes from running a business from day to day. In this he was very different from the partners of the large British merchant houses established in Chile since before his time, who believed that their capital and endeavors should be employed in doing business, rather than entering in speculations, even if they were not averse to making a profit from these ventures. This also explains their criticism of the business methods of the nitrate king. Perhaps because he was a financial innovator rather than an entrepreneur, North did not leave an heir to run his companies. The nearest to one is George Alexander Lockett, who married his daughter and whose family bought out the business of North & Jewell in Tarapacá. North’s “nitrate kingdom” stagnated and eventually disappeared. By the 1920s, his nitrate companies had lost their former importance, and we have already mentioned the fate of the Nitrate Railways and the Tarapacá Waterworks. As to his bank, which later became the Anglo South American Bank, it passed to other hands after successive mergers. It collapsed in the early 1930s as a result of the nitrate crisis and was absorbed by the Bank of London and South America. The time has come to reassess North’s legacy, balancing the longstanding criticism of his methods of operation—“the unacceptable face of capitalism”—against his contribution to the development of Tarapacá. Dr. Pedro Bravo-Elizondo, who is working on a similar project on the life of John Thomas North, states that “como Iquiqueño, reconozco sus méritos por lo que significó para la provincia de Tarapacá”3 (As a citizen of Iquique, I recognize his merits for what he meant for the province of Tarapacá). This is a welcome change of attitude on the part of historians, given the role that private enterprise is expected to play in the economic growth of developing countries, and the regulations they face to ensure the free working of the markets. William Edmundson has provided a balanced view of John Thomas North and his activities so that the reader will be able to form his or her own opinion on the man and his times. JUAN R ICARDO COUYOUMDJIAN Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

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Acknowledgments

I

am very grateful to several archivists in the United Kingdom who helped me greatly while carrying out my research. Gwendoline Seabrook Smith, the then Bibliographic Database librarian at the University of Greenwich, generously guided me through the many documents in the excellent Avery Hill archive. Oliver Wooller, community archivist at the Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre of the Bexley Council in London, engaged with me in valuable correspondence and kindly sent me a copy of his paper The Consul and the Colonel (unpublished) and important documents from the Maurice Jewell Collection. Helen Skilbeck, information librarian at the Local and Family History Library and Information Services of Leeds City Council, made available to me key documents and newspaper clippings related to John Thomas North. Christopher Lloyd of the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives helped me understand “Colonel North” better through correspondence and by sending me relevant newspaper clippings. I am grateful too to Simon Finch and Arthur Holden of the Local Studies Library, London Borough of Bromley, for providing me with a copy of The Life and Career of Col. North: From Apprentice Boy to Millionaire. Laura Gardner, archivist at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, kindly sent me a copy of North’s membership proposal form for this institution (reference MPF 6/3/121), and the obituary printed in the Institution’s Proceedings of 1896 (Volume 50). Many others have helped me understand better key elements of John Thomas North’s life. Andrew Dix, secretary of the Tasmanian Transport Museum Society, and Barry S. Blumstein of Tasmania, gave me important information on the Colonel North Mining & Railway Company and the Colonel North tram. Dr. Philip W. Errington, deputy director of the Department of Printed Books and Manuscripts at Sotheby’s helped me locate the reference to the ship J. T. North in the poetry of John Masefield. Laurie Baker, secretary of The Eltham

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ACK NOW LEDGMENT S

Society, provided me with the text of the inscriptions on the North tomb in Eltham, as well as photos that included the two busts of John Thomas North and Jane North at Avery Hill. Richard Williams of the Royal Blackheath Golf Club sent me information on the North Scratch Medal. Michael and Eveleigh Bradford very generously shared with me their research into the history of Kirkstall Abbey, especially John Thomas North’s involvement in the purchase and his gift of the abbey to the borough of Leeds. Karen Lawrence was very helpful in providing valuable insider information on the North family tree. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity. My son Daniel of the design firm www.mooz.com.br/ helped me with the map of northern and central Chile, and by preparing the illustrations for the book. Once again, I am grateful to my wife Verônica for her encouragement, her insightful comments on an early draft of the opening chapters, and for understanding that “coffee time” is “thinking time.” I am especially grateful to historians who are acknowledged experts on key aspects of this story, and who generously read through and commented on early drafts of the manuscript: in particular, Professor Brian Loveman (San Diego State University), Professor Juan Ricardo Couyoumdjian (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago), and Professor Thomas F. O’Brien (University of Houston). Any errors in this biography are of course my entire responsibility.

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Timeline

1842 January 30: John Thomas North was born in Holbeck, near Leeds. 1847 October: Robert Harvey was born in Truro, Cornwall. Maurice Jewell was born in Jersey (around 1847). 1857 North was apprenticed to the firm of Shaw, North, and Watson of Hunslet, millwrights and shipwrights. 1865 North joined the firm of Messrs. Fowler and Company at their Steam Plough Works in Hunslet, Leeds. North married Jane Woodhead. 1866 North’s son Harry North was born. 1867 North’s father James North died. (He may have died in 1861, according to some sources.) 1868 North’s daughter Emma North was born. 1869 North went to Chile/Peru as a mechanic working for Fowler’s (Some sources give 1866 or 1867 as the year of his departure). 1871 North moved to Iquique and was employed in the Santa Rita nitrate oficina (nitrate processing plant) of Peruvian González Vélez.

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1873 The Peruvian government (on the verge of bankruptcy) raised the export duty on nitrate. 1875 The Peruvian government was authorized to raise a loan of £7,000,000, of which £4,000,000 was to be used to buy out owners of oficinas in Tarapacá. North bought the Marañon, a water-tanker at the port of Huanillos. Robert Harvey moved to Iquique in Tarapacá, and found work at an oficina owned by Peruvian León Castro. 1876 Robert Harvey was appointed as engineer-in-chief and Inspector General of Nitrates in the Peruvian province of Tarapacá, working within the Inspección de Salitreras de Tarapacá. 1878 The Compañia de Aguas de Tarapacá was founded in Iquique. North took out a lease for two years. North acquired from Guillermo Speedie the contract to exploit the Porvenir oficina. 1879 April 5: Chile declared war on Bolivia and Peru, and the War of the Pacific started. John Dawson arrived in Iquique as manager of the Banco de Valparaíso. 1880 North and Robert Harvey joined together to exploit the Peruana salitrera (nitrate field). February: Robert Harvey was appointed Inspector General of Nitrates by the Chilean government. August: North was recognized by Chile as the sole owner of the Compañia de Aguas de Tarapacá. 1881 January: Chilean soldiers entered Lima. Patricio Lynch sold 40,000 tons of guano to North and H. B. Jameson. April 6: The firm of “North & Jewell” was constituted in Iquique by a formal partnership agreement.

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T IMELINE

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North and Robert Harvey went to Lima to purchase nitrate certificates. June 11: The Chilean government decreed it would provisionally recognize the Peruvian nitrate certificates. North and Robert Harvey acquired the title-deeds to oficinas/salitreras, including the Primitiva, Peruana, Ramírez, Buen Retiro, Jazpampa, and Virginia (actual dates of purchases are unknown). 1882 March: The Chilean government reinforced the 1881 decree and granted certificate holders definitive titles to their oficinas. North returned to England. North met with John Waite, a partner in the Liverpool merchant house of William & John Lockett. Robert Harvey returned to England, and was given responsibility for the technical operations of the Liverpool Nitrate Company. August 22: North applied to join the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. August 24: The Nitrate Railways Company Ltd. was incorporated in London by the Montero brothers. 1883 February 3: The Liverpool Nitrate Company Ltd. was registered at Somerset House, based on the Pampa Ramírez oficina, with North as chairman. May 15: Robert Harvey returned to Iquique with English workmen to begin installation of machinery for the Liverpool Nitrate Company. June: North took out a ten year lease on Avery Hill House in Eltham. September 30: North’s son Arthur Jewell North was born. October 20: the Treaty of Ancón was signed with Peru, effectively ending the War of the Pacific. 1884 April: Chile and Bolivia signed the Treaty of Valparaíso by which Bolivia ceded control of Antofagasta to Chile. June: The first “combination” was established which fixed production quotas for each oficina. This collapsed in December 1886. 1885 The Colorado Nitrate Company Ltd. was founded, to work the Buen Retiro, Nueva Carolina, Pozo Almonte, and Peruana oficinas, with North as chairman.

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March 25: North was appointed Honorary Colonel of the 2nd. Tower Hamlets (East London) Engineer Volunteer Corps. The Arauco Company Ltd. was founded in London. Robert Harvey returned from Chile to England. 1886 The Primitiva Nitrate Company Ltd. was founded to work the Primitiva and Abra de Quiroga oficinas, with North as chairman. North and Robert Harvey acquired the Paccha oficina from the Chilean government. North acquired the concession for the Arauco Coal and Railway Company. April 21: North and Maurice Jewell renewed their partnership. July 25: Robert Cecil, 3rd. Marquess of Salisbury, formed his second ministry (to August 11, 1892). August: The 2nd Tower Hamlets Engineers were under canvas at Avery Hill for three days. September 18: José Manuel Balmaceda Fernández began his term as President of Chile. 1887 January 21: North celebrated Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee year with a ball in the Marlborough Rooms. April: North purchased 7,000 shares in the Nitrate Railways Company from the Montero brothers. September: North purchased the Lagunas salitrera. December 30: Harry North’s coming of age was celebrated at the Whitehall Rooms, the Hotel Métropole, London. 1888 North became a company director of the Nitrate Railways Company. North bought Avery Hill House from Anna-Maria Boyd. North was chairman of the Local Reception Committee for the Italian exhibition in London. North and Robert Harvey founded the San Pablo Nitrate Company. June: North acquired the Llynfi and Tondu Company (coal mines and iron works north of Bridgend) through a syndicate. September: The Tarapacá Waterworks Company Ltd. was registered in London, with Robert Harvey as chairman of the board, and North as one of the directors. December: North bought Kirkstall Abbey and adjacent grounds, and presented them to the borough of Leeds in January 1889, in a transaction formalized in December 1890.

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December: The Bank of Tarapacá and London Ltd. was founded. December: North was introduced to the Prince of Wales by Lord Randolph Churchill. 1889 January 4: North’s fancy dress ball was held at the Hotel Métropole in Whitehall Place, London. January 19: Assets in the Llynfi and Tondu Company were sold to North’s Navigation Collieries Company. January 25: The ceremony was held to confer on North the title of Honorary Freeman of the borough of Leeds. January: The Nitrate and General Investment Trust Company was registered in London. North commissioned architect T.W. Cutler to make alterations to Avery Hill House (before leaving for Chile). February 6: North left Liverpool for Chile on board S.S. Galicia. March 4: President Balmaceda left Valparaíso for Iquique on the Chilean warship Amazonas. March 16: The S.S. Galicia arrived at Coronel in Chile with North and his entourage on board. March 25: First meeting between North and President Balmaceda, in Viña del Mar. March 29: Second meeting between North and President Balmaceda, in Santiago. April 20: Third meeting between North and President Balmaceda, in Santiago. April 30: The Chilean government recognized the legal existence of the Bank of Tarapacá and London by accepting John Dawson as the bank’s agent in Chile. May 1: North departed on his visit to northern Chile, arriving in Iquique on May 7. June 1: Maurice Jewell was appointed British consul in Iquique by letters patent of Queen Victoria. June 7: North left Chile for Lima, Panama, and New York, where he arrived on July 2. June 30: The Bank of Tarapacá and London commenced business. North dismissed architect T. W. Cutler, who was replaced by his assistant J. O. Cooke (on North’s return from Chile). September 30: Campbell, Outram & Company applied to the Chilean government for a concession to build a railway from the oficina of Agua Santa to the port of Caleta Buena. November: The second “combination” to limit nitrate output was discussed by London nitrate companies meeting at North’s offices. (Operational from March 1891.)

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North’s greyhounds Fullerton and Troughend tied for first place in the Waterloo Cup coursing competition. North became chairman of the Board of the Nitrate Railways Company. North floated the Nitrate Provisions Supply Company on the London Stock Exchange, with Robert Harvey as chairman. The Lagunas Syndicate Ltd. was incorporated to acquire the Lagunas oficina. The Paccha and Jazpampa Nitrate Company Ltd. was founded. The Permanent Nitrate Committee was established in London. 1890 January 18: President Balmaceda closed the Extraordinary Session of Congress. (Congress reopened on June 1.) February: Official inauguration of the railway bridge over the River Bío-Bío. July: Strike by nitrate workers in the province of Tarapacá. Renovation work on Avery Hill House was completed (in late 1890). 1891 January 7: The start of the Chilean Civil War, when most of the Chilean fleet left Valparaíso. Mid-January: British and Chilean nitrates companies signed the agreement for the second ‘combination,’ which came into operation in March 1891, and broke down in early 1894. February: Revolutionary forces seized the nitrate province of Tarapacá. August: President Balmaceda’s army was routed at the battles of Concón and Placilla. September 19: President Balmaceda committed suicide, ushering in a parliamentary system that lasted until 1924. December 26: Jorge Montt became president of Chile (to September 18, 1896). 1892 August 6: The Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company (ABIR) was established at Antwerp. August 15: William Ewart Gladstone formed the fourth Liberal Gladstone Ministry (to March 2, 1894). August 26: An explosion at Park Slip colliery (North’s Navigation Collieries Company) killed 112 miners. November 3: Emma North married George Alexander Lockett.

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T IMELINE

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The Nitrate Producers’ Steamship Company Ltd. was organized by North and John Latta. Maurice Jewell resigned his post as consul at Iquique. 1894 March 5: Archibald Primrose, 5th. Earl of Rosebery, formed the Liberal Rosebury Ministry (to June 22, 1895). April: The second nitrates “combination” broke down. June 15: The Lagunas Nitrate Company Ltd. was registered. October: The ‘Wealth of Nations’ gold mine in Australia was sold to North. November: The Londonderry Gold Mine was launched. The Colonel North Silver Mining Company was formed in Tasmania. The Khedive of Egypt conferred on North the title of “Commander of the Imperial Order of Osmanisch.” 1895 January 24: The Colonel J. T. North steamship was launched by Short Brothers in Sunderland. March 4: The Nitrate Producers’ Steamship Company Ltd. was incorporated. North campaigned against Herbert Gladstone for the Conservatives in a by-election at West Leeds. June 25: Robert Cecil, 3rd. Marquess of Salisbury formed the Conservative Salisbury Government (to July 11, 1902). September 14: Kirkstall Abbey was reopened to the public after renovation. The City of London Exploration Syndicate of Western Australia Ltd. was founded. King Leopold II leased land to North to create a luxury hotel complex for tourists in Ostend. 1896 The third nitrate “combination” was established, and lasted until 1897. May 5: Colonel North died of a heart attack at his City office in Gracechurch Street, London. July 27: The Avery Hill estate was put up for auction. 1897 May 3: Jane North and Harry North (son) laid the foundation stone in Maesteg of the Colonel North Memorial Hall.

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1898 North’s widow sold Avery Hill House to Dr. Alonzo Henry Stocker. 1899 The Colonel North Mining & Railway Company was launched in Tasmania by the Colonel North Company. 1901 Robert Harvey was knighted. 1902 Avery Hill House and grounds were purchased by London County Council. 1904 London County Council’s Education Committee took over Avery Hill House. 1906 Avery Hill College was opened as a women’s residential teacher training college. 1985 Avery Hill College merged with Thames Polytechnic, and now forms part of the Avery Hill Campus of the University of Greenwich. 1988 April 18: A Yorkshire Society plaque was unveiled in the grounds of Kirkstall Abbey, marking the centenary of North’s gift to Leeds. 2008 October 9: The Yorkshire Society plaque at Kirkstall Abbey was resited, and unveiled in Kirkstall Abbey Visitors’ Centre. 2009–10 Conservation work on the Winter Garden at Avery Hill undertaken by the University of Greenwich.

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Map of Northern and Central Chile

Map 0.1 Map of northern and central Chile.

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Prologue He Would Be Called Quiet

I

n person Colonel John Thomas North is of medium height and only moderately stout, not weighing perhaps more than 150 pounds. His hair is of yellowish-red, while his whiskers and mustache [sic] are somewhat lighter and streaked with gray. His chin is shaven as is the English fashion. His complexion is ruddy, as becomes a Yorkshireman, and by-the-way, though so long accustomed to speak the soft Spanish tongue, when he delivers himself in English the burr of the north of England is most conspicuous. In dress he would be called quiet were it not for his diamonds and jewelry . . . Such is the most conspicuous and important man owning those English interests in Chili of which we have lately heard so much. Harper’s Weekly, February 6, 1892, p. 142

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Introduction

NORTH DENIALS. Colonel North has not offered the Government a cool three millions sterling for the contents of the National Gallery, and he has no intention of covering the walls of his dining-room with Old Masters obtained from such a source. The “Nitrate King” does not propose to wear a dress-coat embroidered with the Koh-i-noor and other Crown jewels at his next private hop. The Colonel has not purchased the Great Eastern, nor does he intend to fit it up as a floating palace, and invite the Prince of Wales to go “yotting” with him in it. The “Nitrate King” invariably uses a gold toothpick after dinner; but he is not in the habit of shaving with a diamond razor, and he doesn’t encourage Miss North to curl her fringe with brand-new Bank of England notes. —Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, January 26, 1889

W

hen John Thomas North returned to England from Chile in 1882, hardly anyone would have noticed. But within three years, he would be labeled “Colonel North” in the national press, and shortly afterward recognized throughout the world—from Canada to New Zealand—as “the nitrate king.” Before the decade was over, North was one of the richest men in the world. He was the subject of intense media attention, gossip, and the tongue-in-cheek sarcasm so typical of the times. John Thomas North spent a colossal sum of around £200,000 renovating a mansion called Avery Hill at Eltham near London. This building, complete with its winter garden, is regarded as one of the great Victorian homes and is now part of Greenwich University. He gave sumptuous banquets and presided over balls that were the talk of the town. North became the honorary colonel of the 2nd Tower Hamlets (East London) Engineer Volunteer Corps and was inordinately proud of his title as Colonel North. He invested heavily in horse racing, owning his own stables, and in the then immensely popular sport of greyhound coursing. His dog Fullerton won the prestigious Waterloo Cup unbeaten for four years in a row. He bought Kirkstall

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Image I.1 “Colonel John T. North, The Nitrate King.” Lithograph from Harper’s Weekly, February 6, 1892. Author not given.

Abbey and gave the abbey and its grounds to the then borough of Leeds. For this initiative, and other generous gifts to Leeds, the city made North its first Honorary Freeman. North also entered as a candidate in the general election of 1895 to run for parliament against

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INTRODUCTION

3

Herbert Gladstone—the incumbent Liberal member of Parliament for West Leeds and the youngest son of William Gladstone. That he lost by just ninety-six votes is a tribute to the popularity he enjoyed among ordinary people. John Thomas North was able to achieve all of this because he was a successful mining speculator and investor and had very quickly become a millionaire. Universally known as “the nitrate king,” North belongs to the nineteenth-century dynasty of business monarchs. Earlier in the century, George Hudson (1800–1871)—like North, also born in Yorkshire—had been known as “the railway king.” Jason “Jay” Gould (1836–1892), who was North’s contemporary, was enthroned by the media as “the railroad king.” In 1880, Jay Gould was in control of around 10,000 miles of railway in the United States and vilified as the archetypal robber baron. The term “robber baron” was used in that century to describe businessmen and bankers who dominated particular industries and amassed huge personal fortunes, typically by anticompetitive or unfair business practices. Although not a term actually leveled at John Thomas North, some would argue that he too belonged to this category. There was also a real baron, Baron de Hirsch (1831–1896), a well-known contemporary of North. Hirsch amassed a large fortune by purchasing railway concessions in Austria, Turkey, and the Balkans, and by speculations in sugar and copper. Like North, he was a lavish patron of horse racing in England. Closer to North in terms of speculation in mining, there were the “copper kings” (William Andrews Clark, Marcus Daly, and F. Augustus Heinze) who during the 1880s made Butte, Montana, the world’s greatest copper producer. They too were in the mold of robber barons, using their immense wealth to buy influence from courts, newspapers, politicians, banks, and the police. Then there was Andrew Carnegie, the “steel king,” whose Carnegie Steel Company became a leader in the steel industry from 1899. North also lived through the same age as Barney Barnato (a self-made millionaire like North), who gained control of diamond mining, and later gold mining, in South Africa from the 1870s; and Cecil Rhodes, the Englishborn mining magnate and politician in South Africa, who founded the diamond firm De Beers Mining Company in 1880. Unlike these magnates, John Thomas North is today almost completely forgotten in his own country. Even in Chile, where he made his first fortune, there is no memorial to him, and he is generally remembered there only to be pilloried as a capitalist predator intent on maximizing profits at the expense of Chile’s economic development. Chile’s Nobel poet-laureate Pablo Neruda, for example,

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devotes seventy-four lines of his magnificent poem “Canto General” to a blistering attack on North’s business practices in northern Chile. North is frequently characterized in South America as a cynical manipulator of the War of the Pacific (fought by Chile against Peru and Bolivia in 1879–1883), and as an active participant in instigating and helping prosecute the Chilean Civil War of 1891 that toppled President Balmaceda. This book sets out to examine this historical legacy and to reassess the several polemics surrounding North as a businessman with support from many key primary and secondary sources. What is beyond contention is that John Thomas North came to dominate the world trade in nitrates, centered on northern Chile, and that he became the undisputed “nitrate king.” Nitrate at that time was used mainly as a fertilizer, underpinning the agricultural explosion taking place in Europe and elsewhere in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1890, the Stock Exchange Year-Book in London listed twenty-three British companies involved in the Chilean nitrate industry, which had a total nominal capital of just over £10,000,000—an almost unimaginable fortune at that time. Seventeen of these companies were either founded by North (nine) or by North with close associates (eight), representing 71 percent of this total.1 By 1896—the year of his death—British nitrate companies dominated by North produced 60 percent of Chilean nitrate exports, 2 for which Chile enjoyed a world monopoly, and North had added two more companies to his portfolio: the Lagunas Nitrate Company and the Nitrate Producers’ Steamship Company. This book also describes how John Thomas North sought to achieve social acceptance among the likes of Lord Randolph Churchill and the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII). In this endeavor, he was largely successful. Four foreign nations conferred honors on North during his lifetime: The Khedive of Egypt (Abbas Hilmi Pasha) in 1894 made him “Commander of the Imperial Order of the Osmanich”; King Leopold II of the Belgians awarded him the “Royal Order of the Lion”; France bestowed on him the “Order of Merit (Agriculture)”; and King Umberto I of Italy decorated him. When he died, six carriages were needed to carry some 800 wreaths with condolences from, among others, the Prince of Wales, King Leopold II, and the Khedive of Egypt. Known, then, all over the world as “the nitrate king,” and as Colonel North, the media followed his every move. Even the most banal incident was carried by cable to newspapers. The New York

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INTRODUCTION

Times, for instance, carried an item on January 8, 1891 captioned “A mishap to the Nitrate King,” which reported that Col. North, “the Nitrate King,” to-night met with a painful accident. He had been present at a dinner given by the Leeds’ Victualers’ Society and was leaving the building where the dinner took place, when he slipped and fell heavily, spraining his ankle. He was at once taken to a hotel, where he was attended by a physician.

It is impressive that this text appeared on the same day of the accident.3 Such was, by 1891, the worldwide interest in the health and fortunes of John Thomas North. This book tells all these stories and is intended as an enjoyable but also academically accurate account of John Thomas North’s life. My interest in North began when I worked for six years with the British Council in Chile, and visited several of the surviving nitrate industrial plants and railways so strongly associated with North’s investments there. This interest was revived when I prepared my book on the history of the British presence in Chile. That this is the first book-length biography of “the nitrate king” can perhaps be explained by two phenomena. First, the lingering polemics that surround North’s activities in Chile, which still excite strong passions, and the doubtful ethics of certain of his business practices. Second, the difficulty of separating myth from reality in the reminiscences of North and his associates during his lifetime, aggravated by the lack of a single archive of primary sources to trawl for details on his life. I have undertaken this work because I believe the time has come for a revaluation of John Thomas North, stripping away the fiction—the often convenient stereotype—to arrive at, hopefully, a more complete and fairer understanding of this larger-than-life figure; this legend-in-his-own-lifetime. I know that I am not alone in wishing to see this reassessment. The senior British historian on “the nitrate king,” Harold Blakemore (1962; 1974), is regularly cited for his debunking of the legend and myth that still hang on North’s persona. More recently, historians in the United States, Britain, and even Chile, have added their voices to call for a fresh look at John Thomas North. This is my contribution to the debate. William (Eddie) Edmundson August 2010 Recife, Brazil

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The Crafty Colonel The Colonel cleverly contrived on one occasion to outwit a Scotch gamekeeper. Mr. Winans, the American millionaire, held strong views as to the sacredness from intrusion of the large northern estates he desired to utilise for purposes of deer forests, and for this end stopped up a path which was exceedingly convenient to the few tourists who explored the neighbourhood, inasmuch as it was a short cut, and saved a detour of several miles. Colonel North told with great glee the manner in which he managed, notwithstanding the prohibition, to take advantage of the short cut. He embarked boldly upon it, but nevertheless kept a sharp look-out, with the result that, after proceeding a few hundred yards, he perceived Mr. Winan’s gamekeeper before he himself was observed. The crafty Colonel at once turned round, and sauntered leisurely back, at the same time striking up a lively whistle. The effect was precisely what he intended. The gamekeeper perceived him and at once gave chase. Coming up to the Colonel, he roughly asked him his business, and informed him that the path was private property, and trespassers were not allowed. The Colonel blandly depreciated any knowledge of offence, or any desire to continue in his offending, but the gamekeeper was obdurate. “Ye’ll just gang awa’ back the way ye come,” said he. Colonel North made no difficulty in complying. —“Stories of Colonel North,” The Leeds Mercury, May 16, 1896

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Chapter 1

We Had Adventures of All Sorts

This “King” of a new order is most affable and most sociable, of middle height, strong looking, military in appearance, with plenty of good colour in his face, auburn whiskers and moustache, but with a shaved chin, very blue eyes, his hair growing already a little thin, but carefully brushed over the crown, which in places shows white as a piece of ivory, and there stands before you Colonel North, who has just reached his fifty-second year. —Interview with Gastón Calmette, Editor of Le Figaro, April 23, 18951

V

ery little suggested his spectacular rise to fame, fortune, and notoriety when John Thomas North was born in Holbeck in south Leeds on January 30, 1842. However, it is not surprising that North became an engineer, and then an entrepreneur, and cast his eyes on working overseas. Holbeck was a significant center of the Industrial Revolution, with foundries and mills that manufactured machinery, steam engines, cloth, and equipment for companies throughout the world. In the late eighteenth century, for example, John Marshall had founded the flax spinning industry in Leeds with the help of a talented young engineer named Matthew Murray by moving his factory to Water Lane in Holbeck. Marshall became one of the first millionaires of the Industrial Revolution. Some years later, while John Thomas North was serving his apprenticeship, Colonel Thomas Harding opened his Tower Works at Globe Road in 1864. This factory made steel pins for wool combing engines. It was built in the Italianate architectural style and still stands today. Regarding his childhood, North tended in later years to exaggerate his humble origins (“his parents . . . were humbly circumstanced”), 2 but he was in fact born into a middle-class family. His father, James North, was a coal merchant and also a local churchwarden—“clearly a

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man of some substance” (Harold Blakemore 1974, 23). James North was born in 1813 and married Mary Gambles (or Gamble) of Batley in 1838. They had four children. The first to be born was Emma North, in 1839, followed by John Thomas North in 1842, and his two brothers, Harry (or Henry) in 1845, and Gamble in 1854. The 1851 census for Leeds records James North, aged 37, “coal merchant,” as head of a household consisting of Mary (34), and their children Emma (11), John Thomas (9), and Henry (5). In the following census, ten years later, the family was living at 78 Grape Street, Hunslet, Leeds, and by then Mary is given as “head” of the family, a widow, and working as the innkeeper of The British Queen Ann public house. Emma was by now married, to John Dickinson “engine erector,” who lived in the same household, and both John Thomas and Henry are described as millwrights. In 1871, the census shows Mary North as living at Beeston in Leeds, still an innkeeper, of The New Peacock Inn, and living with her youngest son Gamble, aged seventeen, who worked as an “engine fitter.” By this time, John Thomas North had already travelled to South America. North described receiving “his early instruction at a local private school.”3 According to Blakemore (1974, 23), John Thomas North went to a middle-class school in Leeds, but left the school at the age of fifteen to be apprenticed to the company of millwrights and shipwrights mentioned in his application to join the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1882—the firm of Shaw, North, and Watson of Hunslet, also in south Leeds. The family connection—this “North” was a cousin of his father’s—may have helped in this placement as a trainee mechanical engineer. In 1865,4 after serving his term of eight years as an apprentice, North joined the larger firm of Messrs. Fowler and Company (Leeds) Limited at their Steam Plough Works at Hunslet in Leeds. John Fowler had established this company in 1862, and with steam locomotive construction starting in 1864, the firm later became the Steam Plough and Locomotive Works. It is possible that North could have had his pick of the several engineering firms established in Hunslet, known then as “the workshop of Leeds.” He certainly would have known of those that had a special focus on steam locomotives, such as Kitson & Company (founded 1835), Hudswell and Clarke (1860), Manning Wardle & Company (from 1840)—all of which were practically next door to Fowler’s—and the Hunslet Engine Company (founded 1864). There is a passage in the one-penny tract Life and Career of the Late Col. North, published in Leeds in 1896, entitled “How Colonel North made his Millions: Told by Himself,” in which North is quoted as

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reminiscing to his Leeds’ cronies about how he made his first money working at Kitson & Company: I have made my first bit o’ brass in a curious way. You know Jim Kitson’s works over yonder. Well, lad, I went there as a boy. You know that the Kitsons are one of the biggest machinery and locomotive makers in the world. I had to do all kinds of odd jobs—generally greasy and smelly. I used to oil the joints of the engines, and many a kick I’ve had when I’ve been slow in my work. At last I got work in the fitters’ shop—a big rise I can tell you. My wages simply leaped up from 12s. [shillings] to 18s. a week. It almost took me off my head for the time.

North was prone to creating his own folk story, or perhaps the author embellished the story with false memories, and this is the only mention in sources of his actually working at Kitson & Company. However, it is possible, since there were very close links between the two companies. John Fowler had moved to Leeds when the company of Kitson, Thompson & Hewitson agreed in 1860 to manufacture steam ploughs based on his design, and Fowler had established his factory adjacent to Kitson’s. Fowler started up his own firm, John Fowler & Company, in 1863. Frank Jux (1985), in his passage on Fowler railway locomotives, writes that Kitson’s in fact provided most of the start-up finance for the Steam Plough Works, and that, given Kitson’s interest in producing more than just steam locomotives, they “could well have intended to use any excess capacity at the Steam Plough Works to cope with any backlog of orders at their own works.” We can be sure that North definitely worked for a while at John Fowler & Company, and this turned out to be a significant step for the young engineer, now aged twenty-three. Interestingly, the same application for membership of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1882 carries the Steam Plough Works stamp, presumably belonging to the proposer. John Fowler died young, in December 1864, following complications from falling off a horse, just before John Thomas North started work at his company, and his brother Robert became the largest shareholder and ran the business after his death. Robert Fowler later became a personal friend of North’s and an important player in the nitrate business conducted in London, but this lay several years ahead. For the moment, North assumed a position of responsibility at Fowler’s—becoming a foreman, according to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ application for membership—and in his

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first year of work he married Jane Woodhead, the daughter of John Woodhead, a painter, senior local Conservative, and Leeds Town Councilor. John Thomas North recalled his courtship several times in later life, as in this version published soon after his death by The New Zealand Observer and Free Lance: I was in love with a girl who was working at a neighbouring factory in Hunslet, Leeds. We’d had many a talk about getting married, but when I was only getting 12s. a week, and she was only getting eight, we came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t do. So I said, “My lass, ahm reyt fond of tha, and the moment I get a rise in screw [on credit] we’ll risk it, and we’ll face the world, lass, for good or for ill.” She gave me a hug and kissed me, and from that day to this she’s been my best adviser, friend and comforter. (July 25, 1896)

During his time at Fowler’s, North’s father died, in 1867,5 and it is reported that he gave his portion of the estate to his widowed mother, despite being already married and having a child, “an act which perhaps foreshadowed his future open-handedness in money matters.”6 The first-born was Harry, in 1866, followed by North’s only daughter, Emma, in 1868. Their third and last child, Arthur Jewell, was born several years later, in 1883, after North had returned triumphantly from Chile to England. There is some doubt over exactly when North left Fowler’s and precisely what he was contracted to do in South America, not helped by North’s confusing recollections later in life. Harold Blakemore, the senior British historian on North’s activities in the nitrate business, gives “went to Peru in 1869” (Blakemore 1962, 468), which he later changes to “in 1866 or 1867” (1974, 23) and then to “in 1869 [Fowler & Co.] sent him to Peru” (2004). Hardy Osgood (1948, 171) writes that Fowler’s sent him to Tarapacá in 1869 “to set up some nitrate equipment.” However, a piece published in the New York Times on July 3, 1889, states that North set out “22 years ago,” which would give the year as 1867, and Michael Monteón’s article on “John T. North, the Nitrate King, and Chile’s Lost Future,” published in 2003, quotes Roberto Hernández (1930, 72) as saying the journey was “around 1867,” and that he “was sent to maintain locomotives in the copper-mining zone near Caldera.”7 Chilean historian Hernan Ramírez Necochea (1958) writes that North arrived in Chile in 1866, with ten pounds in his pocket, quoting from an interview that North gave on March 23, 1889 (during his return visit to Chile) to the El Heraldo newspaper. The year 1867 is implicit in the Kentish

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District Times’ publication of 1896 on The Life and Career of Col. North, where the author writes that “At the age of 25, two years after his marriage to Miss Woodhead, he went off . . . to seek his fortune in America.” Nevertheless, it does seem more likely that John Thomas North set out with his family in 1869 for South America. This is supported by a phrase he used in his application to join the Institution of Mechanical Engineers—that he was a foreman at Fowler’s “for several years,” that is, not just two or three—and by the birth of his first two children in 1866 and 1868.8 As to what North was engaged in when he arrived in South America, it is generally supposed that the firm of Fowler & Company sent him over on contract. Harold Blakemore wrote in 1962 that Fowler’s “sent him out to set up machinery for the extraction of nitrate” (1962, 468). Brian Heaton (1996, 1) believes that Fowler’s sent him to Peru in 1869 to supervise the running of two steam ploughs, and this is Harold Blakemore’s later view (see Blakemore 2004) but this seems doubtful, since steam ploughs would have little use in the largely desert region where North arrived. The Pall Mall Gazette edition of January 4, 1889, published on the eve of an extravagant ball that North held at the Hotel Métropole in London, says that while working for Fowler’s “North was entrusted with the charge of some machinery which the Fowlers were sending to Chili for the manufacture of nitrate of soda for soil fertilization.”9 The text adds that North was happy to accept the assignment “as he already had a brother settled in South America, and he was pleased at the thought of joining him”—this is very doubtful, but it is one of two sources to make such a claim.10 Pedro Pablo Figueroa, writing in 1900 in his Diccionario Biográfico de Estranjeros en Chile, believes that Fowler’s sent North to Tarapacá in Peru to set up one of the first pieces of machinery used to process nitrate, but “certain inconveniences” prevented him from carrying out his commission. So, according to Figueroa, North went to Caldera (in Chilean Atacama) where he spent some time in a workshop before moving to the Carrizal railway. The Kentish District Times’ account of 1896 also says that North worked as a railway engineer on the Carrizal railway, which was in Chile,11 and North’s own account (as rendered by the author of the posthumous Life and Career of the late Col. North: How He made His Millions. As Told by Himself ) was as follows: My firm had a contract to lay a line of railway in Peru. They considered that, as one of the best young workmen in the engine sheds, I might

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go out there and possibly “better myself.” I seized the chance at once. I simply pushed myself forward for the job. I offered to go for the ordinary salary I was getting, namely, 18s. a week, and, penniless as I was, even offered to pay my own travelling expenses out, begging the “guv’nors” to take it out of my wages. They laughed and said, “North, we like enthusiasm, and you shall go.” (1896, 15–16)

However, in an interview with Gastón Calmette, the editor of Le Figaro, which took place on April 23, 1895,12 North gave a slightly different account: My savings were very small indeed when about thirty years ago I was simply a manager in one of the machine shops of Messrs. Fowler and Co., of Leeds. The firm sent me out to Peru to superintend for a few weeks the setting up of some of their machines, but as soon as I became acquainted with the immense resources which this country, so little known and so badly known, offered to an enterprising mind, I decided to prolong my stay at my own expense.

The truth may in fact be a little more prosaic, and he may have worked as a boiler riveter in a railway workshop. William Howard Russell, the celebrated journalist for The Times, accompanied North on his triumphant return journey to Chile in 1889 and wrote up his account as A Visit to Chile and the Nitrate Fields of Tarapacá. In Chapter XI, he describes a steamship journey from Valparaíso to Iquique that included a stop at Carrizal Bajo—a port forty kilometers north of Huasco— which for North “possessed an absorbing interest”: In a building which he pointed out to us from the deck was the workshop in which Colonel North was first employed after his arrival . . . and scarcely had the anchor reached the bottom ere he hastened to visit the scene of his early labours. He led his friends to the deserted workshop. “There is the bench at which I worked! There is the place where I kept my tools! Here day after day for many a month I worked as an engineer at four dollars a day!” (Russell 1890, 134–5)

In his address to journalists in New York on July 2, 1889, summarizing the trip to that date, with North in the audience, William Russell referred to Huasco as interesting to his companion “because in it is the shop at which [North] worked for years driving rivets into boiler iron.” In all probability, then, Fowler’s sent John Thomas North to South America to maintain or install machinery, almost certainly steam

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driven, in the copper-mining region served by the Carrizal Bajo section of the Ferrocarril de Carrizal railway, south of Caldera. Since both Huasco and Carrizal are below the 24 degree south parallel, agreed by Chile and Bolivia as their common border in 1866, he would in fact have been on Chilean territory, and not Peruvian, or Bolivian. As for the type of machinery he worked on, Frank Jux’s introduction to his Locomotive Works List for Fowler’s (1985) stresses that: Fowler’s were probably unique among the family firms of their day for the range of machinery that they built, with the locomotive works only one part—though an important part—of their overall business . . . In their heyday they were nothing if not enterprising.

According to Jux, Fowler’s subcontracted the building of ninetyeight steam locomotives before opening their Steam Plough Works, but there is no mention of any Fowler engine going to Chile (or Peru) in the period in question. Nevertheless, when North had begun to prosper from his nitrate and railways investments, and after the northern provinces had become Chilean, there were several orders from 1884 for North’s businesses in that region.13 North’s reported comment on this period is that “The projected railway didn’t come to much . . . We laid our lines through the wilds of Peru, and had adventures of all sorts.”14 British engineers certainly worked on this mining railway, which operated from 1860 with horse power, and from 1866 with steam locomotives on the Carrizal Bajo section—the same year that Fowler’s began to export engines (but not at first to South America). The president of this railway from 1864 was an Englishman called David Thomas, who owned his own bank, the Bank of David Thomas. North may then have moved on to work in Iquique and Pisagua in the railway workshops. What is certain is that two years later, in 1871, North had left his employment with Fowler’s and had moved north to Iquique, which was then a port in the province of Tarapacá in southernmost Peru and a center for the growing trade in nitrate. I Want To Hear the Man Swear The trap in which he was seated being on one occasion blocked in a crowded thoroughfare in immediate juxtaposition to a costermonger’s cart laden with vegetables, the coachman, finding that the horse was about to help himself to the cabbages, would have backed the animal out of harm’s way. “Let him graze,” said the Colonel; “I want to hear

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the man swear!” The costermonger turning his head round at this moment, the Colonel’s wish was promptly gratified by an exceptionally choice and extensive selection of expletives. “Bravo!” said North, as he threw the man a coin that would have more than bought the whole cargo of vegetables; “I thought I was pretty well educated in your line myself, but hang me if you haven’t taught me four new adjectives!” —“Stories of Colonel North,” The Leeds Mercury, May 16, 1896

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Chapter 2

I Was Better Acquainted Than Any Other Foreigner

In 1871, at the age of twenty-nine, John Thomas North found him-

self in Iquique, having left his employment with Fowler & Company, determined to make the most of the opportunities that the region presented to him. At that time, Iquique was a major (still Peruvian) port that was prominent in the export of nitrates and import of machinery and merchandise for the nitrate salitreras (nitrate fields) and oficinas (nitrate processing plants). North’s first employment in Iquique was to work at the Santa Rita oficina belonging to a Peruvian named José María González Vélez, probably as a boilermaker or boiler operator processing the caliche (crude sodium nitrate), but in time becoming the chief engineer.1 Little is known about his first few years in the province of Tarapacá, but it can be assumed that North was gaining firsthand experience of the nitrate industry and knowledge of the prospects presented by salitreras in the region. This industry was growing quickly, and there was an urgent need for machinery and provisions to support the oficinas. Since water is vital, and Iquique is backed by one of the driest deserts in the world, North soon realized that this presented an opportunity for investment—his first business venture. In 1875, North bought a boat named the Marañon and used it as a water tanker operating from Huanillos,2 a cove just south of Iquique, and a significant center for guano extraction. While separating fact from fiction in North’s early reminiscences is difficult, given the lack of corroborating evidence, and the characteristic embellishment he gave to his stories, it may be true that he purchased this boat cheaply and first used it for local transport.3 The author of the Life

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and Career of the Late Col. North (1896, 16) in the concluding section “Told by Himself” quotes North as saying that one day I wandered down to a creek leading to the big river [this may have been the River Loa], and there I saw a rusty old steamer which had been laid up as useless. I suddenly conceived the idea of getting this little steamer with the rusty paddles, thinking that I might trade up and down the river with it, touching with grain and various provisions at the towns and villages. I got possession of the steamer for a few hundred dollars, and when I found myself in possession of this vessel I was entirely cleaned out.

But “good fortune favoured me,” North told Gastón Calmette, the editor of Le Figaro in 1895,4 “What struck me at the very first was the want of water [in the nitrate provinces] so that the natural water pools were brackish, and consequently unfit for either domestic or industrial purposes.” I asked the Government to grant me a concession for the supply of drinking water. I obtained it with the greatest ease, and for the whole of the province, and I established a system of condensation for purifying the brackish water.

This “very simple” idea was successful and “it brought me in a little money, and it enabled me to find capitalists, whom my first attempt had pleased very much.” As a result, I caused some floating cisterns to be made, which I sent to Arica [in the far north of the Tarapacá province], a port famous for the very pure and very abundant springs. Then floating reservoirs were brought to the port of Iquique, and so I supplied with the most excellent water all this district, which until then had been so badly provided for.

These water tankers were manufactured for North to be used in the services of the Compañía de Aguas de Tarapacá (the Tarapacá Waterworks Company), which was founded in 1878 and which North contracted to rent for two years. The company brought water from Arica to supply Iquique, Pisagua, and other ports. This was a pivotal year for John Thomas North, since it was also in 1878 that he acquired from “Guillermo” (William) Speedie a contract to exploit the Porvenir salitrera and oficina.5 Within a year, the War of the Pacific would break out, pitting Chile against both Peru and Bolivia, and North’s fortunes took off exponentially. Speedie had obtained

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the Porvenir oficina following Peru’s expropriation of the nitrate industry in 1875, and the history of Peru’s dealings with its province of Tarapacá and the origins of the War of the Pacific (1879–1883) are key to understanding how North suddenly became synonymous with very profitable nitrate investments and, during the next decade, known as “the nitrate king”—one of the richest men in the world. The immediate roots of the War of the Pacific go back to the 1860s and the early extraction of nitrate, when two Chilean businessmen, José Santos Ossa and Francisco Puelma, started processing nitrate in the province of Antofagasta, which at that time belonged to Bolivia. The product was soon in great demand overseas as a fertilizer. Ossa and Puelma established a nitrate-processing oficina, but this failed, and they were compelled to return to Valparaíso to seek additional financing. This funding came from a partnership of Chilean and British investors named Melbourne Clark & Company. The other British partner was William Gibbs, and the Chilean partners were Francisco Puelma and Agustín Edwards, a Chilean banker of British descent. Melbourne Clark appointed George Hicks to run the operation in Antofagasta. When war broke out in 1879, the network of nitrate extracting firms was mainly run by Chilean and British interests, in both Peruvian Tarapacá and Bolivian Antofagasta. It is significant too that the majority of the people living on the coast in these two provinces were in fact Chilean.6 Chile fought the War of the Pacific against both Peru and Bolivia, and the reasons behind the conflict with each of these countries are both different and at the same time intertwined. In the case of Bolivia, the war resulted from continual disagreements over exactly where the frontier lay with Chile. In 1825, the territory of Atacama belonged to the Bolivian departamento of Potosí. Later that century, in 1842, the Chilean government gave tacit agreement to a border at 23 degrees south, known as the Mejillones Parallel—the line crossed the country horizontally from near the port of Mejillones, sixty kilometers north of Antofagasta. But the Bolivian government was not satisfied, and they insisted on a border further south. In 1866, faced by a common danger (that of war with Spain), Chile and Bolivia signed a treaty agreeing to 24 degrees south (just south of Antofagasta) as the border between their countries. This is often referred to as the Treaty of Mutual Benefits, in that the two countries agreed to share the tax revenue from the mineral wealth found between the 23rd and 25th parallels, and Bolivia undertook to charge no export tax on Chilean guano extracted from this region. This agreement was regarded as rather vague and it did not reduce the sense of distrust that existed

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between these countries. Peru became involved in 1872 when it tried to use its naval power to assist Bolivia in gaining a precise border based on its claims. In 1874, Chile decided to settle once and for all the longstanding dispute over where the frontier lay, and agreed to having this border fixed at 24 degrees south in return for a promise from Bolivia that tax rates on Chilean businesses in the Antofagasta region would be fixed and that there would be no further taxation of Chilean nitrate during the following twenty-five years. The next crisis broke out in 1878 while John Thomas North was beginning to acquire interests in nitrate extraction and water provision in Iquique. The Bolivian government had previously given generous concessions in the Atacama region to the Antofagasta Nitrate & Railway Company (Compañía de Salitres y Ferrocarril de Antofagasta), which was a very powerful Chilean-British corporation.7 In 1878, Bolivia’s National Congress pointed out that the 1873 contract allowing this company to extract nitrate tax-free over fifteen years was actually invalid, since the agreement had not been ratified by Congress as required by the constitution of 1871. Congress proposed to give the necessary approval, but only if a tax of ten cents on each quintal (forty-six kilograms, or one hundredweight) was paid.8 There was an additional argument: that the 1874 treaty was not offended because this involved a British and not a Chilean business. Naturally, the company was not pleased with this initiative, and they demanded that the Chilean government intervene, leading Bolivia to threaten confiscation. Chile sent a warship to the area in December 1878, and, following the company’s refusal to pay the tax, in February 1879 the Bolivian government announced that the company’s assets had been seized and would be auctioned off. Chile’s response was to declare the 1874 treaty null and void, and to send a small Chilean military force to take over the port of Antofagasta, quickly assuming control of nearby coastal settlements and nitrate oficinas as far as the frontier with Peru. Antofagasta was occupied with no resistance; the population in the Bolivian port was overwhelmingly Chilean,9 and the soldiers were given a rousing welcome. However, the action triggered an escalation of the dispute, and Peru was brought into the conflict on account of a secret treaty of mutual alliance with Bolivia. Peru’s involvement in the war in support of Bolivia derived from the mismanagement of its economic resources following the decline in income from guano, as well as from its sympathies with Bolivia’s claim to the Atacama region—possibly because Bolivia’s enclave on the Pacific coastline acted as a useful buffer between Peru and Chile. On February 6, 1873, Peru and Bolivia had signed a Treaty of

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Alliance, which committed them to defend each other’s independence and sovereignty in the case of aggression from abroad. Crucially, this treaty was kept secret from Chile. Peru’s economic problems had caused it to default on its external debt in 1876, a measure that particularly hurt British and French bondholders. The immediate roots of the problems are found in the early 1870s when Peru had become alarmed by the strong Chilean presence in the Peruvian province of Tarapacá, and by the loss of income from dwindling supplies of guano. Peru decided to create a government nitrate sales monopoly in 1872, promulgated into law in early 1873, but this was a failure since neither Chile nor Bolivia concurred. Valparaíso in Chile was the key trading center for nitrates,10 providing much of the investment capital for Peruvian Tarapacá, and the Chilean nitrate producers in Bolivian Antofagasta undersold their competitors in Tarapacá. In 1875, in a renewed effort to raise revenue, Peru nationalized the nitrate industry in its province of Tarapacá. The intention was to procure a loan of up to £7,000,000, of which £4,000,000 was earmarked to expropriate privately owned salitreras and oficinas. State certificates (interest-bearing trust-deeds) were given to the owners as compensation,11 and several of them were British, but Peru never received the loan, and defaulted again on its external debt, in 1877. Significantly, the certificates were never cancelled, since the loan never materialized, and they were made payable to bearer. When the Bolivian province of Antofagasta fell to the Chilean military expedition, Peru made an attempt at mediation, asking Chile to return the region to Bolivia, but Chile was doubtful of Peru’s impartiality in the conflict. In March 1879, Chile asked Peru to confirm its neutrality in the dispute, leading the Peruvian president to admit that his country and Bolivia were secretly allies and committed to each other’s defense. In the same month, Bolivian dictator Hilarión Daza declared war on Chile, and called into effect the alliance with Peru, which led inexorably to Chile’s declaration of war on both countries on April 5. Lima fell to Chilean troops under vice-admiral Patricio Lynch in January 1881, which effectively brought military operations to a close. The war with Peru formally ended in October 1883 with the Treaty of Ancón, which ceded Peru’s Tarapacá province to Chile, and gave the provinces of Arica and Tacna to Chile for ten years, pending a plebiscite in these regions. Peace with Bolivia was arrived at separately with the Treaty of Valparaíso in April 1884 by which Bolivia ceded control of its entire coastline of Antofagasta to Chile until a full peace agreement could be negotiated, which happened

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only in 1904. Chile increased her national territory by more than one third. This was the scenario that North had stumbled into by moving to Iquique in 1871. Looking back in 1895 on his sudden involvement in the war, North told the editor of Le Figaro of how the Chilean navy had needed flat-bottomed boats for landing operations and had taken possession of some of his barges. Justo Abel Rosales (1889) names these as the steamers Princesa Luísa and María Luísa, and adds that North lent the army eight lanchas. Harold Blakemore (1974, 27) confirms the loan of eight launches, and adds that North lent Chile a steamer for the transport of wounded soldiers. In the Le Figaro interview, North is reported as saying that he refused to hand over his boats, at which they enrolled them under their flag, promising me in exchange, if they should be victorious in the impending struggle, a million of francs guaranteed by the guano deposits on the adjacent islands.12

Chile was victorious, North took the guano, and he “realised a profit of four million francs.”13 North’s version of what happened may well be romanticized. However, Harold Blakemore (1974, 27–8) describes how Patricio Lynch, Chile’s naval commander at the start of the war, sold 40,000 tons of guano to North and H. B. Jameson (North’s partner in another enterprise) in 1881.14 This initiative displeased the holders of Peruvian bonds for whom the Chilean government in 1880 had agreed to use guano sales in Tarapacá to repay debts contracted by Peru before the war started. North enjoyed another windfall. At the outset of the war, the founders of the Tarapacá Waterworks Company—all Englishmen— fled Iquique. When the Chilean army arrived in the port, the authorities decided to recognize North as the owner of the company. Hernán Ramírez Necochea (1958, 79) believes that North prevailed upon the Chilean political head (jefe politico) of the occupied province of Tarapacá to give him all the properties of the company. A decree dated August 17, 1880, which cited instructions from the military authority in the region, named North as the depository of the company’s assets. Most of the company’s tankers survived the conflict, and on this basis North came to have a monopoly for the provision of water to the port, moving from tenant to owner at no cost to himself. North also realized that there were even richer opportunities presented by Chile having overrun the nitrate region of Tarapacá.

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Referring back to his alleged “first” investment in a “rusty old steamer,” North told the story of how it happened: One day, when Chile and Peru were at war, my little vessel happened to come down to the mouth of the river at the critical point. There was a Peruvian warship on guard, and they signalled to me that they were starving, and were in the most desperate straits for food and water. I was able to relieve their immediate necessities, and when the war was over I claimed some compensation for the services which my vessel had rendered. As a return there came to me a concession to work a hitherto unexplored field of nitrates. This one concession led to many others, and a happy accident simply laid the foundation of my fortune.15

More importantly, there was the resulting depreciation of the Peruvian nitrate certificates in the turmoil and uncertainty of war, and North was well placed to make the most of this lucky chance. At times, the certificates were being quoted at 80 percent and even 90 percent down on their face value.16 In 1895, he explained to Le Figaro how: Every kind of Peruvian security underwent an extraordinary depreciation, including the land bonds [certificates], which the [Peruvian] Government had issued in order to realise some money as quickly as possible. I was better acquainted than any other foreigner with the exact value of these land bonds, as I knew from having travelled through them that many of the districts contained very important beds of nitrate; so I bought them, notwithstanding their unpopularity, in considerable quantities, for I felt certain that the Chilean Government would be victorious in the war, and I knew that they would fully respect the obligations issued by their vanquished enemy.17

We now face the first major polemic in John Thomas North’s business career, revolving around exactly what he “knew” and how wise it was for Chile to hand over so big a stake in the nitrate fields to North and his associates. It is commonly believed that North had advance information regarding Chile’s decision to honor the certificates before this was public knowledge, but, while accepting that this is entirely possible, modern historians have found no concrete evidence to support this argument (for example, see Harold Blakemore 1974, 29). Nevertheless, it is probable that North had access to key information and to investment funds, through two well-placed friends. At the outbreak of the war, his associate Robert Harvey held the post of Inspector-General of Nitrates for the Peruvian government, and was

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the source of insider knowledge for North about the nitrate industry. The funds came through his acquaintance with John Dawson, who at different times had been the manager of the London Bank of Mexico and South America in Lima and Valparaíso, but in 1879 was manager of the Chilean Banco de Valparaíso in Iquique. On the eve of the War of the Pacific, in 1879, the British share in total nitrate output was just over 13 percent of the total, with all production in provinces that were then Peruvian and Bolivian, but would shortly become Chilean. By 1890, a decade later, there were twenty-five British companies operating in these northern nitrate fields (now annexed by Chile) with a total paid-in capital of at least £12,000,000, and a peak was reached in 1895 when the British share in overall production amounted to 60 percent. John Thomas North was prominent in this investment, which was not without risk on his part. But his acquisition of Peruvian nitrate certificates paid off handsomely—“as soon as it was known that all the liabilities of the vanquished Government would be taken over and confirmed by the victors, their value was increased a hundred-fold.”18 Free-Handed Hospitality In Palmy Days (1957), John Bennion Booth comments on North’s “free-handed hospitality [that] was too often imposed upon,” and retells the story of a Cockney “seedy individual” who accosted North outside the National Sporting Club with the words: “Good old Leeds, Colonel!” “D’you come from Leeds?” asked North, his hand in his pocket, and the cockney wastrel, assuming what he hoped was a Leeds accent, replied: “Sure, n’ I do, yer honour!” The look of doubt in the Colonel’s eye spurred him on to a fresh effort at local colour. “Begorra!” he added hastily. And breaking into a roar of laughter, North tossed him half-a-crown. (Booth 1957, 176) Booth quotes a man who apparently knew North well, called John Corlett, who once protested at North’s generosity toward “the group of hangers-on who perpetually sponged on him.” North replied: “In Chili, where I spent the best part of my youth, folk are extremely charitable amongst themselves, and help one another all they can in times of distress. No Chilian feels humbled by such help, nor does he hesitate to ask for it, and nothing seems more reasonable to him than to apply to a rich man who has made a fortune in his country to give him what he wants.” (1957, 176–7)

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When North returned to England “hardly ever was an appeal for assistance made to the Colonel in vain, and in most instances his gifts were spontaneous and unsolicited.” Booth gives some examples: On one occasion North was elected president of a local agricultural society and after watching a ploughing contest he presided at the annual dinner, where he learned that the society was in debt— around fifty or sixty pounds. North’s reaction was to exclaim: “Here! This won’t do! I can’t afford to be president of a concern that’s insolvent. Here’s a hundred to wipe the slate and get going.” (1957, 177) On the same occasion, after dinner, North presided over the giving of prizes, and an old ploughman came up to receive a pair of corduroy trousers in recognition of his forty years of service. “How’s the missus?” asked the Colonel, handing over the garment. “Any kids?” “Ten living, an’ three dead,” was the reply. “And you’ve brought up that lot on thirteen shillings a week? Give me back those trousers!” Slightly dazed, the old man meekly handed back the prize for long service. In a minute or two, the Colonel handed them over again. “You’ll find a fiver in the righthand pocket for the missus, and a tenner in the left-hand pocket—a sovereign apiece for the kids—and here’s a fiver for you.” (1957, 177)

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Chapter 3

Don Juan Tomás North

Let the gringos work the nitrate freely. I shall be waiting for them at the door. —President Domingo Santa María1

W

hen Chile found herself in command of the province of Tarapacá during the War of the Pacific, she had to decide what to do with the nitrate oficinas and salitreras, which, at least on paper, belonged to the Peruvian government following the expropriation of 1875. At the same time, there was the complicating issue of the compensatory certificates issued to the owners, which John Thomas North hurried to purchase at knock-down prices. The war was still not over, and the Chilean government found itself in the uncomfortable position of being subjected to pressure from Peru’s creditors, which included British bondholders, in particular Antony Gibbs & Company and the London Bank of Mexico and South America. Peru had used the nitrate holdings as collateral for loans. These creditors threatened Chile’s credit in Europe if their claims were not met. Collier and Sater (2004, 143) argue in their History of Chile that the Chilean government essentially had two options. Having decided that they were there for the long term, they could either assume responsibility for the Peruvian nitrate debt and, in effect, nationalize the industry for Chile, or they could recognize the holders of the certificates as the owners of the assets. Two legislative committees examined the problem in the period 1880 to 1881. The first lengthy report delivered on June 8, 1880 concluded that if the nitrate deposits were not worked with care, and if the regime imposed by the Peruvian authorities was not changed, then the resource could well become “a disastrous inheritance, or at least a difficult business and subject to prejudicial operations of a doubtful

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Image 3.1 Page from atlas: “Provincia de Tarapacá,” from Atlas de Chile, by Juan Türke. Ediciones Eduardo Cadot, Santiago, 1895.

morality.”2 The commission concluded that “instead of this dangerous and absorbing system, it is to be desired that Chile will respect and maintain the first of the rules of good public economy which condemns all government intervention in the special dominions of the industry.”3

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D O N J UA N T O M Á S N O R T H

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The Chilean historian Hernán Ramírez Necochea points out that the report reflected the liberal mentality then dominant in questions of the economy, and that the members of the commission were probably influenced by the nitrate lobby that at that time was closely linked to influential financial circles, and through them to the highest levels of national politics and even the Chilean government itself. The matter was finally settled on June 11, 1881, in favor of the second option, and the government issued a decree provisionally returning the nitrate industry to private ownership. The Chilean government undertook to honor the rights of those who held nitrate certificates, as long as they held bonds equal to three-quarters of the value of a salitrera, and could deposit the remainder in cash.4 The cash deposit would be returned to anyone who could provide all the certificates for a particular salitrera. This decree was subsequently modified in September 1881,5 and in the following year, in March 1882, the government announced that the political head (jefe político) of the province of Tarapacá had the delegated authority to grant definitive ownership titles to those who had been awarded provisional ownership. It is worth reminding ourselves that this was decided against the backdrop of the ongoing War of the Pacific. Eighty oficinas were privatized as a result, while the Chilean treasury still held seventy-one oficinas, several of which were offered for sale by auction. The door was open to North and his associates, and other speculators, foreign and Chilean, to acquire ownership of the richest nitrate deposits and later to exert effective control over the industry. This Chilean government’s decision has been much criticized, and to this day is the source of much debate, even acrimonious debate, with John Thomas North personified as the quintessential predatory capitalist, and Chile lamented for having been duped into losing her economic future. But it is difficult to see what else the Chilean government could have done in the current circumstances. There was an urgent need to revive nitrate exports as soon as possible in order to help pay off the costs of the ongoing conflict. Chile had entered the war as “a nation trapped in a debilitating economic crisis”—“By the end of 1878 . . . Chile’s economic system was in the midst of its worst crisis since independence.”6 And the catastrophic attempt by the Peruvian government to nationalize the nitrate industry was presumably still very fresh in people’s memories. There was also the pressing need to establish sovereignty and control over the newly annexed territory that, in 1881, no one could be absolutely sure Chile would eventually hold on to. If the government had chosen the first option, that of taking the industry into state

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ownership, it would have cost just over 4 million pounds sterling,7 at a time when the country was still engaged in war with its two northern neighbors, and Argentina was nibbling at her heels in the far south. Collier and Sater (2004, 144) argue that “the return of ownership to private hands relieved the Moneda [the Chilean government] of an immense fiscal and bureaucratic burden, while by the same token the imposition of an export duty on nitrate promised a fiscal bonanza.” In addition, it is probable that public opinion in Chile at that time would not have been in favor of the option of nationalization— “government ownership of the means of production was regarded as beyond the ideological pale” (Collier and Sater 2004, 144). The Chilean historian Alejandro Soto Cárdenas also examines why the Chilean government should have handed over the nitrate industry to foreign, especially British, capitalism, and finds that: This decision was the result of the pressures, especially European, which affected our country, as a consequence of two crises which presented themselves almost simultaneously: the economic crisis of 1878 and the military crisis of the War of the Pacific which broke out in 1879. The first deprived the country of the industrial base for the provision of war material that was needed in the conflict with Peru and Bolivia and showed the urgent need of financial resources to take the country out of the economic emergency in which it found itself. The second brought home the convenience of maintaining friendly diplomatic relations with the European powers so as to maintain the foreign sources of arms and financial resources. (1998, 58–9, author’s translation)

European countries expressed their anxiety to Chile over what was to happen to the Peruvian nitrate certificates; over how Chile was prosecuting its military campaign; and over how things stood with Peruvian government bonds that had the nitrate fields as collateral. Pressure built up—in 1881 investors in Europe held around £30,000,000 in Peruvian bonds issued against foreign loans, and most were in the hands of British citizens.8 These bondholders set up a committee in London to look after their interests—the Peruvian Bondholders’ Committee. At the end of 1879, they made their opinion clear to the Chilean government that the Peruvian nitrate works were mortgaged to them, and their position was supported by the British government. In February 1880, tired of the intransigence of foreign nitrate producers in the region in not resuming exports—the producers were fearful of Peruvian reprisals—the Chilean government confiscated the nitrate stocks of Antony Gibbs & Sons, to which Francis

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Pakenham, the British minister in Santiago, responded with official protests.9 These protests were eventually successful, and in February 1881, the Chilean government recompensed Gibbs for more than the full amount of what they had seized. More importantly, the decision made by the executive in June 1881 to honor the nitrate certificates signaled a return of the salitreras to private ownership, and meant that the European holders of Peruvian government bonds no longer had a direct claim on these deposits. Thomas F. O’Brien (1979, 120) concludes that this “pragmatic solution . . . assured the Chilean State of a quick increase in revenues and removed it as the central target of the competing claimants.” He adds that this policy enjoyed the support of most of Chile’s ruling classes, and “it is clear that this course of action was the result of demands of both foreign investors and Chile’s own ruling elite” (O’Brien 1979, 121). It should also be stressed that North and his associates were mainly acquiring rights to nitrate fields—salitreras—which in some cases might have working oficinas (industrial plants). A great deal of investment was still necessary, and Chile did not have the capital, the expertise, nor the technology, which was only available in Europe, to exploit the nitrate deposits on a modern industrial scale. The die was cast for the long ensuing period of mutual dependence between foreign, mainly British, investments in nitrate and the Chilean economy.10 Chile decided that a prolonged war was not in its best interests and decided to show Peru the futility of further resistance by first invading northern Peru and then occupying the southern departments of Tacna and Arica, at which Bolivia effectively dropped out of the war. Chilean soldiers then entered Lima in January 1881. It was during this period of occupation that John Thomas North and his associate Robert Harvey went to Lima in early 188111 to buy up nitrate certificates at bargain-basement prices (as little as 11 percent of their nominal value), gambling that Chile would indeed prove to be the long-term victor, that Tarapacá would remain in Chilean hands, and—crucially—that Chile would honor the bonds. This was a very risky move on their part; “once the War of the Pacific was declared, no-one could give guarantees that the nitrates industry would be a remunerative activity [and] no-one could guarantee what the nitrates policy adopted by the victorious country would be” (Soto Cárdenas 1998, 57). Robert Harvey enjoyed a similar career to Thomas North and the two became closely intertwined as business partners. Harvey was born in October 1847 in Truro, Cornwall, the son of a tailor named Samuel Harvey and his wife Elizabeth Northey. After finishing

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school in Truro, at the age of fourteen, he served his apprenticeship at a local foundry owned by Francis Dingley. About six years later, Harvey began to work at the second largest iron foundry in Cornwall, Williams’ Perran Foundry,12 where he learned his trade as an improver over three years and as a journeyman (qualified skilled worker) for one year. In 1872, the foundry chose Harvey to accompany a steam engine intended for the Tocopilla copper mine, run by immigrants from the copper and tin mining district of Gwennap in Cornwall. Tocopilla lies on the coast between Antofagasta and Iquique, and at the time of his arrival was in Bolivian territory. In 1875, as with North, Harvey heard of the boom further north in nitrates and decided to try his luck in the then Peruvian port of Iquique. He worked for a time as chief engineer at the Rimac oficina13 owned by a Peruvian named León Castro on a monthly salary of forty pounds, and soon afterward he was put in charge of the building of a new oficina. One year later, following the Peruvian government’s decision in 1875 to nationalize the nitrate fields, Peru was anxious to get comprehensive information about the industry, and in 1876 Harvey was appointed engineer-in-chief and Inspector General of Nitrates in the province of Tarapacá, now on an annual salary of £1,500. Not only that, he was also made an honorary colonel in the Peruvian army. According to Harold Blakemore (1974, 26–7), Robert Harvey was already a friend of North’s by this time. When the war started, the Chilean army advanced quickly into the province of Tarapacá, and Harvey found himself a prisoner of the Chilean forces at the Battle of San Francisco and was taken to Iquique. The Chilean naval commander and jefe politico (political head) for the occupied Tarapacá province, Patricio Lynch, interviewed him, and Harvey’s defense was that quite naturally he had supported Peru at that stage since they were his employers. As we have seen, the Chilean view was that they were in Tarapacá for the long term and they concluded that Harvey’s expertise and knowledge were valuable to them. So they made an offer that he could hardly turn down,14 and Harvey became again Inspector General of Nitrates from February 1880, this time working for the Chilean government. Chilean historian Ramírez Necochea comments that this position gave Harvey a wide range of powers: he administered the oficinas and salitreras belonging to the Chilean treasury; he had been delegated responsibility for signing contracts for nitrate exploitation; and he was the experienced adviser to the Chilean government on matters relating to the nitrate industry. However, it is this historian’s opinion that “in carrying out his functions Harvey acted with the most absolute lack of scruple”—“on

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several occasions he gave false reports to the Chilean government” (Ramírez Necochea 1958, 77). For these reasons, it is possible, even probable, that Robert Harvey knew that the intention of the Chilean government was to return the nitrate industry to private hands and honor the certificates, since he had remained as Inspector General of Nitrates, but this has not been substantiated.15 Harvey may in fact have been instrumental in encouraging the Chilean government to take this course of action. It is likely that Robert Harvey and John Thomas North became business associates in 1880 in the exploitation of an oficina and salitrera called the Peruana.16 But the major step came in 1881, when Harvey and North joined together in a formal partnership with Harvey as the managing director17—essentially to pursue nitrate certificates as a prelude to selling the salitreras at a tremendous profit to companies they expressly set up to exploit the concessions. Ramírez Necochea (1958, 77) writes that Harvey and North realized that the situation of the nitrate industry in the chaotic circumstances of the ongoing war was transitory and were able to subject the “terrified Peruvian industrialists” to extortion. This may be overharsh, although it seems certain that the Peruvian holders of nitrate certificates feared being harassed later by the Chilean government, given the military situation that was clearly going badly for Peru, and were presumably vulnerable to accepting whatever was offered for their bonds. On June 26, 1881, Robert Harvey married in Iquique a lady from an important Franco-Peruvian family in Lima, Alida María Godefroy. In 1882, Harvey followed (or accompanied) North to Britain to help establish joint stock companies grounded on the certificates they had obtained so cheaply, but was soon back in Chile, in May the following year, to set up equipment at the Ramírez oficina for their Liverpool Nitrate Company. Harvey became a director of several of the nitrate industries in the North empire and the related fields of banking and railways. When he returned to Cornwall in 1885, he was already a very rich man. He bought the Trenoweth estate in Cornwall and several properties in the Totnes area of Devon. In 1897, he became high sheriff of Devon, and in 1898 high sheriff of Cornwall. In 1901, Robert Harvey was knighted, and he died in Falmouth in 1930. The Times published an obituary for Sir Robert Harvey on March 17, 1930, which noted that he “played a great part in the employment of British capital in Chile, and through his intimate knowledge of conditions in that country he was able to perform great services to those companies in which he was interested.”

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Tracking down the certificates was only one half of the battle to gain final ownership; even at rock bottom prices North and Harvey needed cash for their purchase and to make up the necessary additional deposits. Much of the funding came through the Iquique branch of the Chilean Banco de Valparaíso,18 which was managed by another of North’s close acquaintances, John Dawson. Loaning money in this way does not seem to have been improper—the bank was dealing with established businessmen and the certificates were presumably offered as collateral—and Dawson remained a banker all his life, never becoming a director of a nitrate company. North and Dawson had probably met in the early 1870s during Dawson’s career as manager for the London Bank of Mexico and South America in Lima, Iquique (Peru), and Valparaíso. The New York Times mentions John Dawson in an item captioned “Suspension of Specie Payments by Peruvian banks” published on August 16, 1875—the pivotal year when Peru decided to nationalize the nitrate industry. The newspaper comments on the decision for Peruvian banks “to suspend specie payment of their obligations until they may be enabled to procure sufficient coin for their necessities”— indicative of the financial crisis then faced by Peru—and adds that John Dawson, “Director of the London Bank of Mexico and South America . . . believes this plan to be the only method of tiding over the financial difficulties of the situation.” Since the Peruvian government required his signature on any final agreement alongside those of the Peruvian bank managers, Dawson was clearly already a banker of great influence and importance. In 1879, the same year that the War of the Pacific broke out, John Dawson returned to Iquique, this time as manager of the Banco de Valparaíso, a post he held until 1886. In his study of A Century of Banking in Latin America, David Joslin (1963, 176) notes that Dawson tried unsuccessfully to convince his previous employers to give up the certificates they were holding in their Lima office, which suggests that he believed they constituted a healthy investment opportunity. As we shall see, Dawson was intimately involved in the setting up of North’s Bank of Tarapacá and London from 1888 (“Dawson . . . played the major role in its inception and early organisation”),19 and in making local arrangements for North’s triumphant visit to Iquique in 1889. The triangular business relationship was cemented when Robert Harvey became a director of North’s Tarapacá and London Bank in 1894. A third key business associate of North’s was Maurice Jewell, and so close did they become that North’s second son, born in September

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1883, was almost certainly named after him—Arthur Jewell North. Little is known about Maurice Jewell’s life prior to the War of the Pacific. We know that he was younger than North—he was born in Jersey in the Channel Islands around 184720 —and that they became friends during the 1870s. Harold Blakemore (1974, 24) writes that the British government appointed him as their first vice-consul in Iquique in 1879, quoting (in a footnote) “Foreign Office to St. John, London, 1 December 1879. F. O. 177/160. No. 21. Consular.” However, it is difficult to accept that the Foreign Office would take this step at the very outset of the war when Iquique had been overrun by an invading army, and much more likely that—if the year of 1879 is correct—Maurice Jewell was at best acknowledged in an honorary post or more probably as an unofficial agent to represent the interests of British citizens in the port. What is absolutely certain, since the documents have survived, 21 is that Jewell was already vice-consul in Iquique (probably appointed in 188722) when he was made consul by Letters Patent on June 1, 1889, 23 later confirmed officially for “Don Mauricio Jewell” on September 16 the same year in the name of the president of Chile, José Manuel Balmaceda. Their first partnership was the firm of North & Jewell, established in Iquique on April 6, 1881 (during the war) as a trading company— “a mercantile partnership”—to serve the nitrate mines and to act as representatives of shipping companies that plied the west coast of South America. Their business interests were apparently diverse; Ramírez Necochea (1958, 80) quotes a newspaper advert that appeared in the Iquique newspapers that reads “Ladrillos a fuego [Fire bricks]. Venden North y Jewell.” The agreement in Spanish between “Don Juan Tomás North” and “Don Mauricio Jewell” has survived24 and carries the seal of the “República de Chile”—at that time the occupying force in Iquique. The partners agreed to share equally the capital of 50,000 pesos. The “refining and export of nitrate” is specified in the contract, but there is a clause explaining that while the partners’ existing nitrate businesses came within the partnership,25 North’s participation (dating from 1878) in an oficina named “Porvenir”26 was excluded, as was any future investment in an oficina which North might acquire “on his own account.” The contract was intended to last for five years from the date of starting the business, but still had legal effect in 1893 since the agreement carries supplementary statements from the public notary and the Intendant’s office dated that year, as well as a witnessing statement in English from Herbert Arthur Robert Hervey—the British consul in Iquique from 1892 (who replaced Maurice Jewell in this post).

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North and Jewell entered into a second partnership in Iquique five years later, on April 21, 1886, in an agreement that would expire at the end of December 1889, but would be automatically extended by one year from each succeeding December unless one or both of them determined otherwise.27 The original agreement in Spanish and the official translation into English have both survived.28 Since North was at this time back in England, he was represented by John Dawson, who clearly played a significant role in looking after North’s business affairs while he was away from Chile. Maurice Jewell, however, was present; he had married Ada Margaret Brown (born in Valparaíso) in around 1885 and was settling down in Iquique, soon to bring up a family of three boys, Maurice, Richard, and Arthur.29 The agreement committed the partners to continue with the “mercantile partnership” in the firm of “North and Jewell,” which had been dissolved in March that year, with both partners having the right of signature as administrators. Maurice Jewell had the devolved responsibility of managing the business in Iquique, and in compensation he could draw for himself the annual sum of £1,000 from the firm’s accounts and live in the upper storey of the house belonging to the firm “free of any charge.” The partners were careful to make clear that they could independently engage in: any private commercial or civil business which is outside of the sphere of the general business of North & Jewell; that firm, however, being entitled to act as agents in any such private business, but so as not to be mixed up with the business done by the firm with its own Capital.

The concluding section points out that John Dawson’s power of attorney is not inserted in this deed at the request of the partners and also because “it is inserted in the Deed of dissolution of the old partnership.” This second deed of partnership is of special interest since a note was added in the margin from “a commissioner for oaths,” in both language versions, dated July 23, 1896 (soon after North’s unexpected death), which refers to the litigation between the North and Jewell families, and also to a sworn affidavit made by John Dawson. Maurice Jewell had also already died, on March 14 of the previous year during a visit to Chile,30 which precipitated the liquidation of the firm of “North & Jewell,” and prompted a claim by George Fleming (the executor of Maurice Jewell’s will) against John Thomas North that Jewell’s estate was owed 421,162.91 Chilean pesos with a further claim from the executor for 37,210.91 pesos.31 North never backed

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away from litigation and contested Fleming’s additional claim, so it is no surprise that the Jewell and North families only reached a final agreement after John Thomas North had passed away. This agreement has also survived, in the Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre,32 and is dated June 30, 1896. The agreement is between George Fleming, as the executor of Maurice Jewell’s last will and testament, and North’s executors Jane North (his widow), Harry North (his son), George Alexander Lockett (his son-in-law), and their solicitor named John Wreford Budd. Fleming argued that Maurice Jewell’s heirs were entitled to a share of the profits in the business up to the end of the year in which he died—to December 31, 1895. The additional claim against North was clearly a bone of contention during his lifetime, and afterwards—“this claim was not admitted either by the said John Thomas North in his lifetime or by his executors since his death,” reads the document, and had caused “protracted negotiations and discussions.” Nevertheless, the parties agreed “to compromise and settle all questions and differences in relation thereto on the terms following.” The decision was for the North family to pay the Jewell family the sum of £36,000, which included interest accruing from the end of 1895, “and shall be accepted in full satisfaction and discharge of all the share and interest of the said Maurice Jewell deceased in the partnership business of North & Jewell as lately carried on at Iquique in Chili.” In addition to this settlement, Maurice Jewell’s widow received his shares in several of the companies that will appear in this narrative. They included the Paccha & Jazpampa Nitrate Company and the Lagunas Nitrate Company, as well as the Arauco Company Limited, and the Bank of Tarapacá and London Limited.33 These companies, and many others, arose from the moves made by John Thomas North and his associates to launch joint stock companies in London to exploit the concessions that they had acquired and to sell the nitrate industries to these companies. To achieve this objective, North needed to get back quickly to Britain, and he did so in 1882. Who’s Chairman of This Meeting? One of the Nitrate King’s most recent amusing exploits took place at a Birmingham charity dinner, over which in festive mood he presided. “It is safe to say,” wrote a local gossip, “that the gallant colonel made a remarkable impression on his hearers, among whom were three peers of the realm, six members of Parliament, one baronet, and a number of well-known local people. Colonel North likes his meetings to be

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breezy, and it is not his fault if he is disappointed. The great scene of the evening was between Lord Dunsany and Colonel North. The Colonel had complained about the length of certain speeches, of which Lord Dunsany’s was one, and had observed of another address that it was an excellent speech with some sense in it, for it only lasted two minutes. Then Lord Dunsany got up to make a little statement, and the Colonel ordered him to sit down. ‘But,’ said his lordship, ‘I must * * *.’ ‘Sit down,’ said the Colonel, ‘Who’s chairman of this meeting?’ The Lord appealed to the company. He was denied the opportunity of making an important announcement. The chairman had stopped him, and he regarded it as a reflection on his honour. ‘I have nothing to do with your honour,’ retorted the chairman. ‘Thank God you haven’t,’ said Lord Dunsany with appropriate and convincing gesticulations.” —The Star, New Zealand. “An Extraordinary Man,” July 2, 1896

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Chapter 4

The Nitrate King

I’m wealthy now—I’ve married tons of coin, My wife’s the Silver Queen, and all her mines are mine. You know me not? My wealth away I fling, East, West, and South. I’m North the Nitrate King.1 —Cinderella’s father to his creditors in the pantomime “Cinderella,” December 1889

John Thomas North’s return to Britain in May 1882 would have

gone largely unnoticed—initially. He carried with him the title deeds to several oficinas, including the Peruana, Jazpampa, Ramírez, Primitiva, Virginia, and Buen Retiro plants, 2 and he now turned his attention to introducing himself and promoting his acquisitions. His aim was to form joint stock companies to exploit these nitrates holdings. One of his first steps was to join the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. His application for membership has survived, and is dated August 22, 1882. He describes himself as an “Engineer & General Merchant” with a business address given as “Iquique, West Coast South America Chili,” and an address in England at “Cedars, East Dulwich Road, Peckham, London SE.” The proposer for his membership provided a supporting text on “the particulars of the professional career of the Candidate”: Served apprenticeship as Millwright and Engineer at Messrs. Shaw, North, & Watson, Leeds, afterwards Foreman for several years at Messrs. Fowlers Steam Plough Works. For several years as Contractor & Consulting Engineer in Peru & Chili, at present, partner in the Engineering Works of “North, Humphrey and Dickinson” also as steam ship owner & General Merchant on the West Coast.

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Image 4.1 “Nitrate Works in Chile,” Melton Prior. The Illustrated London News, November 16, 1889, p. 623.

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Image 4.2 “Fichas” (tokens) used in mining settlements in Chile (author’s collection).

Little is known about the engineering works mentioned in this application, but William Russell describes seeing three nitrate crushing machines at the Ramírez oficina in 1889 manufactured by “Messrs. North, Humphrey, and Dickinson, of the Tarapacá Foundry, Iquique.”3 Jack B. Pfeiffer (1952) describes the company as a foundry in Tarapacá that was capable of manufacturing nitrate crushing machines, and one of five British-dominated firms in Chile focused on the manufacture of heavy equipment in the 1800s.4 Soon after arriving in England, North looked up John Waite, whom he had entertained in 1877 in Pisagua while the latter was on a business trip to Peru. John Waite was one of four partners in the Liverpool merchant trading company of William & Jno. [John] Lockett.5 This company had started in the 1830s as a business focused on importing wine and had expanded into overseas trade using their own sailing ships. The company had a special interest in Peru—it acted as the agents in Britain for a Scottish sugar planter in that country. With Lockett brothers’ finance, the Liverpool Nitrate Company Limited was established in 1883, based on the Ramírez oficina, with

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North as chairman and Robert Harvey as one of the directors. Over time, the Locketts’ ties with North became very strong: they backed the Colorado Nitrate Company based on the Buen Retiro oficina in 1885; members of the family held several directorships in North’s companies;6 North’s daughter Emma married George Alexander Lockett in 1892; and they even launched a ship christened the J. T. North. The Liverpool Nitrate Company set North on the road to universal acclaim as “the nitrate king.” This was no exaggeration; North and his associates controlled a major share of a global monopoly, since the only substantial deposits of salitre (sodium nitrate) in the world are found in the desert region of what is now northern Chile, in a band that is roughly thirty kilometers wide and seven hundred kilometers long. Geologists believe that saline water formed in shallow lakes in this area and that bacteria fixed the nitrogen into sodium nitrate. Chilean nitrate was used as fertilizer, underpinning the huge expansion of agriculture in the world toward the end of the nineteenth century. The paradox is that while “itself a powerful fertilizer of exhausted soils, the nitrate is unable to support a vestige of life”7 in the northern Chilean desert. Nitrate continues today as a strategic source of iodine, and was employed as an ingredient in the manufacture of explosives, until the synthetic manufacture of nitrate started during the First World War. This third property had been known in Chile from the earliest exploitation of sodium nitrate, when it was used as a blasting agent in the Tarapacá region in the second half of the seventeenth century. However, it was only in 1808 that a European formula for converting caliche (the unrefined nitratebearing rock or gravel) into sodium nitrate was successfully applied, leading to the export of the product through Iquique to Lima. Despite Spain’s prohibition of nitrate during the War of Independence, it was mined and used by the patriots to make gunpowder.8 Following Spain’s defeat, Tarapacá lay in Peruvian territory, and the early miners were Peruvian, to be joined later by Chilean and other foreign entrepreneurs, including an early English pioneer named George Smith who set up the La Noria oficina around 1830. Smith had traveled extensively in 1827 with his friend William Bollaert, at the invitation of the Intendant of Tarapacá, to map the nitrate deposits for the Peruvian government. Bollaert called George Smith “one of the first nitrate refiners” (Bollaert 1860, 255). In 1853, Smith contracted Bollaert to publicize the nitrate business and attract capital investment for improvements to the La Noria oficina. In 1854, Smith was joined by Melbourne Clark and William Bollaert

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in a partnership to exploit La Noria, and Bollaert approached the firm of William Gibbs and Company in Lima for further investment.9 Interest in the nitrate found in Antofagasta—belonging to Bolivia until the War of the Pacific—came later, but, as we have seen, this also had a strong British involvement from the beginning. The firms of Melbourne Clark (a group of British and Chilean investors) and William Gibbs had taken over the business started by José Santos Ossa and Francisco Puelma, and by 1872 the firm had established the Antofagasta Nitrate and Railroad Company. Juan Ricardo Couyoumdjian explains in his history of nitrate mining (2000, 12) that the first shipment of nitrate for Europe left Iquique in 1830, consigned to the Peter Aikman trading house in Glasgow.10 However, on arrival in Liverpool, most of the cargo was thrown overboard because there was little interest among potential buyers.11 Fortunately, some sacks of nitrate did make it to farmers in Scotland, who were pleased with its properties as a fertilizer. Oscar Bermúdez (1963, 106) adds that in 1834, Aikman bought 5,336 tons of nitrate in Iquique, and that he was the first to export a small quantity of nitrate from Scotland to Germany. Charles Darwin was in Iquique in 1835, and wrote in his diary that he visited the “Saltpetre works [that] . . . are the present support of Iquique; during one year the value of 100 thousand pounds sterling was exported to France & England” (Beagle Diary, July 12, 1835). Darwin noted that “the Nitrate of Soda, purified by solution in boiling water, is sold at the Ships side at 14 shillings the 100 pounds” (July 14, 1835). Nevertheless, until the middle of the nineteenth century, exploitation was rudimentary and precarious, characterized by small communities with little capital investment and suffering frequent failure in the harsh desert region. Couyoumdjian (2000, 13) points out that the pioneering initiative to set up a company along modern lines was taken by Williamson & Company, founded in Peru by an Englishman named John Williamson. In 1851, this company ran ten oficinas, but had overreached itself in the difficult terrain and later had to sell off its assets. These included salitreras that were purchased by Gibbs & Company. Gibbs became, along with John Thomas North, a major player in nitrate investments. They were also a competitor of his, in part because they suffered from his monopolistic business practices, and also because they resented North as a Johnny-come-lately in the nitrate industry who they regarded as a mere speculator and not a legitimate businessman in the same class as themselves. A significant milestone in foreign investment in nitrate came in November 1865, when Gibbs bought up all of the properties belonging

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to George Smith & Company in Tarapacá, to form the Compañía de Salitres de Tarapacá (Tarapacá Nitrates Company), with a capital of £10,000 shared between Gibbs (7/12), George Smith (3/12), and Melbourne Clark (2/12). This business was based initially on the oficinas of La Carolina and La Noria (later known as Limeña).12 Several more nitrate companies began to appear from 1870, soon after North had arrived on the scene, with around 40 percent in foreign hands by 1875 when, as we have seen, the Peruvian government determined to take the industry into state ownership. The nitrate boom, however, started with the War of the Pacific when, soon after the Chilean government’s decision in 1882 to return the deposits to private enterprise, British interests (especially North’s group and Gibbs) owned about 34 percent of the industry, with some 36 percent in Chilean hands.13 North’s activities on his return to England in 1882 set off a nitrate boom on the London Stock Exchange, and before the decade was over, British investments came to dominate the industry, especially the companies and ancillary businesses established by North and his associates. From 1882 until North’s death in 1896, more than thirty joint stock companies were founded in Britain focused on the exploitation of and trade in nitrate, and many of these were started by North.14 Twenty-five of these companies were still in operation at the end of 1896. Although the flotations were initially slow to start, by 1886 three companies had been established, all of them organized by North, and all run from the same office in Liverpool. These were the Liverpool Nitrate Company (registered February 3, 1883—to exploit the Ramírez oficina); the Colorado Nitrate Company (1885—the Buen Retiro, Nueva Carolina, Pozo Almonte, and Peruana oficinas); and the Primitiva Nitrate Company (1886—the Primitiva and Abra de Quiroga oficinas). In the same year of 1886, North and Harvey also acquired the Paccha oficina from the Chilean government— the basis for the Paccha Nitrate Company and, later, for the Paccha and Jazpampa Nitrate Company (1889).15 In 1888, North and Harvey founded the San Pablo Nitrate Company, with a capital of £160,000,16 and by then the center of North’s operations had moved from Liverpool to London. The Ramírez oficina, belonging to the Liverpool Nitrate Company, was the first to be exploited by North as a joint stock company registered in Britain, and it turned out to be one of the most productive in his portfolio of nitrates investments. This oficina had been nationalized by Peru, had cost the partners just £5,000 when

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they purchased the corresponding certificates (with a face value of £13,750), and was sold by North and Robert Harvey to the company for £50,000.17 The company was registered in Liverpool with a capital of £150,000.18 North delegated preparations to Robert Harvey, and in early 1883 Harvey was busy purchasing the machinery they needed from England, which included boilers, pumps, and tools.19 Harvey returned to Iquique on May 15, 1883, along with a group of English workers, to begin work on building the plant, in readiness for the arrival of the machinery, in December that year. Couyoumdjian (2000, 20) comments that the design of the plant “incorporated all the latest technological advances and integrated them with the most modern systems of transport available.” Examples include the illumination of working areas with electric arc lamps, the first telephone to be installed in the nitrate fields (connecting Pozo Almonte with Iquique), and the novel use of portable railway tracks known as “Grieg’s Patent Portable Railway.” The Liverpool Nitrate Company was a significant flagship enterprise for North and paid high dividends to shareholders for the duration of the nitrate boom in shares on the London Stock Market. Hernán Ramírez Necochea (1958, 66) provides figures showing a dividend of 26 percent paid in 1885, then 20 percent in 1886, rising to 40 percent in both 1887 and 1888. The £5 shares came to be traded at £35, although the price dropped to £26 in January 1889, when the boom was starting to run out of steam. Not content with simply investing in nitrate as a product, North and his group diversified into ancillary businesses. North bought a major interest in the Nitrate Railways Company, which held the sole concession for railways in the nitrate fields of Tarapacá. Another railway followed—the Arauco Railway Company—giving North access to the coal deposits near Lota, needed for the gas plants he had installed in his nitrate oficinas. In September 1888, North took control of the Tarapacá Waterworks Company, which supplied Iquique’s water needs from spring waters at Pica, and in 1889 he created the Nitrate Provisions Supply Company, with Robert Harvey as chairman of the board, as well as the Nitrate and General Investment Trust Company Ltd. With so much business under North’s control, a bank was needed, and this led to the founding of the Bank of Tarapacá and London, launched at the end of 1888. This diversification of business interests arising out of North’s nitrate investments is described in chapter 5. In a remarkably short time, spanning the War of the Pacific, British investments in the nitrate industry blossomed from a minority stake

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in 187520 to 70 percent of the total value by 1890. Ramírez Necochea (1958, 68) estimates that toward 1889, there was a British investment of around £10,000,000 in Chilean nitrates. North’s name became synonymous with the industry, but he was not the only British investor. Couyoumdjian (2000, 14) mentions a businessman named W. MacAndrew who set up in England the London Nitrate Company (1887), 21 the Santa Luisa Company (1888), and the Lautaro Company (1889), and later became an associate of North’s in the Tarapacá region. James Drew exploited the Mercedes oficina from 1890. Another British company was the Agua Santa oficina founded by the British firm of Campbell, Outram and Company in 1874, 22 which became a thorn in the side of North’s railway investments in the following decade. James Inglis was also a significant British investor; he acquired the San Donato23 and Puntunchara oficinas for his trading company. “Even members of the British parliament promoted companies, such as F. H. Evans, in the case of the Tamarugal Nitrate Company, founded in 1889, who was also a director of the Santa Luisa and Lautaro companies” (Couyoumdjian, 2000, 14). Another British company was the Rosario Nitrate Company, organized in London in 1889. A very significant British player in nitrates was Gibbs & Company, second only to North in importance, and frequently overshadowed in historical accounts due to North’s brilliance in promoting himself. Gibbs & Company had a much earlier start in business than North, having been founded in London in 1808 as Antony Gibbs & Sons. The founder, Antony Gibbs, concentrated at first on trading in Spain, with his two sons, William and George, taken later into the partnership. Following Antony Gibbs’ death, the sons concentrated initially on trade in guano from the former Spanish colonies, taking advantage of the postindependence republics’ freedom to engage in commerce. The company opened a branch in Lima in 1822 as William Gibbs & Company, and then in Chile opened first in Valparaíso in 1822, and in Santiago in 1826. Later in the century, in 1880, during the War of the Pacific, a Chilean subsidiary was opened in Valparaíso and was called Gibbs & Company. This subsidiary and Antony Gibbs & Sons (London) became known collectively as “The House of Gibbs,” as merchants and bankers, in a partnership where the London firm was the senior partner. Gibbs was not at first a significant company, until the Lima branch negotiated an exclusive contract with the Peruvian government to trade in guano in 1842, which was sold in England as fertilizer and produced huge profits. When the Peruvian monopoly in guano trade was taken away from Gibbs in 1861, the firm sought

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to diversify by investing in railways and nitrate. Gibbs was the major partner in the Tarapacá Nitrates Company (founded in 1865, before North had even arrived in Chile), and around 1871 they became the sole owner of this company. In 1869, while North was probably working as a mechanic in Carrizal Bajo, Gibbs became the largest shareholder in a company exploiting nitrate in the then Bolivian province of Antofagasta to the south of Tarapacá. In 1870, the firm acquired the Sacramento oficina. Following Peru’s decision to nationalize the nitrate industries, Gibbs administered the state nitrate company for Peru in the period 1875 to 1878, during the time that Robert Harvey was Inspector General of Nitrates. Gibbs opened an office in Iquique in 1881, following Chile’s first victories in the War of the Pacific, where the firm specialized in imports, especially of machinery for the nitrate industry, and the export of nitrate. As a consequence of the War of the Pacific, Gibbs obtained the Peruvian certificates for the La Palma, La Patria, and the Jazpampa oficinas, although the latter was later taken over by North’s group, who set up the Jazpampa Nitrate Company. During the 1880s, only North was more prominent than Gibbs in promoting nitrate companies; they owned eight oficinas, including those named Alianza, Tamarugal, Salar del Carmen, and Pan de Azucar. Branches were opened in other nitrate region towns and in the ports of Antofagasta and Mejillones. The firm’s export business focused on nitrate, and they had a monopoly for many years on the production and sale of iodine, a by-product of the nitrate industry. And yet, it was John Thomas North who became the undisputed “nitrate king” following his return to Britain. North had a flair for self-promotion, and soon there was a nitrate boom on the London Stock Exchange, driven by speculation and the dream of quick and enormous profits, all led by North’s flamboyant personality. There was a rush to buy shares in North’s nitrate companies, and at first large profits were made, stimulating the fever to invest, but grossly overvaluing the real worth of the investments. There were also two underlying systemic problems—price fluctuations on the world market and overproduction. Nitrates were mainly used as fertilizer and were very dependent on demand from farmers and their ability to purchase the product.24 When farmers could not afford the fertilizer, or bought in smaller quantities because of fluctuations in the prices they earned for their agricultural produce, the nitrate producers found that the price dropped, threatening not only their profits but the public’s confidence in the companies’ shares. A contributory factor was the tax levied on nitrate exports by the Chilean

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government, “representing no less than thirty and as much as seventy per cent of the price of nitrate in Chile.”25 The strategy adopted by the producers was to publicize the benefits of using nitrate as a fertilizer and to limit production whenever necessary through cartels, which were named “combinations.” John Thomas North played a leading role in both activities. There was nothing exceptional in that period about setting up a cartel, although this one was unusual given the world monopoly on the product enjoyed by Chile. The first combination aimed at a 20 percent reduction in overall output and lasted from June 1884 to the end of 1886. This cartel was backed mainly by nitrate producers in the province of Tarapacá, including companies owned by the North group.26 This was moderately successful, since nitrate exports dropped from just over twelve million quintals27 to nine-and-a-half million quintals between 1884 and 1885, and prices rose in 1885, only to drop again in 1886. The cartel fell apart in December 1886 due to friction between the producers, and in fact world demand increased in 1887. This rivalry among producers was intense, and “the widespread belief that [production] allotments were inequitably distributed induced many producers to exceed their quotas” (Brown, 1963: 233). Those producers who had lower costs, often because they had invested in a new refining method known as the Shanks process, 28 wanted to be treated differentially, and several refused to join the cartel. Regulating world prices in this way obviously had the potential of bringing the producers into conflict with the Chilean authorities— although the government did support this first combination—since tax revenue was affected by the reduced quantity of nitrate exported, and naturally with the workers too when they found themselves laid off as a result. It was especially galling to the government that they were, at least in the early years, largely bystanders to decisions made by foreigners acting within their country. J. R. Brown comments that “This development so stirred nationalist sentiment that the Chilean commitment to private enterprise and the laissez-faire theory was seriously challenged” (Brown 1963, 231). In an article published by The Economist on March 23, 1889, captioned “The Fall in Nitrate Securities,” the journalist quotes a report to the Foreign Office by the British Consul in Valparaíso (W. H. Newman): “It is no secret that there is a considerable amount of jealousy felt and expressed at the fact that the profits on an article which is essentially a Chilean monopoly should go chiefly in the pockets of foreigners.” As we shall see, this is relevant to our understanding of the factors at play in the

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Chilean Civil War of 1891 and the polemic of North’s alleged active meddling in this conflict. But this lay in the future, and in the meantime there was a nitrate bonanza in the following period from 1887 to 188929 when great profits were made by North and all the nitrate producers; but a glut in the market, continual overproduction, and overcapitalization of the joint stock companies in England provoked another crisis. This led to the second combination, engineered by the Permanent Nitrate Committee, which North established in London in 1889 at his business address of 3 Gracechurch Street.30 The principal aims of the Permanent Nitrate Committee were to publicize the advantages of nitrate as a fertilizer; promote agrarian research; keep the business prominent in the media through lobbying and paid announcements; and decide on production quotas whenever necessary. As an example, an advertisement published in August 189431 referred to reports in the specialized farming press that had recently commented unfavorably on the quality of the nitrate of soda. The Committee thundered that they: “HEREBY GIVE AN EMPHATIC CONTR ADICTION TO SUCH STATEMENTS, THE ANALYSIS OF CARGOES OF NITR ATE OF SODA HAVING NEVER BEEN MORE UNIFORM THAN OF LATE” (capitals in the original). But the overriding objective of the second combination was clearly political, and monopolistic. North’s Permanent Nitrate Committee proposed that 70 percent of the nitrate export allotments be assigned to British companies, which exacerbated the rivalry that existed between “West Coast producers” (Chilean and resident foreigners) and the British “Nitrate Ring,” led by North, which in 1890 accounted for 60 percent of output.32 This second cartel was opposed by José Manuel Balmaceda, who had become president of Chile in 1886, so much so that it was only operational from March 1891—after Chile’s Civil War had started. Carmenza Gallo (2008, 171–2) points out that Balmaceda “argued that reduction of output would decrease revenues, affect nitrate mineworkers negatively, decrease commerce, encourage the development of synthetic fertilizers, and promote the formation of a foreign (i.e. English) monopoly that did not have Chilean interests at heart.” After Balmaceda’s forces were defeated by the Congressional party and Balmaceda committed suicide, Jorge Montt Álvarez became the president and followed a policy that was (to the surprise of the producers) similarly antagonistic to combinations and foreign control of the nitrate industry, and especially hostile to what was termed John Thomas North’s “nitrate ring.” President Montt threatened the cartel

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with legislation if there was a significant drop in production and also sold government-owned salitreras in an effort to boost production. Nevertheless, the collapse of this second combination in April 1894 was actually precipitated by North’s decision that his new investment in the Lagunas Nitrate Company would not join the cartel, and nitrate prices plummeted in 1895.33 North’s investments in the Lagunas salitrera constitute an interesting example of his approach to business. North organized the Lagunas Syndicate Limited in 1889, the year of his visit to Chile, and he was one of the three named liquidators when proceedings to voluntarily wind up this company started in January 1895.34 The Lagunas Nitrate Company Limited, also organized by North, came into being in June 1894. The share capital was given as £900,000, and the seven directors included North (as chairman), Robert Harvey, Maurice Jewell, and George Fleming, who were also directors in the Lagunas Syndicate company. These directors were essentially selling the assets of the syndicate to themselves, at a profit, although this was not clear to shareholders at the time. The advertisement placed in the national press35 named North’s Bank of Tarapacá and London as the company’s banker; the firm of “North and Jewell” of Iquique as the “port agents” in Chile; and “Messrs. W. & J. Lockett” in Liverpool as the “mercantile agents in England.” Although North did not disclose this at the time, he was in fact entitled to a share of the profits that resulted from the agreement with the firm of Locketts. The stated intention was to acquire from the Lagunas Syndicate an oficina “in complete working order” as well as “a portion only” of the syndicate’s nitrate salitreras, “which are believed to contain the richest deposit of caliche in the Province of Tarapacá, Republic of Chile.” The final purchase price was contracted at £850,000, consisting of £550,000 in cash and £300,000 in fully paid shares in the new company.36 The announcement included inducements to potential share buyers, including the “direct communication” with the port of Iquique over the Nitrate Railways Company railway, and the “right of using one-third of the surplus water of the Syndicate after supplying to the extent of 3,000 gallons a day the prior requirements of the Nitrate Railways Company.” Both the railway and the supply of water were North businesses. The offer came with the glowing deposition that: The Directors believe that owing to the valuable nature of the caliche deposit, and the facilities for manufacture which will be possessed by the Company, the profits from the production of nitrate will be very large . . . and they have reason to believe that the dividends which this

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Company will be able to pay will be very large. In their opinion, the Company is acquiring a property at a favourable price, and on conditions most satisfactory to the new Company.

The Economist was far from convinced and warned its readers in June 1894 “to take these picturesque statements with a few grains of salt” in an article captioned “The New Nitrate Rig,”37 since “Experience has taught us that Colonel North38 wears very rose-coloured spectacles when he is engaged in bringing out a new company.” Colonel North is a bold man. Barely five years have passed since the collapse of the nitrate boom, which carried with it widespread disaster and inflicted ruin upon many a poor investor who had been beguiled by the Colonel’s bluff and confident optimism into buying, at a high premium, shares in the companies which he came over here to promote. Barely five years, yet he is again to the fore with new projects, and is talking and manipulating in the same old vein of jubilant prophecy. The investing public must, indeed, have short memories if they are so soon ready to listen once more to the voice of the charmer.

The piece added, very knowledgably, that: Everybody connected with the Stock Exchange knows perfectly well that the old familiar methods have again been resorted to, and that nitrate shares have been bid up in order to make the public think there must be something good in store . . . The whole manoeuvring is too palpable. We are evidently on the threshold of another well organised and systematic attempt to entice buyers to come in at greatly enhanced prices before the bubble has had time to burst. Somebody will no doubt make money out of this business, but we question if it will be the investing public.

The Economist concluded that “It is . . . our duty to draw attention to what has taken place under Colonel North’s auspices before, and to remind investors that they have no sort of guarantee that a similar catastrophe may not take place again.” The new company was not a success for investors. In December 1894, a half-year’s dividend of 15 percent per annum was paid, but this was the only share dividend that was ever paid. There was also friction between the two Lagunas companies, which shared the same boards of directors until the end of December 1895—a cozy arrangement that was concealed from the shareholders in the new company, and only came to light after an independent audit at the end of 1895. There then followed a long legal battle that pitted the new directors of the Lagunas Nitrate Company (with North now removed)

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against the Lagunas Syndicate (with North as chairman). The syndicate was taken to court in January 1896 “for rescission of the contract and damages, on the ground of misrepresentation, misfeasance, breach of trust, and concealment of material facts” contained in the prospectus and contract.39 The syndicate directors chose to liquidate the company, but their shareholders were, not surprisingly, displeased with this action. In July 1896, shortly after North died, The Times 40 reported on an extraordinary general meeting of the Lagunas Syndicate Limited at which the shareholders were informed that the liquidation of this company had been concluded. This had led to legal proceedings started against the liquidators, including North, “and an application was made to the Court for an injunction to prevent the closing of the liquidation.” It seems that the meeting was acrimonious; The Times reported that “a resolution in favour of paying the chairman [of the liquidators] £220 for his services was negatived [sic] by a considerable majority.” The Times summarized the history of litigation in its report on the case before the High Court of Justice published on February 10, 1898. While not alleging fraud, the Lagunas Nitrate Company’s accusation, when the case came for trial in July 1897, against North’s Syndicate was that the property was sold at an exorbitant price and without independent investigation, and that the prospectus did not disclose the onerous nature of certain agreements mentioned therein as beneficial: that the nitrate works and water supply agreed to be sold as actually completed at the date of the contract for sale had not been in fact then completed; and that the water supply agreed therein to be supplied was not in existence, and what there was was wholly inadequate; and that the prospectus contained misrepresentations in these respects.

The syndicate had denied these charges and contended that the root problem was the fall in nitrate prices. The lawyer acting for North’s executors (he had died in May 1896) argued that “It was for those who besmirched [North’s] character and threw doubt on his bona fides to prove their case by substantive affirmative evidence,”41 adding that “Nitrate adventures were undoubtedly of a most speculative kind [and] what the plaintiffs sought was to turn speculation into certainty, whereas it was the charm of uncertainty which had attracted the shareholders.” The lawyer ended his address by stating that North’s executors “desired that any imputations cast upon Colonel North should be absolutely cleared away by evidence,” to

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the extent that he asked the judge not to consider a “non-suit,” “even if they were entitled to it.” The judge dismissed the action, subject to inquiries into possible damages that may have resulted from the plant not being ready and the water supply being insufficient. The Lagunas Nitrate Company appealed, and in June 1899 their case was dismissed on several grounds, including the principle that company directors “are not personally liable for losses which the company may suffer by reason of their mistakes or errors in judgment.” In the meantime, the firm of W. & J. Lockett took legal action against both the Lagunas Syndicate and the Lagunas Nitrate Company, in July 1898. Locketts cited an agreement of December 1891 between North, the syndicate, and themselves whereby Locketts constituted the “sole mercantile agents” in England for a period of ten years. Locketts argued that this agreement was binding on the new nitrate company when it was established in June 1894, and the Queen’s Bench Division Commercial Court ruled in favor of the firm of Locketts.42 When The Economist warned its readers in 1894 to avoid the Lagunas Nitrate Company, it reminded investors of what had happened to other earlier companies organized by North, “which were rushed on the guileless investor under the glamour of his then ascendant influence.”43 The journal focused in particular on the fortunes of the Primitiva Nitrate Company, established in 1886, with financial backing from Locketts, and the third company to be floated on North’s return to England that helped crown him as “the nitrate king.” The Economist recalled that in 1888 dividends of ten shillings and twenty shillings respectively had been paid in two quarterly payments, and that dividends of twenty shillings each had been paid in the first two quarters of 1889, “but from that time to this the shareholders have never received a penny piece.”44 Confidence in the Primitiva, and other oficinas in Colonel North’s portfolio, began to wane during and immediately after his visit to Chile in early 1889. The Express reported in September 188945 on doubts raised the British Consul in Valparaíso, and North’s vigorous response to allegations of overproduction. “I hold my nitrate shares,” declared the Colonel with a stamp of his foot, “as an investment; and so well satisfied am I with the interest and security they afford, that I am constantly adding to the number of shares I already hold.”

A year later, while presiding over an annual meeting of the Primitiva in Liverpool in December 1890, North was compelled to address the problem of reporting a net loss and the reports that “had lately been

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circulated as to the position of the Primitiva Company.”46 With his typical bluster, North “could tell [the shareholders] that the company was not in a bankrupt state, as had been alleged. Their property was not mortgaged, neither did they owe anything like what was alleged to the banks.” As usual, North sought to boost confidence by pointing out that he and his family held 11,370 shares in the company and “he had contracts for thousands of shares which he bought after seeing the property . . . The shareholders of the Primitiva had a good property. It did not pay them now, but it would do so.” But it did not, and the cracks became increasingly difficult to paper over. At a meeting in November 1894, North had to admit that the year’s results were poor, but that “no one was more disappointed than himself at the results of last year’s working.”47 This was too much for one shareholder named J. E. Rayner who complained that in 1890 the directors had failed to obtain accurate information that was available, and since then there had been nothing but mistakes and disappointments. [Rayner] was afraid that the statement of accounts did not show the true position of the company, and with a view to an independent valuation he moved that the report and accounts be not adopted and this meeting be adjourned for a month.

North responded by suggesting that if Rayner joined the board to help the directors “nobody would be more pleased than himself,” and added that: “This company had cost him over £200,000 besides his time. If any shareholder present wanted to sell, he would buy his shares at one-half more than the market price.” The bluster worked, for the moment, and the motion was voted against. But it was forestalling the inevitable. In November 1895, The Pall Mall Gazette 48 railed at the directors’ attempt to “hush up the Primitiva past” and declared that “the shares are now next to worthless, and the shareholders are asked to assume a liability of ten shillings a share in order to pay debts to the bankers at Iquique which should never have been incurred.” The Gazette added that: It is no use dwelling upon such minor points as Colonel North’s unloading of his holding which we have proved up to the hilt in spite of his denial. The practical question now before the shareholders is as to whether culpable mismanagement is not suggested by such a remarkable history as that of the company and whether they cannot recoup themselves at the expense of those responsible for their cruel losses.

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The Gazette bitterly called attention to “the so-called accounts” and its disgust at “the meaningless jingle of the auditor’s certificate repeated year after year,” which merely says that if the books of the company kept at Liverpool are correct, if the books kept at Primitiva are correct, if the stocks of material and stores have been correctly taken, then the balance-sheet exhibits a true view of the company’s position.

The journalist posed an “if” of his own, that if the balance sheet showed the true position of the company, then where was the reserve fund of £40,000? He added that “Colonel North ‘in his bluff hearty manner’ says that he does not know—he has not got it,” and concluded that “It is all a grim, ghastly joke.” In the same month of November 1895, The Economist also weighed in with devastating criticism of John Thomas North and his running of the Primitiva company, which they said was once valued at a million-and-a-half pounds and was now admitted by North to be worth about £20,000. For the grossly exaggerated estimates which induced foolish investors to buy Primitiva shares at nearly 700 per cent premium it is not uncharitable to say that Colonel North is mainly responsible. In his bluff, bucolic manner, he used to spare no effort in trumpeting the wonderful results that lay in store for Primitiva shareholders, while his pet phrase, to those who deemed themselves fortunate in being permitted to consult the “Nitrate King,” was “buy and hold.” It was, indeed, the Primitiva “boom” which, for a time, made Colonel North the most talked-about man of his generation, the embodiment of British energy, success, and opulence; but of late the Colonel’s lucky star has not been in the ascendant, even apart from the Primitiva business.49

For good measure, The Economist added that while North was advising investors to “buy and hold” he had been quietly divesting himself of shares in the Primitiva. In a piece published a week later, The Economist accused North of “a direct lie” and disclosed that when they checked the share registers for the company at Somerset House, they found that North had sold 7,247 shares out of his original holding of 11,325—“the transactions can scarcely have escaped his memory.”50 The weekly then challenged North to explain matters, “if he wishes to sustain whatever reputation for truthfulness and straightforwardness he may now possess.” But it seems that the shareholders still held a belief in North, or perhaps they felt that they had no

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choice. The Economist took up the story again at the end of November 1895,51 at the time of the Primitiva’s annual meeting, where North dismissed the issue of selling his shares “in his usual blustering manner” (he said he had sold them to family members) and proposed a voluntary liquidation of the company, charging the liquidator with reconstructing the company to be registered under the same name.52 The Economist commented that “The shareholders have decided to go blindly into the new venture, and they will have themselves to blame if the new experience is no more satisfactory than the old.”53 But the time when North could have his way through bluff and force of personality was drawing rapidly to a close. The new Primitiva company was wound up the following year, losing all its capital. It is very probable that the stress this all caused to John Thomas North contributed to his unexpected death in May 1896. The New York Times reported in August that year, somewhat cruelly, in a piece headlined “Col. North Denounced: His Treatment Of Shareholders Declared Little Better Than Robbery,”54 that North “was fortunate in dying when and as he did,” although this was probably true. Recent disclosures as to the business methods of the Colonel and his close associates have excited intense indignation in a majority of the Lagunas Nitrate Company’s shareholders, and at a recent extraordinary meeting held by them extremely harsh things were said about the dead speculator.

This chapter would not be complete without referring to the other key stakeholders in the nitrate industry—the workers. “Although the pay was better than in the farming areas [of Chile], life was very hard: in daytime the work took place from sunrise to sunset, with a heat of at least forty degrees [centigrade] in the summer. At night the cold and the coastal fog penetrated land, rocks, and bodies. The conditions of accommodation, workers’ social security, public health, medical care, recreation, education, religion, and other areas were very distant from present-day parameters” (Couyoumdjian 2000, 14, author’s translation). Sadly for the historical record, as Rory Miller (1993, 174) points out, “The nitrate companies seem to have been some of the worst British employers in Latin America.” While the money earned tended to be higher than the wages paid in central Chile, much of this difference was lost when the cost of living was taken into consideration. Many British nitrate companies, including North’s, continued to pay with fichas (tokens), although ruled illegal from 1852 in Peru. According to

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Couyoumdjian (2000, 15), the ficha was first introduced by the British in Chile and Peru as an alternative to money, and from around 1850 in the salitreras and oficinas of then Peruvian Tarapacá. This was later justified by the lack of small change prevalent in Chile, the danger of robbery while traveling across the pampa, and the flight of money to the Chilean south. The tokens were embossed with the name of the nitrate plant and were valid only at the oficina that emitted them. Bergquist (1986) describes how this operated. The workers were paid once a month, and between pay days they could receive an advance in fichas. The companies ran their own stores, called pulperías, which sold food, clothing, water, tools, and so on, where the fichas were redeemed. “Nitrate companies restricted commerce by outsiders and routinely expected profits from the company store to defray about 10 percent of their labor costs. At some oficinas this percentage was much higher. Especially in the early years, markups in the company stores on some items of basic consumption such as bread could be as high as 50 or 60 percent” (Bergquist 1986, 38). Stickell’s research (1979) shows that throughout the nitrate era, the majority of workers were Chilean, even though Peruvians and Bolivians were willing to work for lower wages. Since most of these workers were single, without family ties, and prone to move to the oficina that paid the most, the ficha system had the effect of tying workers to a particular site. Another advantage (for the employer) was that it helped keep unwelcome outside influences at bay. A key disadvantage (for the industry) was that the availability of a cheap, albeit restless, labor force discouraged innovation—the one major new technique was the Shanks process for extracting nitrate, introduced just before the War of the Pacific, and only improved upon in the late 1920s with the introduction of the Guggenheim process. The work was dangerous, unhealthy, and backbreaking, and the pay was piecework—linked to production. We do not know what North thought about this; in all probability it never crossed his mind.55 As we shall see in the following chapter (chapter 5), he became engrossed in acquiring and promoting other nitrate-related investments in Chile, in the guise of a modern-day “venture capitalist.” Music Hall Song I am Colonel North of the Horse Marines I began promoting when in my teens, And I rather think I’m behind the scenes In the Grand Promotion Army.

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‘Tis said to the early bird is due The worm, and I’ve collared of worms a few; For I came from Leeds, and “I’m Yorkshire too,” In the Grand Promotion Army. With Chili for long I cast my lot, And made some money in that far spot; And Chilies are strong and I make it hot For the Grand Promotion Army. The City imagination fails To realise how the Nitrate Rails Were boomed so high; but we tell no tales In the Grand Promotion Army. Two hundred and eighty from fourteen! Why, what could a rise so tremendous mean? ‘Twas simply that I was upon the scene With the Grand Promotion Army. What great financial soul confines Itself to a pitiful few designs? There’s a smaller crop of Nitrate lines For the Grand Promotion Army. So we run them up, and the rig succeeds, And if some day there’s somebody bleeds, You bet it isn’t the tyke from Leeds, Of the Grand Promotion Army. Of Tarapaca I might be dumb For the waterworks have only come To a trumpery thirty premium For the Grand Promotion Army In promoting schemes I still persist; There are lines that pay, yet don’t exist. Egad! I’m quite the philanthropist Of the Grand Promotion Army. As all my friends and admirers know, I’ve mixed myself up with Whitley’s show, That the organ-grinder’s tin might flow To the Grand Promotion Army. Although I am bald, with whiskers red, There’s Ouless, R. A., who paints one, said He thought I had a wonderful head For the Grand Promotion Army.

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Then vive le jeu! And the game for me Is starting a merry companie And waltzing away with the s. d. For the Grand Promotion Army. For “some has brains and some has tin,” As Orton remarked; and if you’d win, Why, stick to the Colonel, and all stand in With the Grand Promotion Army. —“A Stock Exchange Ballad: The Grand Promotion Army,” The Financial News, May 26, 1888

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Chapter 5

The Grand Promotion Army

He was heard lamenting there were not more elements in nature than air, earth and water, as they were such nice things to finance. In Tarapacá he has made himself master of all the existing elements. With his Nitrate Companies and Nitrate Railways he controls all the saleable earth in the province. With his sea-water condensers, his water barrels and his Pica concession he monopolises the drinking materials. It is generally understood that [recently] he was elaborating a scheme for placing the atmosphere of Tarapacá under the care of a limited liability company, with an airy capital of several millions sterling. —The Financial News, June 14, 1888

John Thomas North’s sudden, spectacular, and widely reported rise

to prosperity spawned defenders and detractors. The Financial News was one of his constant critics, as shown in this sarcastic comment— “The latest good story about our friend Colonel North.” Founded in 1884 by Harry Marks, The Financial News described itself as “a trusted guide of the investing public” and set out to expose fraudulent investments. John Thomas North became a favorite target. The mutual enmity reached boiling point early in 1889, just as North was preparing to return to Chile on a visit, and was reported in the press. Mr. Harry Marks, of the Financial News, is not the sort of man I should care to make my enemy, were I in Colonel North’s place; and if the “Nitrate King” has not to pay heavily in more ways than one for the libels he published abroad at the Liverpool banquet on Friday evening anent the Hebrew journalist, I shall be much surprised. Mr Marks has never yet come off second best in his litigious enterprises. Colonel North dislikes the Financial News because it has not prostrated itself before him like other City papers. Mr. Marks was not

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actively hostile to the Colonel, but simply hypercritical on the nitrate question. He wanted to know this and he wanted to know that, and the great man did not like it. At Liverpool he (needless to say after dinner) called Mr. Marks names. They were instantly wired to that gentleman, who promptly issued a writ for libel, [seeking] damages [of] £20,000 . . . Mr Marks is now the Colonel’s open and avowed enemy, so if he has a weak place in his financial armour let him beware. (The Star, April 6, 1889)1

Despite this antagonism, North enjoyed financial success for several years. But this was not enough; North had a craving too for recognition at the highest social levels in contemporary England and was keenly aware of the benefits that accrued for his business activities from such prominence. With this in mind, just one year after returning to England, John Thomas North took out a ten-year lease on Avery Hill House in London (which he afterward bought and renovated as a palatial mansion), and then two years later reinvented himself as “Colonel North,” becoming honorary colonel of the 2nd Tower Hamlets (East London) Engineer Volunteer Corps on March 25, 1885.2 He was known as Colonel North and by the epithet of “the nitrate king” for the remainder of his life. In the period up to 1889, especially, Colonel North continued to invest heavily in the nitrate industry in Chile, and he also branched out into the related businesses of railways, coal, water, banking, and steamships—the subject of this chapter. An early investment was in mining coal and building a railway, not in the northern provinces, but much further south, in the coal mining region of Arauco just below the River Bío-Bío and the city of Concepción. Colonel North founded The Arauco Coal and Railway Company Limited in London in 18863 and became chairman and the major shareholder in this enterprise. This was the only important British investment in coal mining in Chile. This diversification of his business activities was motivated by the urgent need to fuel gas plants in the nitrate oficinas, and the only commercially significant coal deposits in Chile were found near Lota in the region of Arauco. In addition, this was a promising business venture given the need for coal in the growing cities of Santiago, Valparaíso, and nearby Concepción. The company operated several of the coal mines south of Concepción, based on a concession acquired in 1886 with a capital of £477,800, and a government guarantee of 5 percent interest on the capital invested over twenty years. In addition, Colonel North set about building a railway line from Concepción south to Curanilahue, linking up with the important port of Coronel, the town of Lota,

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and the coal fields of Puchoco and Lota. Colonel North’s interest in railways in Chile presumably dated from his arrival in 1869 on a contract with John Fowler & Company, which, as we have seen, may have focused on operating steam locomotives on the Ferrocarril de Carrizal; the mining railway near Caldera that operated from 1860 with horse power, and from 1866 with steam locomotives on the Carrizal Bajo section. The railway in Arauco was needed to connect the company’s coalmines with the state railway at Concepción, where a line starting south from Santiago in 1857 had reached Concepción on the River Bío-Bío in 1872. This was not the first railway line in the region; there were short lines linking the extraction of coal with the ports, from the Maquehua mines to Laraquete, and from Raimenco to Triana and Trauco. There had also been at least one previous attempt to link Concepción with Coronel by rail; an authorization in 1873 given to Guillermo Délano supported by John Marks and John Murphy, which came to nothing. But Colonel North’s company was the first to have the necessary capital and the technology to undertake the task successfully. This was no easy matter, for the company faced one of the major engineering challenges of the age. The River Bío-Bío just south of Concepción is Chile’s widest river, and it had to be crossed to reach the coal-mining region of Arauco. As a result, the company was faced by “the delightful difficulty of constructing one of the greatest bridges in the world” and embarked on “one of the finest engineering works of the kind in the world.” This was the description given by William Howard Russell,4 the veteran and celebrated correspondent of The Times, when he witnessed for himself the closing stages of the construction of the railway bridge across the River Bío-Bío at Concepción on his visit to Chile in 1889. The iron bridge was finished in 1889, soon after Russell’s visit, the same year that the great Forth Bridge in Scotland and the Eiffel Tower were also completed. Prior to the construction of Colonel North’s railway, coal had been sent inefficiently to the north by ship, or had crossed the River BíoBío in small boats and on rafts. When completed, the bridge and the ninety-five-kilometer railway effectively linked the important coalmining region of Arauco to the rest of the country. Not only that, travelers between Arauco and Concepción had previously needed to take a stagecoach to the river and then cross by rowing boat. The railway bridge over the River Bío-Bío enjoys the fame of having as many meters in length as the number of the year of its opening to traffic—1,889 meters from bank to bank—and this was William

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Russell’s opinion. However, at least one photograph gives the distance as 1,864 meters, while other sources give 1,865 meters. The construction of this bridge was truly one of the engineering triumphs of the age. The cost was £75,000, a fortune at that time. For the sake of comparison, the government-guaranteed cost of the railway line was £4,500 per kilometer. The technological expertise that was needed was available only in Britain, and in fact the contractor, Abbott & Company, all the engineers, as well as the machinery and ironwork, all came from Britain. The English engineer Edward Manby was responsible for designing the bridge, and had to deal with the thorny problem of how to find footholds in the shifting river sands for the piers of the massive bridge. Edward Manby was, of course, not the only British name associated with the company; George Hicks was the general manager, Mr. Bidder was the chief railway engineer in 1889 as well as manager of the company’s colliery operations, and Edward Edmondson was the first owner of the company before Colonel North took it over in 1886. The wrought-iron superstructure of lattice girders had a total weight of around 2,500 tons and was manufactured by John Butler & Company of Stanningley, near Leeds. The piers were made up of bundles of six cast-iron columns that added up to about 1,800 tons and were supplied by Fawcett, Preston & Company of Liverpool. The solution to the problem of the river sand is attributed by William Russell to the Scottish civil engineer Sir James Brunlees. The pillars were hollow, and the sand was blown away by driving water from a pump down the tube at great force, allowing the pillars to settle into place thirty feet beneath the river bed. Doubts on the stability of the bridge were published in The Pall Mall Gazette in March 1897,5 to which the designer of the bridge, Edward Manby, responded in a Letter to the Editor: “The Bio Bio bridge has suffered no injury of any kind whatever since it was constructed, either from stress of weather or any other cause.” It is in fact an impressive tribute to these engineers that the bridge still stands, and that it withstood the great earthquake of 1960—one of the most violent tremors ever recorded in the world, that cracked the nearby road bridge (opened only in 1943), and rendered the railway the only means of land communication north and south of the river for several weeks. The railway bridge also survived the devastating earthquake of February 2010, the epicenter of which was close to Concepción. The need for a bridge was the major obstacle to the construction of the railway, but it was not the only difficulty. One short stretch of the

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line, between Lota and Laraquete, required 1,800 workers to bore and construct nine tunnels measuring in all 1,600 meters, as well as fourteen deep cuttings and two bridges. The rock was extremely hard, and despite the use of compressed air drills and explosive, sometimes progress was made at only ten inches per eight-hour shift. In fact, it took more than four years to construct the railway line, and the official inauguration of the last stretch of track and the bridge took place only in February 1890, although the line had been open to traffic for some months already. The first locomotives in use on the railway were British, and manufactured by Colonel North’s previous employer, Fowler’s of Leeds, as well as Robert Stephenson of Newcastle, and Manning Wardle of Leeds. The Lancaster Wagon Company provided the first carriages, although they were modeled on an American design. The railway passed through Coronel, which at the end of the nineteenth century, before the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, was one of the most important ports on the Pacific seaboard. The once elegant railway station in Coronel still exists, although the second floor, which housed the administrative quarters, was destroyed in the 1960 earthquake. The Arauco Company fell victim to the general collapse of North’s empire following his death in 1896. In March 1897, The Pall Mall Gazette 6 of London reported on the appointment of a receiver, which, the newspaper believed, “will have caused little surprise to readers of the Pall Mall; apart from the hopelessness of the position revealed by the accounts published three months ago, and by the recent heavy fall in the company’s bonds.” Nevertheless, the company survived and in 1915 accounted for 11 percent of the coal produced in Chile. The company remained British until 1919, when it was sold to the Compañia Los Ríos de Curanilahue, which in turn passed control, in 1920, to the Compañia Carbonífera e Industrial de Lota y Coronel, the largest coal company in Chile at that time. In 1959, this company donated the railway to the Chilean government. In 1887, one year after establishing the Arauco Company, Colonel North bought a controlling interest in the Nitrate Railways Company Limited. He then became a company director and deputy chairman in 1888, and president of the board in 1889. Created in London on August 23, 1882, before the War of the Pacific had in fact finished, this was perhaps the most famous of the British railways in Chile.7 This acquisition gave North a virtual monopoly over transport in Tarapacá—it was “the key to North’s kingdom” (Joslin 1963, 176)— but it was also a very risky investment. Throughout the decade following the War of the Pacific, the Chilean government sought to curtail

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this monopoly, and the confrontation between President Balmaceda and Colonel North over this matter was a major contributing factor in the Civil War of 1891. The history of the Nitrate Railways Company is rooted in railways that existed when Tarapacá was Peruvian territory. Following several false starts, the Peruvian government approved concessions in 1868 and 1869 to the company of Ramón Montero & Brothers for the construction of two railways that, respectively, linked the port of Iquique with the nitrate deposits of La Noria (the “Iquique Railway”), and the port of Pisagua with the nitrate fields of Zapiga in Tarapacá (the “Pisagua Railway”). These lines were finished by 1875. A third concession (in 1871), exclusive for twenty-five years, was for a railway from La Noria to the Bolivian border, but this was never started. The Montero Brothers transferred most of their rights in 1874 to the National Nitrate Railways Company of Peru, but retained a large number of shares for themselves. This company was set up in 1874, with a capital of £1,200,000 and had directors in London, but was a Peruvian company with a working committee in Lima. The transfer did not include the concession for the line to the Bolivian frontier. Litigation between the Monteros and the Lima Committee meant that the Peruvian government’s approval for the transaction took a long time to come through, and was approved only in February 1879, the same year that the War of the Pacific broke out. In the middle of the war, in June 1881, the lines were returned to the National Nitrate Railways Company, but this company was not able to meet its obligations. This led to the formation of a new company, the Nitrate Railways Company (sometimes referred to as The English Company), a joint stock company registered in London in August 1882 with the aim of acquiring the National Nitrate Railways Company of Peru. This company soon held a monopoly over railway transport in the province of Tarapacá, centered on the port of Iquique. Colonel North purchased 7,000 shares from the Monteros in April 1887 and assumed control of the company. A famous anecdote tells of the Monteros being pursued to pay off a mortgage and their telling their agent in London to raise £70,000. In this story, the agent came to North who said, “I will make you an offer, but it has got to be accepted or rejected by you before you leave the room. I will give you £95,000 for your interest in the railway.” The agent paused, and asked North for some time to think over the offer, at which North locked the door and said “It is ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ before you leave the room,” and the agent said yes.8

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Looking back in 1895 on what happened, North recalled the incident in this way: I bought most of the shares of a railway which ran through the [nitrate fields’] district, and so I became master of the situation . . . Thanks to my management, which I may say without pride was both wise and skilful, this railway, which had never hitherto paid any dividend whatever, at the end of the second year in our possession, distributed a dividend of from 20 to 25 per cent amongst the shareholders.9

But it was far from plain sailing. Pressed by other nitrate producers and prospective railway investors, a Chilean government decree in 1886 had moved against the company’s monopoly on railway transport in the province of Tarapacá by cancelling the original concessions on which the company was based, arguing that the company had forfeited the rights and privileges given when it started life as a Peruvian government concession before the War of the Pacific. This led to a legal battle in the courts and drove “an already unprofitable company towards insolvency.”10 After he assumed control, North tried to ensure that this was not properly resolved by engaging expensive lawyers and lobbying Congress. The Economist reported on July 17, 1897—the year after North died—that there were “serious allegations” of misconduct in the affairs of the Nitrate Railways Company, and that: The directors admitted that large sums of money had been paid and charged to legal expenses, which had been employed generally with a view to preventing the grant of concessions to competing lines, and in the prosecution of lawsuits against competing companies for what they considered an infringement of their exclusive privilege.

The company appealed to the Supreme Court of Chile, but the attorney general ruled that the courts had no jurisdiction in dealing with this issue. The Supreme Court disagreed, but with the support of the Council of State, the president insisted on his absolute right to annul the concession. This culminated in the verdict of the Council of State on September 13, 1889—after North had returned from his visit to Chile—that the courts had no jurisdiction over the matter, which effectively supported the government’s annulment of the monopoly. This gave encouragement to the firm of Campbell, Outram & Company, which on September 30, 1889 requested the Chilean government for a concession to build a railway from the oficina of Agua

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Santa to the port of Caleta Buena, with the enticement that they would build branch lines to nearby oficinas, and the Nitrate Railways’ monopoly was finally under attack.11 The concession was granted in March 1890, and three days later the award was handed to Chilean investors who renamed the property as the Compañía de Salitres y Ferrocarril de Agua Santa, registered in Valparaíso in September 1890. The Nitrate Railways took the Agua Santa company to court and “did their utmost to prevent its establishment, but in the end they had to submit to what was a very great hardship, and to see traffic which properly belonged to themselves pass over to their rivals,” as the chairman, Robert Harvey, reported in his annual summary for 1895.12 Antony Gibbs & Company also weighed in, with protests to the British government in March 1890, that the Nitrate Railways Company was a monopoly and prejudicial to Britain’s wider commercial interests in Tarapacá. Gibbs argued that the monopoly was “weighing unmercifully on the British capital invested in the Nitrate works.”13 Gibbs wanted to construct a railway line in the south of this province connecting the company’s nitrate fields of Pan de Azúcar and Alianza to the small port of Chucumata on the coast—fields that they had not worked because of the monopoly and the consequent high freight charges.14 This became an issue in the political crisis of 1890 and the Civil War of 1891: not just an economic question but also an important constitutional question. President Balmaceda’s cancellation of the concessions by administrative decree was an affront to the rights of Congress, according to the mounting opposition, and for them a clear example of the president’s abuse of executive power. Balmaceda lost the civil war, but his successors turned out to be just as determined to end the Nitrate Railways’ monopoly by giving concessions for competing lines. The Agua Santa Nitrate & Railway Company was the key means to establishing this policy, and eventually the Nitrate Railways Company had to come to terms with competition from newly formed railway companies in the province of Tarapacá. Much of North’s regional monopoly was effectively ended from late 1893 onward. When Robert Harvey commented on the company’s annual statement for 1895, at an ordinary general meeting that took place a few weeks after North’s death, he warned shareholders that the concession from Iquique to Lanoria would terminate the following month (in July 1896); the concession from Pisagua to Sal de Obispo would expire in 1897; and the Tamarugal concession in 1900. He

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added that these concessions were anyway “de facto worthless,” on account of the permission given for construction of the Agua Santa to Caleta Buena railway line. Harvey reported that the Chilean government had also given the go-ahead to a competing line from Sal de Obispo to Junin, citing the Nitrate Railways Company’s “high charges [that] precluded the natural development of the industry.”15 William Russell provides a detailed early history of the railway as an appendix to his book A Visit to Chile and the Nitrate Fields of Tarapacá (1890, 355–9). There is also a delightful firsthand description of a railway journey that Russell took from Iquique to Pisagua as part of Colonel North’s entourage on the 1889 visit to Chile. Prior to joining the journey to inspect North’s nitrate investments, Russell stayed with the company’s general manager in Iquique, and wrote that: Every day I saw from my room in Mr. Rowland’s comfortable mansion, the Nitrate Railway trains ascending and descending the steep mountain side; those going up laden with jute bags and supplies for the oficinas, which depend on the port for food, clothing, the necessities of life and machinery; those coming down charged with the result of the labour of the nitrate manufacturers. They were as regular as clockwork in their rates, each train keeping its prescribed distance from the other as if they were fixed parts of a machine . . . As you look eastwards to the Andes you see near the skyline a faint small white cloud like the smoke of a gun. But it moves—the puffs are intermittent. Straining your eyes you make out a dark object on the black thread. It is a locomotive descending from the Pampas, drawing its appointed load of waggons [sic] and carriages. It seems almost stationary—but it is creeping down.16

By the time of his death in 1896, North had sold off most of his shares in the company.17 and Rory Miller (1998, 226) believes the railway “seems to have become independent of the remnants of the North empire thereafter, judging from the membership of its board.” By 1913, it had become an autonomous freestanding company. In the year following his gaining control of the Nitrate Railways Company, Colonel North established a company in a business that he knew very well, dating from his first investment in Chile—the provision of water in 1875 to the desert regions. This was the Tarapacá Waterworks Company, registered in London in September 1888 with a capital of £400,000. Robert Harvey was chairman of the board, and Colonel North and George Lockett were two of the five company directors.

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The history of this acquisition is revealing. As we have seen, North had moved from being a tenant of the Compañía de Aguas de Tarapacá in Iquique to its owner in 1880 during the War of the Pacific. By the close of the war, in 1883, North had five condensers in Iquique and also brought water in by tanker from Arica in the far north of Chile. The Tarapacá Waterworks Company prospectus of 188818 explained that its purpose was to supply water to Iquique and the surrounding districts “from the springs of Pica and other sources of supply,” and that this was based on a Chilean government concession originally granted in 1885 to Thomas Hart (who had died in 1887). In addition to the Pica springs, lying around one hundred kilometers inland of the port, the company “will also buy from Colonel John T. North the freehold land, offices, water tanks, pipes, and other fixed plant at present used by him for his water business at Iquique, together with the goodwill thereof; and his lease from the Company [sic] Proveedora (a company now existing in Iquique for the distillation of sea water by machinery) of their works and plant.” Colonel North stood to gain handsomely from the new company, which proposed to pay him £100,000 “for the Iquique water business of Colonel North,” and £4,295 for the lease of and shares in his “Proveedora Company.” In comparison, the springs at Pica cost £6,000, and the concession to supply Iquique with this water was set at £25,000 (consisting of £10,000 in cash and the rest in shares in the new company). The advertisement also mentions that North’s Nitrate Railways Company would be supplied with water. The prospectus cites as a key selling point that: “By the purchase of the above-mentioned concession, property and rights, the company practically secures the control of the supply of water to Iquique.” In other words, this was a virtual monopoly, and Colonel North was keen to take full advantage of his exclusive position. However, this was not without challenges. This monopoly had been first challenged by an engineer named Dixon Provand, who had organized the company called the Compañía Proveedora (Provisions Company) in Valparaíso in January 1883, with the aim of supplying Iquique with water using a distillation plant that he had invented. According to Chilean historian Hernán Ramírez Necochea (1958, 80) the result was that the price charged for water dropped considerably. Four of North’s condensers were shut down, the fifth continued working at a loss, and North set out to break this affront to his monopoly. Ramírez Necochea believes that North caused the value of Provand’s shares to depreciate, and then purchased the shares when they were at a low point. He then rented, and later bought Provand’s condenser, along

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with the corresponding eight-year concession. Now back in a monopoly position, the price North charged for water rose abruptly. This may be an exaggeration. When William Russell visited Iquique in 1889, accompanying Colonel North on his return visit to Chile, he reported that water reached the port from Arica in steamers belonging to North and was also distilled in the town. “I was informed that the condensing apparatus . . . patented by Mr. Provend [sic], C. E., and erected by a company formed by him, is capable of making, theoretically speaking, about 26 lbs. of water for 1 lb. of the worst description of coal; and can also condense 40,000 gallons daily.”19 North’s condenser, according to Russell, was a little more efficient. However, it does seem probable that North first leased Provand’s machinery and then purchased the plant. The second challenge to Colonel North’s exclusive rights came in January 1885, when a Scottish businessman named Thomas Hart was given permission by the Chilean Congress to bring water by pipe from Pica to Iquique. In 1886, Thomas Hart went to Scotland to establish his Iquique Water Company Limited. According to Ramírez Necochea, and to Harold Blakemore (1974, 56–8), this was unsuccessful due to a campaign against the venture orchestrated by Colonel North and his associates, and that when Hart died in 1887, North bought the concession from his widow for £1,000. The compensation may have been a little more generous; the 1888 prospectus mentions that 1,500 shares of £10 each in the new company were allotted to the executors of Thomas Hart’s will. There was yet another challenge. In 1888, an English engineer named Charles Wuth 20 applied for a concession to supply Iquique and some of the nitrate oficinas with water. President Balmaceda—no fan of Colonel North’s monopolistic practices—gave this request his personal support, and asked Congress to include the petition in their current deliberations. The initiative got nowhere, and Ramírez Necochea argues that this was on account of North’s friends in Congress who ensured that there was no unwelcome debate. Blakemore (1974, 92) quotes The Chilean Times of January 19, 1889, which reported that the municipality of Iquique had accepted the offer of the Tarapacá Waterworks Company to provide water to the port, and that Wuth’s offer had been shunted aside to be considered by a committee.21 By 1888, North’s portfolio of lucrative investments in Chile consisted of several oficinas enjoying the height of the nitrate boom, coal mines, and a railway under construction in the region of Arauco, the Nitrate Railways Company in the north, and a monopoly on the provision of water to Iquique. He turned now to the financial element

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in the equation, and in December 1888 founded his own bank—the Bank of Tarapacá and London. British participation in banking in Chile can be traced back to a law passed by Congress in 1854, which established the rules for limited liability companies and effectively opened the way for joint stock banks. The first bank that resulted was the Banco de Valparaíso, established in 1855—the same bank that John Dawson arrived to manage in Iquique in 1879 and which was so instrumental in providing funds to North and Robert Harvey for the purchase of nitrate certificates. The early trend in Chilean banking was to have a strong British presence on the board and in day-to-day management, especially because this brought valuable banking expertise into the business. However, the first truly British bank in Chile, and the first foreign-owned bank, was North’s Bank of Tarapacá and London, given legal status by the Chilean government in April 1889 when John Dawson was recognized as the bank’s representative in Chile. The bank opened for business in June 1889—the year of Colonel North’s return visit to that country—and set up a network of branches throughout Chile in the 1890s. David Joslin’s study entitled A Century of Banking in Latin America (1963) shows how the Bank of London and South America (and indeed Lloyds Bank too, which acquired BOLSA after Joslin’s study was published) can trace its lineage back to the unusually named and now forgotten Bank of Tarapacá and London. Joslin points out that the bank was “at first a mere adjunct to North’s mighty nitrate empire” (1963, 177). North became the bank’s deputy chairman and engaged actively in the bank’s affairs in the early years, riding out the threats to his business interests represented by the policies of Chilean president Balmaceda, although it was his associate John Dawson who played the main role in the bank’s beginnings and organization. John Dawson had some twenty-five years’ experience already in banking, having been at different times the manager of the London Bank of Mexico in Lima and in Valparaíso, and the manager of the Banco de Valparaíso in Iquique. Two branches were opened in the principal ports for the export of nitrate, Iquique and Pisagua. Later, there were differences between John Dawson and the bank over his salary and he left the bank, only to be reappointed in 1892. Dawson became the bank’s managing director in 1895 and died in Monte Carlo in 1902. The bank experienced difficulties in its early years of operations because it was too heavily dependent on Colonel North and on the fickle state of the nitrate industry. For example, North’s nitrate companies received large loans and advances from 1890 to 1895, and

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worse, North used his influence in the bank to compel other clients to conform to the rules of the Permanent Nitrate Committee, which he controlled, or else lose their access to overdraft facilities. However, this influence began to wane, and Joslin (1963: 185) reports that when North died suddenly in London in 1896, an applicant for the vacancy on the bank’s board was told “the lamented death of Colonel North did not appreciably affect their labours, he having rarely attended Board Meetings.” The bank has also been accused of taking sides in the 1891 civil war, actively aiding and abetting the opponents of President Balmaceda, although “it is impossible to tell from the meager surviving records of the bank whether any such transactions were entered into” (Joslin 1963, 183). Robert Harvey became a director of the bank in 1894 and eventually its chairman, and remained in this position until 1918. Branches of the Bank of Tarapacá and London were opened in Santiago (1895), Punta Arenas (1895), Concepción (1897), and Antofagasta (1897), together with smaller branches in the copper region in Calama, Copiapó, Coquimbo, and La Serena, in a period when this bank was practically alone in Chile in foreign banking. In 1900, the bank merged with the Anglo-Argentine Bank, changing its name to the Bank of Tarapacá and Argentina, and in 1906 became the Anglo South American Bank. In 1936, BOLSA took over the Anglo-South American Bank, which had itself absorbed the British Bank of South America, the Commercial Bank of Spanish America, and the London Bank of Mexico & South America. One month after founding his bank, Colonel North registered in London, in January 1889, the Nitrate and General Investment Trust Company, expressly to buy and sell shares in the nitrates industry.22 In the same year, North floated the Nitrate Provisions Supply Company on the London Stock Exchange, with Robert Harvey as chairman of the board. There was just one link in the chain remaining for North, in his pursuit of total monopoly, and that was the transport of nitrate over the sea to foreign markets. On his return to Chile, in 1889, Colonel North had mentioned his interest in setting up a shipping company, but this was to come much later, in 1895, when North and his associates founded the Nitrate Producers’ Steamship Company Limited, sometimes called the Anglo Line. David Burrell’s book, The Nitrate Boats (1995), gives an excellent account of the history of this company. He describes how John Latta and Robert Lawther had become partners in a shipping business in 1892, which they registered as Lawther, Latta & Company, and that one focus of the company was the shipment of nitrate from

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Chile to markets abroad, especially in North America and Europe. With this in mind, John Latta visited Chile in 1892 to examine the prospects for introducing steamships into the nitrate transport trade. David Burrell reports that Colonel North was (uncharacteristically) reluctant to back the enterprise, but that John Latta found a way to overcome this resistance.23 Latta visited North in mid-1892 to talk over business in the colonel’s office, and concluded the meeting by complimenting North on recent wins by his horse Nunthorpe and his famous greyhound Fullerton. “Latta then sallied that North’s racing colours (light blue, primrose sleeves, primrose 5-pointed stars and scarlet cap)24 would look well on the funnel of a steamer which could, carrying nitrate cargo controlled by North, prove a profitable venture” (Burrell 1995, 18). This appeal to his vanity apparently worked, and North called in several of his nitrates associates and (very characteristically) impulsively allocated them shares in this new enterprise, in a company which had not yet been founded. Colonel North’s brother Gamble North was a company director until his death in 1941. The first steamer was built by Short Brothers, shipbuilders in Sunderland, who took out a substantial shareholding in the firm, and remained the only shipyard to build for this company. The launch of the Colonel J. T. North took place in January 1895. This was not the first ship to carry North’s name—a sailing iron barque built for W. & J. Lockett had been launched in 1883 with the name J. T. North. John Masefield, British poet laureate from 1930 to 1967, praises this sailing boat in his poem Ships:25 . . . the perfect J. T. North, the loveliest barque my city has sent forth.

The Nitrate Producers’ Steamship Company Limited was incorporated on March 4, 1895, focused initially on the Colonel J. T. North steamer, with a capital of £100,000 in 20,000 shares of five pounds each. Two steamships quickly followed; the Avery Hill, launched in June 1895 and the Juanita North (engagingly named after Jane North) launched on May 13, 1896—eight days after Colonel North’s sudden death. The Avery Hill was named after Colonel North’s home in Eltham, London. The Glasgow Herald reported on the 1895 launch: “The gallant gentleman had an enthusiastic reception from the huge crowd which had assembled.”26 Never one to miss an opportunity to promote optimism in his businesses, and himself, Colonel North boasted that: “He had built 10,000 tons carrying capacity for the Nitrate Company at the low cost of £60,000. Twenty

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years ago it would have cost just double that amount. He thought they were advancing steadily towards a wave of prosperity.” Before he left, North gave a donation of 100 pounds to the Sunderland Infirmary. John Latta, now Sir John Latta, later recalled the triangular trading basis of the company, at the annual general meeting reported in The Times on June 1, 1928. The ships were built in England, and steadily recurring employment was for years thereafter provided by loading them with rough mixed cargoes for Chile. Nitrate was there shipped for the United States; cotton and other goods from thence to the Continent [of Europe].

The company lasted until its voluntary liquidation in 1942 and was behind the launch of many ships with the Anglo- prefix, such as the Anglo-Chilean (1898) and the Anglo-Peruvian (1905), ending with the Anglo-Indian in 1938.27 By the time this steamship company was founded in 1895, Colonel North had quietly divested himself of many of his shares in companies that focused on Chile and built up a diverse business portfolio in Britain and elsewhere, especially after the nitrate bubble began showing signs of bursting after reaching a peak in 1888 and early 1889. Starting in 1883, when he took out a lease on Avery Hill house, North courted the media and social acceptance at the highest level, becoming an honorary colonel in 1885, widely known for his extravagant banquets, his own racing colors, and acts of great generosity, such as the purchase of Kirkstall Abbey for the borough of Leeds. As we have seen, North’s business activities in Chile were the cornerstone of a largely British takeover of most of the nitrate sector in the golden years of the “nitrate age,” which, with his investments in railways, coal, and water, and his tendency to monopolistic practices, gave rise to growing concern—both in Britain and in Chile. North’s economic and political influence had not gone unnoticed by the Chilean government, and there was increasing apprehension about the power that had accumulated in his hands, causing tensions that contributed to the breaking out of civil war in Chile. These are the subjects of the following three chapters. Wild Rumours There are many wild rumours going about with regard to Colonel North’s princely generosity, says the London correspondent of the

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Birmingham Mail, “but what has not been stated, however, and what, moreover, is a fact—for I hear it on unquestionable authority—is that the ‘Nitrate King’, having been exceptionally well served on several occasions by a waiter at one of our palatial hotels, before leaving the country handed to the said waiter a cheque for no less a sum than a thousand pounds!” —The Pall Mall Gazette, February 16, 1889

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Chapter 6

Colonel North

Dining with us once I was much amused at the description [Colonel North] gave me of his picture gallery. That very day he had bought a “grand picture” for which he had given the large sum of £8,000. I asked who it was by; that he could not remember, nor even the subject. “But,” he added, “It is twelve feet by eight!” He was a kindly man, and very charitable. —Cornwallis-West, George (Mrs.). The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill,1908

*

*

*

North, although fond of pictures, hated what one calls “doing galleries.” Once being pressed to go and see a picture after Rubens, he quickly replied, “After Rubens! Why, surely, Rubens was the brute they were after last year when you dragged me in here [to this gallery]. Haven’t they caught the old cuss yet?” —“Stories of Colonel North,” The Leeds Mercury, May 16, 1896

I

n February 1883, one year after he had returned from Chile, North registered the first of his joint stock nitrate companies—the Liverpool Nitrate Company—at Somerset House, and in June he took out a ten-year lease on an empty building called Avery Hill House. The mansion near Eltham in Kent, now in London, came with extensive thirty-seven acre grounds,1 which had a history going back to the early part of the eighteenth century,2 when a number of individual farms were amalgamated into one estate. The building itself was constructed around 1841, on the site of a farm—the room which North used as a library and study in the center of his home preserved the walls of the living room of this farm. David Shorney (1990, 2) quotes from the History, Gazetteer and Directory of Kent of 1848, which

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“Avery Hill, Eltham,” early twentieth-century postcard.

describes Avery Hill as “a pleasant mansion overlooking an extensive district to the south, one mile from Eltham.” The house had most recently been owned by a Scottish sugar refiner named James Boyd until his death in 1882. North rented the home for £550 a year from his widow, Anna Maria Boyd, who moved away from Eltham to Eastbourne. Having found a home for his family, which grew later that year with the birth of his third child, Arthur Jewell North, on September 30, 1883, North sought to add social prominence and respectability to his wealth, and on March 25, 1885 he became Honorary Colonel of the 2nd Tower Hamlets (East London) Engineer Volunteer Corps.3 The history of this corps goes back to 1861 when the 1st Tower Hamlets Engineer Volunteer Corps was established, only to be disbanded in 1868, when the 2nd Corps was formed.4 Colonel North was extremely proud of his military title, by which he was known in Britain and throughout the world from this time on. He took his responsibilities very seriously, to the extent of providing the grounds of Avery Hill for the volunteers to camp out and drill. The Express 5 newspaper provided a detailed description of the second time the corps came, to spend from Saturday to Monday under canvas in August 1886. The report notes that “There is no [other] corps which devotes so much care and attention to camping out.” An advance party made preparations on the Friday, laying out the camp for a body of nearly 300 officers and men who arrived on the Saturday

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afternoon by special train to Eltham and were met by Colonel North. They enjoyed an evening meal “mostly provided from Mr. North’s farm, it being stated that two oxen and half a dozen sheep were killed to feed the men until Monday night.” The meal was illuminated by “several thousand oil lamps, which formed an outline not only to the mansion itself, but also to the various windows, the terrace, lawn, and flower beds, making altogether a most brilliant feature.” There were fireworks too, and music from the regimental band. Sunday started with a religious service followed by the men being “at liberty to enjoy themselves,” and Monday was taken up with a parade and regimental sports, with North as one of the judges, and another fireworks display in the evening. The journalist concluded that “It says much for the generosity of the Colonel, when it is stated that every expense was covered, including the travelling to and fro.” These encampments at Avery Hill House continued for many years. The Times of October 27, 1890, for example, noted that the volunteers “had made a feigned attack upon Avery-hill-house, the colonel’s residence, and were afterwards entertained there,” and that Colonel North had been thrown from his horse on his way back from Eltham railway station and had suffered fractures to his right arm. Colonel North was very happy at Avery Hill. A lengthy description of a visit in 1888 published in The World as “Celebrity at Home” and reprinted in the Dartford local newspaper, The Express,6 describes how, on arrival: Colonel North will take you to see his relics and his roses presently; but he must first prepare for your delectation one of those mysterious cocktails beloved of the dwellers in South America. The great tent pitched at the end of the well-kept cricket-field is intended for the accommodation of the thousand poor children from London, the warriors of the Tower Hamlets, the Thespian cricketers, or the coachingmen, who are each in turns guests at Avery Hill; the best brands of the Drapers’ flow perpetually in the coolest of dining-rooms; and your host forgets all about the San Pablo Nitrate Company, which is coming out next week, and has already been subscribed for several times over, while talking enthusiastically of his pig-farm and his poultry yard; pointing out the beauties of the Madame Lombard and La France roses and prize camellias, upon which his only daughter bestows so much attention.

In fact, North so enjoyed living at Avery Hill that in 1888 he persuaded Anna Maria Boyd to sell the house for £17,0007 and decided

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to spend much of his wealth renovating and extending on the mansion. Colonel North was chairman of the Local Reception Committee in 1888 for the Italian exhibition in London,8 where be purchased several paintings and sculptures, and had met the architect of the exhibition, Thomas William Cutler. Before leaving on his return visit to Chile early next year, North commissioned Cutler to make “additions and alterations” up to a ceiling of, first, £30,000, and then in February to £40,000, in verbal agreements. Cutler informed North, on his return to England in July 1889, that a truer estimate was more like £65,000, and this was agreed. Colonel North was later told that the contracts for the builders and decorators would in fact amount to £115,000. Colonel North promptly dismissed Cutler; refused to pay the architect the balance of his commission (a sum of £2,718 from the work undertaken in the period from October 1888 to October 1890 to renovate the house which amounted to £5,468); and handed the work to his assistant, J. O. Cooke. This led to litigation, which was followed with great interest by the media.9 In June 1891, the case of “Cutler v. North” was tried at the Queen’s Bench with Lord Coleridge as the Lord Chief Justice, where the defendant, Colonel North, argued “that the charges are excessive”10 and that the work “was not executed in accordance with the plans, and that he has been obliged to renew defective work, as the building was unskillfully executed.” In addition, Colonel North alleged that there had been “undue delay in completing the work, and he counter claims for damages in respect of these matters.” The Pall Mall Gazette of London on June 22 recounted a revealing exchange when Colonel North was cross-examined regarding the issue of the commission agreed on with Thomas Cutler: This drew a characteristic confession from the “Chief”—“I have often had to say” he remarked . . . “that I was unfortunately educated at a public school,11 and that I cannot do figures.” Asked why he did not limit the amount to £30,000, Colonel North said he thought he was dealing with a gentleman. Since then he had seen reason to change his opinion.

The Pall Mall Gazette reported toward the end of June12 that the jury had spent five minutes to find in favor of the architect, and that Colonel North was directed to pay the full amount claimed plus costs. Lord Coleridge said this was a peculiar case because there was no question of the defendant’s having his money’s worth, and even from

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the mouths of unfriendly witnesses it was admitted that the work was excellently done, and that the amount of money “Mr.” North had to pay, large as it was, was not at all large for what had been done . . . His lordship proceeded that Colonel North was an overbearing person, accustomed to have his own way. When he spoke to magnificent orders, and was confronted with tenders, &c., which even poor human creatures with only £30,000 or £40,000 a year were obliged to do, he said he could not trouble himself with all that. “Build me a house,” was his cry, said the learned judge in a lordly way, with an amusingly vigorous flourish.

And what a house this was! In September 1889, The Express newspaper commented that “Colonel North is amusing himself building an enormous residence, half barracks, half Crystal Palace, at Eltham.”13 By the time the renovations were completed in late 1890,14 at a final cost of around £200,000, one hundred acres had been added to the estate; Italian workers had worked on the mosaic floors of the corridors; a fernery, an ornate Turkish bath, a conservatory, and a domed winter garden had been added to make a fifty-room mansion; and the road from Eltham to Bexley had been rerouted around the property at his expense. Both the house and the stable buildings were centrally heated and illuminated by electricity generated by a forty horse-power machine in an engine room set off from the main building. There is a charming description by T. Raffles Davison published in The British Architect in January 1890,15 while the renovations were nearing completion: Let us suppose that we are on a tour of inspection, alighting at the principal doorway. Before entering the vestibule we may note the entrance doors elaborately carved out of Spanish mahogany with boldly modelled bronze lions’ heads in the centre, and graceful wrought-iron grilles on either side . . . There are two entrances from the south side of the entrance hall, one leading to the drawing-room and library, the other to the garden entrance, dining, drawing, morning, and small billiard rooms. One of the fine effects is the vista from the west looking from the entrance hall when the doors are opened, which gives an uninterrupted view of some 500 ft. through the sculpture gallery, picture gallery, and ante-room to the orchard house and vineries beyond. The sculpture gallery is lined with red marbles, and through a door of onyx we enter therefrom to the picture gallery, at the farther end of which is a minstrels’ gallery, built up of rare Mexican onyx . . . The range of perambulation possible within the house is very extensive, for from the drawing-room a continuous circuit may be made through the conservatory, winter garden, fernery, ante-room, picture gallery, sculpture gallery, vestibule, and so round to the drawing-room again.

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Some sources16 mention that the mahogany entrance doors may have come from, or may have been intended for, Lima Cathedral in Peru, and this is entirely possible, since the cathedral was in such a state of disrepair that it was closed for renovation from 1893 to 1898. Even the lavatory was a wonder to behold! Thomas Cutler himself described in The British Architect 17 in March 1890 how the lavatory was “a very excellent example of permanent constructive decoration,” and continued: The walls and ceiling are built in Burmantoft’s faïence,18 the floor is of marble mosaic by Burke and Co., the lavatory inclosure being of red and white Silvestre marble by Houghton. The decorative effect of the faïence is, we think, the best of its kind we have seen. The colours used are ivory, old gold, green gold, and a flat grey drab, and the whole effect is refined, and pleasing.

There was also “the strongest of strong rooms in the world.”19 Not only was Colonel North’s gold and silver ware stored here, but special arrangements were made for the security of the jewels of lady visitors during the nights of their stay. The strong room is floored with cement many feet thick, and walled all round with mighty blocks of granite. To get into it, gates of great thickness, and fitted up with secret burglar alarms, have to be passed through. The room is situated underground, and even in the room itself there are fixed smaller safes of great strength, in which the treasures are kept. (The Yorkshire Post, May 11, 1896)

Colonel North started early on his acquisition of paintings and sculptures to adorn his splendid home. He now had a picture gallery, which doubled as a ballroom, measuring one hundred by fifty feet and was forty-four feet high. The Times reported in June 188820 that North had purchased at the Italian Exhibition that year “the whole of the striking collection shown by Signor Sciuti”21 for £10,000, including three mammoth recreations of ancient Rome that dominated his picture gallery. North also bought a series of five pictures by William Powell Frith entitled The Road to Ruin, painted in 1878, which told a moral story in the manner of William Hogarth. This series focused on the dangers of gambling, with the subject falling from grace in five steps—College, Ascot, The Arrest, Struggles, and The End, where the gambler is about to kill himself. (Frith also painted a second series, in 1880, entitled The Race for Wealth, which told the story

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of reckless financial speculation, and some might argue that this was rather more appropriate for North.) A notable purchase was a painting by the American artist Albert Bierstadt entitled The Last of the Buffalo, a huge oil on canvas exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1889, which North had acquired by September 1889. The painting is today housed in the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington. Another smaller Bierstadt painting in the collection was Seal Rocks. There were also paintings by Richard Caton Woodville II—Charge of the Light Brigade, The Relief of Lucknow, Blenheim, and Badajoz; by Patrick Nasmyth—The Falls of Shira; and by the British painters Walter William Ouless (who made a painting of Colonel North) and Frederick Goodall, whose canvass Neither do I condemn thee hung in the picture gallery. In addition, North had 600 sketches by Melton Prior, who accompanied him as the artist for the triumphant visit to Chile in 1889, and an eye-catching copy of Raphael’s Madonna of the Chair. Following North’s death in 1896, several of the paintings were sold by auction. The Times reported on the sale of 290 lots at Avery Hill on March 21, 1898, where the Frith series was sold for 610 guineas (to his associate George Inglis). Bierstadt’s The Last of the Buffalo was knocked down for a paltry ninety-five guineas22 and Seal Rocks for just forty-seven guineas. The Art Amateur periodical of May 189823 reported on how “the professional reputation of both of these gentlemen [Frith and Bierstadt] had to undergo the ordeal by trial by auction on the same occasion, which was the dispersion, at Avery Hill, of the belongings of the late Colonel North,” and concluded that “the result was painful.” The Sciuti paintings also raised small amounts compared to the original purchase prices: one hundred guineas for Roman Senators receiving offerings; one hundred guineas for The second foundation of Rome; seventy-five guineas for Foot race at Olympia; and eighty guineas for A Roman triumph. There were also sculptures and statues at Avery Hill House. A statue of Mercury was unveiled around 1890 on top of the glass dome of the winter garden and can still be seen there. There is a white marble sculpture of Galatea, set in a circular pool in the center of the winter garden, which was sculpted by Leopoldo Ansiglioni in 1882. The nude figure of Galatea, a sea nymph in Greek mythology, reclines on the back of a dolphin, and has survived to today. Above the doorway leading into the winter garden, there is a panel with two reclining female figures carved in red brick. There are also two busts of Colonel and Jane North still at Avery Hill, sculpted by John Adrien Raemaekers in 1887,24 which once

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faced each other across the middle of the sculpture gallery, and are now outside what was once the drawing room. In addition to these sculptures and statues, visitors today to Avery Hill can see two full-size portraits of Jane North and her daughter Emma painted by Philip Tennyson Cole hanging in the library. There are several other reminders of the time when Colonel North and his family lived there. Of great significance is the coat of arms in brickwork above the western entrance gateway to what is today the Avery Hill campus of the University of Greenwich, which was unveiled in 1890. This consists of a crest with a shield that has two chevrons across the center and three stars, two above and one below, surrounded by scrolls and leaves. Underneath, also in the same brickwork, there is a large scroll with the motto “ANIMO ET FIDE,” and below this there are two wrought iron gates that incorporate two shields with Colonel North’s initials “JTN” intertwined. The crest and motto are repeated in the four panels and a pediment carved in stone around the main entrance doors to the mansion, and date also from Thomas Cutler’s plans. Over the main door is an eagle in relief, and the year “1890” is visible in raised letters beneath the eagle’s feet. The crest and motto formed the coat of arms of Avery Hill College while it existed, up to 1985. Colonel North’s picture gallery is now known as the Great Hall and is part of the library, while the sculpture gallery, known as the Marble Hall, is the space where library enquiries and issues are dealt with. There are two copies of pictures of Colonel North at Avery Hill purchased from the National Portrait Gallery, which are kept in the archive; one is a photo and the other is a sketch by Harry Furniss. There is also a framed copy of Colonel North by “Spy,” the Vanity Fair cartoonist Leslie Ward, which is on display. As a wealthy patron of the arts, Colonel North also had some of the best musicians of his times play in the picture gallery. For example, the pianist and arranger Frederick Dawson (born in Leeds in 1868) accompanied the distinguished Hungarian violinist Eduard Remény at a concert given in February 1891. This event was North’s way of opening his new mansion to public inspection, and he provided two special trains to bring his audience from Charing Cross in London to Eltham. It seems too that North took an interest in the theater. The New York Times reported on February 17, 1889 that he had given generous share allotments to Charles Wyndham, (actor and owner of the Criterion Theatre) and George Edwardes (manager of the Gaiety Theatre) among others. Later, in 1895, The New York Times 25 reported that North would finance the production

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of an Australian comic opera in two acts called Predatoros, or The Brigand’s Bride. But perhaps Colonel North’s real joy was in acting the persona he invented for himself, that of the munificent country gentleman with the obligatory passion for sports. The centrally heated stables at Avery Hill were beyond the engine house, together with a large coach house, and accommodated several of the best known racers in his day, and a stud that at one time had sixty-four horses in training. A reporter who visited in late 1892 described the care taken with the horses: They are more carefully exercised than any prize fighter and the stables at Eltham have better sanitary arrangements than many hospitals. They are heated by steam, and under one of the stables is a Turkish bath, by which a horse can be thrown into a perspiration and the cold steamed out of him. The walls of the stables are lined with costly tiles.26

North’s horses ran in most of the top horse races in England—the Jubilee Stakes at Kempton Park (his horse Nunthorpe won in 1891), the St. Leger (third place), Goodwood, Newmarket, Doncaster, Kempton Park, the Derby, Ascot, Epsom, and the Liverpool Spring Meeting (his horse Simonian won in 1893), and had the effect of keeping his sobriquet as “the nitrate king” constantly in the media. North must have exasperated his trainers at times. John Bennion Booth 27 writes that: “If he had a houseful of guests at Eltham whom he wished to amuse on a fine morning, he would run them over to Newmarket by special [train], and hold a private race-meeting, all his horses, fit or unfit, taking part in the various races.” Booth adds that at the Goodwood racetrack the custom was for open-air picnics, and that once, during a storm, North bought a gypsy’s tent “lock, stock and barrel” and had it erected under the trees, starting a fashion that later led to elaborate tents and marquees. North would let his friends know if one of his horses had a good chance in a race and others too whom he came across. The Leeds Mercury tells the story of Colonel North attending a performance at the Leeds Grand Theatre on the evening before his horse St. Simon of the Rock ran in the St. Leger race. A large crowd had gathered to witness his arrival, and there was a loud cheer when they spotted him going up the steps to the theater lobby. The Colonel, evidently delighted with the reception accorded him, faced the throng, and, having secured silence, shouted at the top of his

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voice, “Back St. Simon for a shop, boys.” Sure enough, on the following day, the colt was placed third by the judge.28

John Bennion Booth (1957, 188) writes that “in his pleasure hours he was notoriously careless of money,” and that this was especially true of his betting. He would accept tips on horses from friends and even strangers, and at the end of the meeting not have the slightest idea which horses he had placed bets on, since he did not keep a record. But with the larger bets his memory was clearer. Booth tells the story of North betting a bookmaker £9,000 to £3,000 against a horse called Royal Star in the Cesarewitch Handicap at Newmarket, and being told that he was mistaken, that the bet was for another race (the Cambridgeshire). North was sure this time and referred the issue to the race committee, which decided in North’s favor. However, according to Booth, “Having won his point, the good nature of the man reasserted itself, and he let the bookmaker off half the bet.” Nevertheless, Colonel North was not especially successful in this sport. The New York Times 29 reported in February 1891 that he had not fared well in the previous year, for if he has won thirty races worth £10,655, including the Goodwood and Brighton Cups with Philomel, his two-year-olds have turned out badly, despite the promising début of Simonian, for whom he had paid 4,000 guineas as a yearling, in the Brocklesby Stakes at Lincoln. He has run very badly since, and none of the others were of much account.

Sources30 show that his winnings improved in 1891, to a total of £20,000, but dipped to £15,000 in 1892, and £9,000 in 1893. Perhaps for this reason, Colonel North offered for sale his entire training and breeding stud of racehorses in June 1894, duly reported on by The Times.31 The sale of these seventy horses was governed by “Colonel North retaining the right to buy in those lots which did not reach what he might consider to be their fair value,” and, while it attracted a good crowd, there were few serious buyers. Twenty-five mares, for example, from his Avery Hill stable had reserves of between 2,000 and 3,000 guineas, which “though not, perhaps, exceeding the actual value of these well-bred mares, were more than the few buyers present cared to pay. The consequence was that only four or five were sold.” The sale ended with around twenty of the seventy lots sold, for a total of only about 3,000 guineas. John Bennion Booth32 tells a more embellished and perhaps somewhat apocryphal version of this story. “He was persuaded, much

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against his will, to dispose of the greater part of his stud, and of his kennel—a decision no sooner made than repented of.” The sale was held at Avery Hill, with two auctioneers: a man called Edward Tattersall to auction off the horses and a Mr. Rymill for the greyhounds. “There was, inevitably, a gigantic luncheon tent, wholly insufficient for the crapulous needs of the hundreds of free-lunchers who filled the special trains from town.” In addition, “on one side of the sale-ring was a long building containing a bar, with unlimited supplies.” Colonel North was beyond repenting of his decision, by now he hated the idea of it. So, when a horse named El Diablo entered the ring, and before the auctioneer could start the proceedings, North was heard to shout out: “The reserve on this horse is ten thousand guineas,” and El Diablo was promptly escorted from the ring. When the auctioneer protested, Colonel North shouted for a whisky and soda to be taken to him. He continued to bid for every horse brought into the ring, and then “a decrepit old mare” was brought in. There was a bid of ten guineas, to which North responded with a bid of one hundred guineas. “But Colonel, you might let me have the old mare. I can go to fifty for her,” pleaded the bidder. “Fifty be damned!” was the instant rely. “I wouldn’t let her go for five hundred!” According to Booth, the sale of greyhounds took place without mishap—North could not be at both sales at the same time—and the prices raised there were good. Colonel North was in fact more fortunate with his greyhounds and in the sport of coursing. It was his love of this sport that most captivated the ordinary public and won him kudos in high society. It was also where he enjoyed most sporting success. In the 1880s, huge crowds of up to 75,000 gathered to watch and bet at the top coursing championship—the Waterloo Cup (named after the Waterloo Hotel in Liverpool where the first promoters had met) held at Altcar near Liverpool. Coursing is the precursor of modern-day greyhound racing and is today illegal in England, Scotland, and Wales (and in Northern Ireland since June 2010), but in Victorian England involved two greyhounds racing after a live hare. Points were awarded not only for catching the hare, but also on each dog’s performance in outracing the other dog, catching up with the hare, turning it at a right angle, for “wrenching” (turning it at less than a right angle), for tripping the hare, and for a kill. Colonel North’s interest in this sport started through an introduction to W. J. Hope-Johnson, who guided him in all aspects of the sport during his initiation into coursing. The first greyhound he entered for

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the Waterloo Cup, in 1888, was named Duke Macpherson, and this greyhound finished as the runner-up in the competition. Fired by this taste of success, in November 1888, North paid a breeder named Edward Dent 850 guineas for a puppy greyhound called Fullerton— the highest price ever paid for a greyhound to that date33 and for a young dog that had only raced once—and it was Dent who continued to train the dog. The risk paid dividends, and in 1889 Fullerton shared first place with his kennel companion Troughend. This arose because North had entered five dogs for the competition, and the custom was to share the prize between the final pair if they belonged to the same owner. Fullerton went on to win the cup outright in the three following years—an unbeaten record for the Waterloo Cup, excelling the achievements twenty years earlier of another famous greyhound named Master McGrath. When Fullerton died in 1899, outliving his owner, such was the dog’s prestige that the body was given to the National History Museum for preservation and can today be seen at the Natural History Museum at Tring in Hertfordshire. While Fullerton was easily the most famous dog that North owned, there were others in his kennels that were also successful in the sport, including Thoughend, Simonian (Fullerton’s brother), Mickleton, Tarset, Blue Green, Nuneaton, and Not Out. The kennels themselves at Avery Hill prompted comment from the media; for example, The Express provided this description in January 189034: The kennels at Eltham are sumptuously fitted up. There is a doctor’s room where a dog who has a slight cold is immediately attended to. Then the cloakroom has to be explored, and you are shown the dogs’ coats, that probably cost 16s. each. The sleeping compartment would excite envy. In the feeding house you see upon the tables shoulders of mutton. Because one shoulder was a little tainted the other day the butcher had to take it back.

The journalist concluded the item with a swipe at Colonel North: By the way, it is interesting to note that Colonel North’s labourers are paid eighteen shillings a week. Some of them, curiously enough, have families to keep. But they don’t get any more on that account.

Following North’s death, all his greyhounds, with the exception of Fullerton, were sold in June 1896, and all his horses, with the exception of Iddesleigh, in July 1896. Avery Hill was sold later, and there was a five-day sale in March 1898 of certain of the house contents

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with lots that were evocative of Colonel North’s sporting interests in horseracing and coursing,35 including the Liverpool Cup of 1889 (“185 oz. at 8s. per ounce”), the Goodwood Cup of 1890, the Brighton Cup of 1890, the Waterloo Cup of 1889 (“a large embossed and chased silver gilt jug with cover”), and the Waterloo Cups of 1890, 1891, and 1892. North enjoyed many other sports. There was deer hunting, and he was Master of the Mid Kent Stag-hounds at Farningham from at least 1888.36 He also played golf, becoming a member with his son Harry of the Eltham Golf Club in June 1892. The North name lives on in the naming of the “North Scratch Medal,” played for since 1892 at the Eltham club, now named the Royal Blackheath Golf Club.37 The prize was at first ten pounds, given by an anonymous donor, but since 1897 was a medal donated by Harry North in the form of a gold Jubilee Medal of Queen Victoria, which can be viewed in the museum of the Royal Blackheath Golf Club. Colonel North also played cricket at Avery Hill, and he made a generous contribution to the testimonial for, arguably, England’s most famous cricketer, W. G. Grace. This sportsman dedicated his book The History of a Hundred Centuries (1895) to Colonel North. To Colonel John Thomas North, a thorough all-round sportsman, and the first subscriber to my national testimonial fund, I dedicate this book. [Signed] W. G. Grace. July 1895.

North apparently enjoyed running. John Bennion Booth (1957: 181) reports that when the Tower Hamlets Volunteers were encamped on his estate “the standing dish of the afternoon” was North challenging others to run sixty yards, giving his opponents a start of five yards. “He would invariably win, for in his youthful days at Leeds he had been a keen runner, and knew all the tricks of starting.” There is no record that North played football, but Booth (1957, 189) tells the story of North sending a banknote to the West Bromwich Albion player who returned to the field after a bad accident in the Cup Final played against Aston Villa in 1895, at the Crystal Palace ground in London.38 When Colonel North collapsed and died on May 5, 1896, his widow Jane North immediately put Avery Hill House on the market. The estate was put up for auction on July 27 as “the important and valuable freehold residential estate distinguished as Avery Hill . . . An Excellent Family Mansion.” The Times 39 reported on the attempt to sell three lots, consisting of the mansion and its grounds, estimated

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at 143 acres, together with two adjoining leasehold properties—430 acres at Pippinhall Farm and around twenty-four acres at Avondale. According to The Times, the Avery Hill mansion was said to have cost between £250,000 and £300,000 to build. Only one bid was made, of £50,000, and when there was no response to the auctioneer’s starting price of £100,000, the auction of all three lots was suspended. Subsequently, the Avery Hill property was sold in 1898 for £40,000—a fraction of what North had paid in acquiring the mansion and undertaking the alterations. The purchaser was Dr. Alonzo Henry Stocker, a well-known specialist in his day on lunacy, who may have considered turning Avery Hill into an asylum, although this did not happen, nor did he ever take up residence there. Dr. Stocker offered Avery Hill House for sale in 1901, but initially there were no buyers, until the London County Council bought the house along with twenty-eight acres of parkland for £25,000 in 1902, “for the purpose of a public open space or for such other purpose as the Council may legally determine upon,”40 but in fact they had little idea of what they would do with their acquisition. The site was officially opened on May 23, 1903. In 1906, the LCC’s Education Committee (later named the Inner London Education Authority) used the site to open its first residential training college for women teachers—Avery Hill College. In 1908, the college purchased Southwood House to the south of the park, where North and his family had lived while the renovations were being carried out.41 Part of the Avery Hill building was destroyed during the Second World War—essentially the eastern half of the building, three floors high, including the dining room, billiard room, morning room, three-roomed Turkish bath, and the east gallery. Avery Hill College lasted to 1985, when it merged with Thames Polytechnic, and now forms part of the Avery Hill campus of the University of Greenwich, and still remains a venue for education training. The part of the building destroyed in the Second World War has been rebuilt—the refurbishment was completed in 1958—but in a different style. A curiosity is that in this eastern portion destroyed in the blitz in April 1941, the famous lavatory across from the billiard room was the only room to survive and, while clearly intended for the male billiards players, is now a ladies (staff) toilet, and proudly described by the University of Greenwich as “one of south London’s hidden gems—a listed ladies’ lavatory.”42 Fortunately, much of the rest of the building remains—the winter garden (open to the public), which was damaged during the war but later restored43; the gatehouse (with the brickwork crest and motto, and the ornate iron gates); the

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entrance hall to the mansion with its fireplace and mahogany paneling; the picture and sculpture galleries; and the public park surrounding the building. Several features of Avery Hill are protected today as Grade II “listed buildings” (“buildings of special architectural or historic interest”)—“the entrance gate and adjoining lodge,” “the main doorway, lobby, passage and theatre,” and “the conservatory” (winter garden). Further conservation work on the winter garden was started by the University of Greenwich in 2009,44 and involved careful restoration of the glasshouse structure and the pool, and a new planting scheme. The intention is to recreate the original look and feel, with camellias and tropical plants from Chile in addition to the existing collections of cacti, exotic trees, and shrubs. While Colonel North enjoyed living in Avery Hill House until his death, and concentrated much of his business activity on his office in London, he never forgot his roots in Leeds and his love for Yorkshire. A short biography published in the year he died45 recalled how North had once said, “The one pleasure, I may tell you, that I have in life, is to be born a Yorkshireman; the other, is to read about Yorkshire.” He is remembered today for having purchased and then donated Kirkstall Abbey near Leeds to the then borough of Leeds. There is a Yorkshire Society plaque at Kirkstall Abbey—the fourth in the series to commemorate the achievements of Yorkshire sons and daughters—which was first unveiled in the grounds in April 1988 (and then moved to the visitors’ center in October 2008), and reads “Colonel J. T. North 1842–1896 purchased the Abbey and grounds in 1888 and gave them to the city.” The Cistercian abbey has a long history, but by North’s time was in ruins and dangerously derelict, having been surrendered to the Crown in the “Act for the Dissolution of the Greater Monasteries” in 1539 during the reign of Henry VIII, when the roof was removed to prevent the monks from returning, and the church bells, lead, and timber were sold off. From the late seventeenth century into the nineteenth century, the abbey was on an estate owned by the Earls of Cardigan.46 In 1868, the 7th Earl died, leaving no heir, but leaving lots of debt that needed to be paid off. The Cardigan property, including the abbey and Abbey House, was advertised for sale in October 1888, but this was suspended, until announced again in December. There then ensued a sequence of developments that led to Colonel North’s dramatic intervention. On December 12, the second day of the sale of the Cardigan estate, the abbey and Abbey House were put up for auction. There were two

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Image 6.2 “Reopening of Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds: The Bishop of Ripon delivering the Address.” Holland Tringham, The Illustrated London News, September 21, 1895, p. 1.

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conditions: that the new owner would not build on the site (except for restoration or ecclesiastical purposes) and that the abbey would not be demolished. Crucially, the auctioneer began the day by removing the first condition, although the obligation to leave the abbey building untouched was retained. Neither the abbey nor Abbey House reached the reserve starting prices of, respectively, £10,000 and £3,500. A rumor circulated the following day that a business group in Manchester planned to acquire the estate and turn it into a pleasure park, and the day after that, a man named Edmund Wilson (who had had his eye on the property for some time) paid a 10 percent deposit on his £13,500 offer to buy the abbey and the house. He hoped to get the financial backing of a syndicate for the remainder, and was probably intent on selling the abbey (alone) to the Leeds Council and developing the rest. Six days later, on December 20, two delegates from the Leeds Mechanics’ Institute met with Colonel North at the Hotel Métropole. They had traveled to London with the intention of inviting important figures to the opening of the institute’s new boys’ school in January the following year, and naturally North was on their list of prospective dignitaries. North agreed to attend the opening and contributed £250 to the building fund. There is a delightful account of the conversation that then followed given in The Life and Career of the Late Col. North47 allegedly based on North’s memory of the event some years later: I will tell you how Kirkstall Abbey came about. Two men from Leeds came into my breakfast-room, from your Mechanics’ Institute, and asked me if I would take the chair. I said, “Have you had breakfast?” They said, “No.” Then I said, “Have some breakfast!” They said, “What a pity about Kirkstall Abbey!” I said, “What about Kirkstall Abbey?” They said, “It has been sold by auction.” I said, “Won’t the town buy it?” They said, “No.” I said, “Then you wire down to the Mayor, and ask him if he will accept it as a present from me.” That is all the premeditation I had.

Leeds Borough Council was obviously delighted and decided unanimously “to present the Colonel with the honorary freedom of the borough”—and North became the first Honorary Freeman of Leeds. The citation reads: That this Council, in appreciation and recognition of the eminent services rendered to the borough of Leeds by Colonel John Thomas North of Eltham, in the county of Kent, a native of this borough, in his munificent gift to the Corporation of the historic ruins of Kirkstall Abbey, and the grounds connected therewith, do hereby, in pursuance

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of the Honorary Freedom of Boroughs Act, 1885, confer upon him the honorary freedom of the borough of Leeds.48

Arrangements for the handing over of the check were made quickly, since Colonel North was traveling back to Chile in February 1889, and he visited Leeds for the ceremony held on January 25 with members of his family: his wife Jane, his brother Gamble, his daughter Emma, and his son Harry.49 For the ceremony, 2,800 tickets of admission were issued. When North spoke, he began by saying: You have conferred upon me the highest distinction at your command, with the support of everyone here. I don’t know but that any true Yorkshireman who has done what I have done would have acted in the same way and come to the fore. There is no doubt I have been prosperous even beyond my expectations, but what is the use of money if you don’t spend it in the way it should be spent? (Loud cheers).50

He added that he had visited the abbey earlier in the day and, finding that the grounds were not large enough, he had undertaken to pay £900 for an adjoining field51 “for the children to play upon.”52 There were legal problems to be resolved, and the transaction was only formalized in December 1890 as North’s present of “15 acres of land and the ruins of the Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstall as a Public Place . . . to the intent that the said ruins and buildings may not be pulled down or destroyed but may at all times be maintained and as far as reasonably possible preserved from injury and decay . . . In Trust to permit the premises to be for ever freely used as a Public Park by all peaceable inhabitants of the Borough.” North sold Abbey House to Colonel Thomas Walter Harding in 1893, who restored several of the historical features,53 and after much-needed repair work the abbey was opened to the public on September 14, 1895. There were other acts of generosity toward the city of his birth; Colonel North gave £5,000 toward a new wing in Leeds General Infirmary, and 2,500 guineas to the Engineering Department of the Yorkshire College—the forerunner of Leeds University.54 There is a report too that in September 1889,55 Colonel North announced that he intended to acquire the moor at Holbeck, where he was born, and present Holbeck Moor to the city. This report, in The Pall Mall Gazette, says that the Mayor of Leeds thankfully accepted the gift, but it has proved impossible to verify if the offer was actually carried out. In January 1889, the same month that North attended the Kirkstall Abbey ceremony, he was already thinking of running for election to parliament, for the Conservative Party, naturally. The Pall Mall

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Gazette,56 quoting the London correspondent of The Yorkshire Post, reported that North was seeking to become a member of the Carlton Club in London (a club founded as a party political organization in 1832), with Lord Randolph Churchill as one of his two sponsors. The Gazette noted that “Colonel North, who is an out-and-out Tory, is ready to mark his accession to the Carlton by contributing to its election funds £20,000, or to contest any seat in the United Kingdom that the party may select for him.” Colonel North’s chance came later, in the 1895 General Election when he was chosen by the conservatives in the West Leeds constituency to run against Herbert Gladstone—the current Liberal member of Parliament for Leeds, and the youngest son of William Gladstone (prime minister in several periods, most recently from 1892 to 1894). Despite North’s immense popularity in Leeds, this initiative was not universally applauded. The Leeds Mercury, for example, was of the opinion in July 189557 that: It is a candidature promoted by a small clique of devoted worshippers at the shrine of the Nitrate King, who may, for the present purpose, be termed ‘the Colonel North Election Syndicate.’

The article explained how the usual procedure of hearing from the candidate about his political views was dispensed with, adding, with irony, that: To have asked a gentleman who had bought and presented Kirkstall Abbey to his native city, and whose balance at his bankers was universally believed to be substantial, to go through the formality imposed upon less well known and less wealthy candidates would have been to imperil the very dearest objects of the Election Syndicate.

Colonel North’s attitude from the first seems to have been that of cultivating a self-parody of his by now well-known folkloric reputation. At his first public meeting, held to formalize his candidature, The Leeds Mercury noted how he “expressly stated that he was not going to talk politics [and] his talk was on every other theme but politics.” He admitted, in mock weariness, “I suppose I shall have to send round some sort of address [i.e. statement of his opinions].” The resulting pamphlet was “lacking in the Colonel’s humorous vein,” but, continued The Leeds Mercury, it has all the attractiveness and alluring phraseology and typography of the shrewdly-drafted prospectus of a new gold-mining company.

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The large capitals, the italics, and the seductive sonorous phrases are all in their right places, and no doubt is left on the mind of the reader that if only he will consent to give his vote to the Colonel the political dividends will be as great as those promised in the prospectus of the Londonderry Gold Mine.

The newspaper urged the voters to reelect Herbert Gladstone, “a representative who has served them faithfully,” given that: Whatever we may think of Colonel North as a successful man of business and a good-natured, sound-hearted, genuine, generous man, we have no hesitation in saying that his knowledge of the political issues now before the country is almost beneath contempt.58

The election campaign was followed closely throughout Britain, and even abroad. The New York Times on July 14, 1895 was of the opinion that: His speeches are unparalleled examples of ignorance, vulgarity, and the coarsest bids to everything selfish and mean in the constituency. They would have attracted wide, almost incredulous, attention a few years ago. Now they are merely chuckled over.

If there was any strategy, it was that of playing to the gallery. The Times described it as “a remarkable contest conducted by Colonel North upon novel electioneering principles.”59 The Manchester Guardian gave its opinion on July 15, 1895: Colonel North is very well known in the “nitrate” and the racing fields, but he has confessedly interested himself only in the very slightest degree in politics. His whole position may perhaps best be summed up in an answer given by him to a question [as to] whether he would support “one man one vote.” “I leave these things to those who know more about them than I do,” Colonel North is reported to have replied. “But when the time comes,” he added, “I shall, no doubt, make up my mind one way or the other.”

The same newspaper, in its obituary for John Thomas North on May 6, 1896, recalled how: His generous impulses made him a bad candidate from the point of view of the election agent, who had the Corrupt Practices Act forever in front of him. But the difficulty was practically got over by sewing up Colonel North’s pockets, and in that condition the candidate courted the constituency.

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It is said that North had all the white dogs that could be rounded up dipped in laundry blue (his party’s color) and turned out into the streets; that on the eve of the election he paid for as much beer as anyone could drink in the packed Conservative Club; that on the day of the election North and his friends organized a procession that included two well-known prize fighters; and that he chartered fire engines to take voters to the polls. It very nearly paid off. He lost by only a narrow margin—fifty votes in the first count and just ninety-six votes in the recount, in a poll of over 12,500.60 On accepting defeat before a large crowd assembled in Victoria Square, North claimed the result was a “moral victory,” and ended by saying “I thank you all, ta-ta.” In the concluding paragraph of the obituary for Colonel North published by The Leeds Mercury on May 9, 1896, the writer argues that: His friends made a mistake in inducing him to seek Parliamentary honours, but his political campaign was not fought out by him in false colours, and his unbounded popularity, as a result of his free, frank, rough-and-ready, and kindly manner, nearly secured him the seat for which he was a candidate—albeit many who voted for him were glad at his defeat, satisfied by the exhibition they then witnessed that Colonel North, while thoroughly at home as a sportsman, as a financier, and a tower of strength as a friend, was altogether impossible as a politician.

Myth Making 1. Hernán Ramírez Necochea quotes from the El Ferrocarril newspaper of March 22, 1889 (soon after North arrived on his return visit to Chile) that Jane North was seen breast-feeding her baby in Iquique when a servant, who was also breast-feeding a baby, died. When she discovered this, she breastfed the two babies, notwithstanding the notorious danger of contagion. The newspaper was impressed and added that “one understands the merit of Mrs. North’s action, with which she proves that she is a worthy companion to the likeable Colonel” (Hernán Ramírez Necochea, La Guerra Civil de 1891: Antecedentes Económicos, 1958, 91–2, author’s translation). A touching story, but sadly for the record, Jane North’s third and last baby had been born six years previously, and did not accompany North to Chile.

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2. “A syndicate which includes Colonel North and Baron de Worms has purchased the Lower California Peninsula for £9,000,000. The country will be annexed to the United States. At present it forms part of Mexico” (The Evening Post, New Zealand, October 10, 1893).

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Chapter 7

The Sensation of the Hour

When Colonel South, the millionaire, gave his last garden party I was amongst the guests who had a welcome true and hearty. The Prince of Wales was also there, and my heart jumped with glee, When I was told the Prince would like to have a word with me. Chorus: Where did you get that hat? Where did you get that tile? Isn’t it a nobby one, and just the proper style? I should like to have one just the same as that! Where’er I go, they shout “Hello! Where did you get that hat?” —From the music hall song Where did you get that hat?1

T

oward the end of the 1880s decade, as the nitrate boom reached its zenith, Colonel North began to look elsewhere to expand on his portfolio of investments, and until the year of his death, 1896, he diversified away from Chile into goldmines in Australia and South Africa, trams in Egypt, rubber in Africa, cement works in Brussels,2 a hotel and tourist complex in Ostend, and silver mining near Belgrade and in Bolivia at the Maravillas mine.3 However, one of his first important business moves outside South America was closer to home. In June 1888, Colonel North acquired the Llynvi and Tondu Company, which owned coal mines and iron works near Maesteg in south Wales. This town lies at the northernmost end of the Llynfi Valley in what is today the county borough of Bridgend in Glamorganshire. The region was facing an uncertain future, and the company was being liquidated. Colin Chapman (1998) tells the story of how Colonel North was hosting a garden party at his palatial Avery Hill home in London when he got into a conversation with his neighbor John Joseph Smith, who had been appointed receiver of the Llynvi and Tondu Company in February 1885. John

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Smith later became the official liquidator in January 1887, following the decision to wind up the company, and in August that year an order was made to liquidate the part of the company that was not secured by debentures.4 A deal was struck whereby North would purchase the company, and in June 1888 he offered £150,000 for the entire property, with the exception of the stock of manufactured iron bars. His offer was really made on behalf of a private syndicate called the Western Navigation Collieries Syndicate Limited and was accepted by the debenture holders. The syndicate was registered in July, when North transferred his investment to this syndicate, which in turn sold the company to North’s Navigation Collieries Syndicate. In January 1889, this syndicate sold the company to North’s Navigation Collieries Limited for £350,000, with Colonel North as the largest shareholder. The Times announced on January 26, 1889 that the new company had a capital of £450,000 to invest in the coal and iron business, and that apart from the land and the mines, the purchase included “all ground rents, improved rents and royalties, railways, coal wagons, plant, and all the live and dead stocks and stores belonging to the present proprietors.” The company’s assets consisted of six collieries: Park Slip near Tondu; Wyndham Nos. 1 and 2, and Tynewydd collieries in the Ogmore valley; and No. 9 Level, Maesteg Deep, and Coegnant collieries at Maesteg. There was an explosion at the Park Slip colliery on August 26, 1892, which claimed 112 lives, 5 and North immediately sent £200 as his personal subscription to the fund for the bereaved families. There were other assets too, including the iron works at Maesteg, which was quickly taken apart and sold, and at Tondu. New coal pits were sunk at Caerau near Maesteg in the Llynfi Valley—the No. 2 Level and the South Pit. As so often happened with North’s investments, there was litigation, although not brought by Colonel North, nor against him personally in this case. The Times reported on October 30, 1889 that holders of debentures had filed a motion in the High Court of Justice to remove John Joseph Smith as the official liquidator of the company, since by acquiring an interest in the transaction he had “placed himself in a position in which his interest was in conflict with his duty as liquidator.” The judge dismissed the motion, but criticized John Smith for taking out a £5,000 interest in the company while acting as liquidator, an action which “was neither wise nor prudent; it was a grave error on his part . . . But it was not shown that he had in fact in any way abused his trust.”6

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One year after Colonel North’s death, his widow Jane North and his son Harry laid the foundation stone in Maesteg for the Colonel North Memorial Hall, which still stands and has recently been renovated.7 The ceremony took place on May 3, 1897, and the Western Mail 8 newspaper in Cardiff recalled how Colonel North, on his first visit to Maesteg in 1889, had been so pleased with his reception that he subsequently sent a check for £500 to the committee that managed the Llynvi Reading Room and Library to spend as they saw fit. The money and the interest that accrued was later put toward the construction of new buildings on the same site—the North’s Miners Library and Institute, which today has been modified for use as an amusement arcade. It was also announced at the same ceremony that new schools for 1,016 children had been opened in Maesteg on land provided by North’s Navigation Collieries Company in leasehold for ninety-nine years. The Western Mail described how a crowd of 3,000 came together for the laying of the foundation stone, and that “the arrival of the company was the signal for vociferous cheers.” His son Harry, now Captain Harry North, “was heartily received,” and addressed the crowd, “ ‘Do good to all’ was, he said, his motto, as it was that of his late father. They would find that he was a ‘chip of [sic] the old block.’ (Cheers). He was never in Wales before, but he hoped to come many times in the future. He was rather sorry he was not a Welshman (laughter) but he had a wife from Wales, and she belonged to Glamorgan. (Loud cheers).” Jane North was presented with a silver trowel at the close of the festivity. Apart from the Colonel North Memorial Hall, the building of North’s Navigation Company can still be seen in Maesteg, one of the few original coal company offices to have survived in the Llynfi valley. The National Coal Board took over the collieries upon nationalization in 1947, and coal mining continued for some years; in the case of the Coegnant colliery, this was closed in 1982. A more controversial investment, this time in Africa, was North’s involvement in the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company (ABIR), which was established at Antwerp on August 6, 1892, with British and Belgian capital and with the aim of harvesting natural rubber in the Congo Free State. This huge area in the north of the country, of some two million square kilometers, was defined by the Maringa river in the south and the Lopori river in the north, rivers that joined in the west to make the Lulonga river that led on to the Zaire. This was the largest rubber concession company in the country and was essentially the private property of the Congo Society, which was run

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by King Leopold II, not as King of the Belgians but as a private entrepreneur. This arrangement had come about as a result of the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, which divided Africa into spheres of influence for the European powers and set into train the “scramble for Africa.” ABIR’s concession conferred exclusive rights to all forest products for thirty years, together with the controversial right to tax the inhabitants. The tax was forcibly collected as rubber from a relatively rare rubber vine that grew in the region, and collection points with armed sentries were established along the two rivers and their tributaries. “Like the Congo Independent State of which it was a part, Abir was a plundering and tribute-collecting empire of the crudest sort. It operated on a boom-and-bust cycle, and after the bust it departed, leaving a legacy of death, disease, and destruction” (Harms 1983, 125). It is said that King Leopold II met Colonel North at a horse racing event and suggested that he invest in the Lapori-Maringa concession, one of the nine concession areas designated by the king. North agreed, and contributed £40,000 of his money toward the ABIR. The company issued 2,000 shares, of which 1,800 were in the hands of British investors, including Colonel North, and was the largest of its kind in the country. It is generally believed that North was essentially a front man for the enterprise, to give it prominence and attract investment. Nevertheless, Colonel North did attempt to expand on his stake in the Congo. The Times of December 22, 1894 reported on rumors that North had offered seven million francs to purchase the Manyema district, and that this had been rejected by King Leopold, despite his need for funds to invest in the Congo to cover his debt. The offer was formalized later in the year, and The Times 9 announced that “A society of speculators, led by Colonel North, had offered a sum that more than covered the debt for the purchase of the sole privilege of establishing their operations in the vast and rich province of the Manyema.” The Society of the Manyema had already been organized, and shares printed, but Belgian authorities were concerned that a monopoly of this kind might jeopardize any future decision by Belgium to annex the country.10 ABIR was at first quite successful as a business, but entered into liquidation in 1898 in a maneuver to avoid tax and escape Belgian business regulations. Nevertheless, the company at once reestablished itself as the Abir Congo Company (where “Abir” was no longer an acronym for the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company). The name change was needed since British investment was no longer involved,

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in part because Colonel North’s heirs had sold their shares following his death in 1896. The company later became synonymous with human rights abuses, most famously when Roger Casement was commissioned by the British government in 1903 to investigate the situation in the Congo Free State and he published a devastating report in 1904. Two years after his foray into Africa, Colonel North turned his attention to gold mining in Australia. A prospector named John Dunne had stumbled on an apparently rich deposit of gold in hills north west of Coolgardie in western Australia, which he named the “Wealth of Nations” mine but was afterward called the Dunnesville mine. After extracting some gold of good quality, the mine was sold in October 1894 to Colonel North for £139,000,11 which was a huge sum of money. North and his associates invested a great deal of capital in developing the Dunnesville mine and other nearby leases. Much enthused by the business potential of gold mining, Colonel North established in 1895 the City of London Exploration Syndicate of Western Australia Limited. One of the mines, the Londonderry Gold Mine at Coolgardie, was purchased for £180,000 and floated with a capital of £700,000.12 This acquisition was to cause Colonel North a great deal of trouble and was the target over time of much negative media attention. The Glasgow Herald13 reported in November 1894 on the early promotion of the mine by Colonel North and his associate Lord Fingall at Winchester House in London, where “specimens of auriferous quartz valued at about £25,000” were on view. The newspaper described how a John Mills of Londonderry had found the deposit in May that year; that an area of twenty-five acres had been staked out; and that an application had been made to the government for a lease on the property. Lord Fingall had accompanied this first reconnaissance of the property in Western Australia, and he was satisfied that he was in “the presence of a large rich shoot [sic]. A shaft 50ft. deep was sunk, and a second rich shoot discovered. Other deposits have been found, and several experts have pronounced an opinion in favour of the enormous wealth of the find.”14 Early estimates coming from Australia put the potential value at an incredible £300,000 worth of gold for every twenty feet of excavation. The trouble arose over a telegram that Lord Fingall subsequently sent on April 1, 1895 from Australia in a blind panic, having on this occasion found very little gold. The text read “Regret in the extreme have to inform you that rich chutes of ore very bad indeed. Does not appear to be practically anything important left.” The Economist

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commented wryly on April 6 that this was “an extraordinary start for a property from which, only a few months ago, it was stated that £600,000 worth of gold could be taken in a month or two.” North first tried to suppress the telegram, and then went on the attack. Newspapers carried a Press Association report dated April 9 quoting North: “Colonel North declares that the gold in the Londonderry mine must have been stolen.”15 The Leeds Mercury 16 published a letter from the company secretary on April 10 in rebuttal to Lord Fingall, quoting a cablegram from two “of the best-known mining experts in Western Australia” who reported that “We do believe this mine is valuable, notwithstanding this temporary reverse, not uncommon in this district.” They recommended that development of the mine should continue. Lord Fingall did not endorse the report in full, and as a consequence the company decided to ask the government of Western Australia to appoint “the highest independent expert to examine and report upon each of the company’s eight mining properties.” Colonel North’s response, as given in this letter, was characteristically to instill shareholder confidence through a dramatic gesture: Colonel North has increased his offer to the company as follows: “In order to secure every advantage possible to the shareholders, I have decided to place the whole of my profits (i.e. one-half of the whole profits), after deducting outlay, in the hands of trustees for the company, under conditions to be arranged for the greatest advantage to the shareholders . . . These funds, including also all profits arising from their investments, thus placed in the hands of trustees, shall so remain until the company has earned profits equal to 100 per cent of the issued capital, and only when this has been accomplished shall the money so held in trust be handed back to me.”

The Economist reminded its readers on April 13, 1895 that the Londonderry launch in November 1894 had been “the sensation of the hour,” with promises of stone “literally permeated with gold.”17 Lord Fingall’s lawyer, Horace Plunkett, himself a director of the Londonderry Company, felt compelled to write to The Times on April 8, 1895 in a letter with the heading “The Londonderry Mine”: I feel that some statement from me may serve to justify the continued confidence of the shareholders in their representative at the mine. I have known Lord Fingall intimately all my life, and a more sensitively honourable man does not live. I think it possible that, in framing his now famous telegram, anxiety to conceal nothing may have caused him to give an unnecessarily gloomy picture of the prospects of the company.

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Plunkett later resigned his directorship, in August that year, “alleging he is not going to stand Colonel North’s treatment of himself and Lord Fingall.”18 But North was very annoyed with Lord Fingall and took him to court in the case of North v. Fingall and others, tried in December 1895 at the High Court of Justice, and duly reported on by The Times.19 Colonel North requested an injunction to prevent Lord Fingall from accessing the sum of £30,000 deposited in Fingall’s name (and others) with the Union Bank of Australia until all matters relating to the purchase of the mine had been resolved. This resulted from a second serious problem that had emerged; the original lease of twenty-five acres had subsequently been reduced, since the sellers had the title deeds only to around sixteen acres. The sum of £30,000 was taken out of the purchase price to await the final verdict on the land issue. Litigation continued after Colonel North’s death and arose from the undertaking he had announced in April 1895, and had reaffirmed at a meeting of shareholders in August that year. The case of Cowell v. North—Cowell represented all the Londonderry shareholders—tried in 1898 in the High Court of Justice was prompted by the fact that when Colonel North died in May 1896 the profits he referred to had not yet been transferred to trustees, nor had the final deed of trust been drawn up.20 The judge was sympathetic to the shareholders, but “the facts showed only a promised gift not completed at the death of Colonel North, which could not be enforced against his executors,” and the case was dismissed. In the same year that Colonel North was busy investing in Western Australia, in 1894, he was probably also looking into mining prospects in the southeast of Australia, on the island of Tasmania. The Colonel North Silver Mining Company N. L.21 was formed in 1894 to work a mine on the Comstock field to the west of Zeehan on the west coast of Tasmania. There is very little documentation, and it is not clear exactly whether or how North was involved. The company was launched again in 1899 as the Colonel North Mines and Railway Company N. L., focused on various leases including the Colonel North Mine22 and Grubb’s Mine, but was not successful at first in raising capital for their tramway. Subsequently, the “railway” became a two-kilometer horse-worked tramline that linked Zeehan to Summit and the Colonel North Mine, and started as Grubb’s Tramway in 1891, but in 1899 became the Colonel North Tramway. This line closed in 1927. It seems too that Colonel North also looked further east, to New Zealand. The Evening Post reported in March 189523 on

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information from Auckland that Colonel North had taken up 10,000 shares in the Silverton gold mine in Waihi. Other mining investments included the Ripanji Quicksilver and Silver Mining Company Limited at Ripanji, near Belgrade (registered in the UK in 1887), and shares in the Spes Bona gold mine in South Africa.24 Colonel North’s investments outside Chile were not confined to mining and rubber. There are references25 to his business interests in tramways in Egypt, 26 cement works in Brussels, and factories in SaintEtienne and Paris. The investment in Saint-Etienne, in eastern central France, was in a brewery there and—as so often happened—Colonel North was involved in litigation. The Times reported in February 189327 on two cases before the High Court of Justice; Lescher v. North and Kirby v. North, both of which related to the sale of the brewery. The first case was dismissed, but in the second, Colonel North was ordered to repay Lady Kirby certain advances made by her deceased husband and the costs of her claim. Shortly before he died, North was involved in a hotel and tourism project at Ostend in Belgium, which lay close to King Leopold’s palace. He was reported as having reached an agreement with the king in late 1895 whereby, for £300,000, he gained a mile and a half of coastline for tourism development. The idea was very modern: to create an international center for sports and recreation, with a racecourse, theater, hotel, cycling track, a boxing ring, and even a casino to rival that of Monte Carlo.28 However, North died in May the following year, and although his company endeavored to carry out his plans, and may have been involved in the Tramway Electrique d’Ostende Littoral (started in 1897), there was no further work on the project. A Little Nonsense Here is an item concerning Colonel North. When he was travelling in the United States some years ago, he put up at an hotel for the night. Next day, on his bill being presented, he noticed that they charged him as having consumed three quart bottles of champagne. Knowing for a fact that he had only drunk three pint bottles, he thought he would have a joke at the expense of the hotel clerk, so he arranged on packing up his portmanteau to leave at least half of the things on the floor as being unable to get them in. He then went to the clerk and asked him to be good enough to go up and pack his things. The clerk went, but came down in due course with a long face, and said: “Colonel, I have done my best, but I can only get about half your things in.” “Well,” replied

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the Nitrate King, with a merry twinkle in his eye, “I thought you could have done the trick for me, seeing that you managed to get three quarts of champagne inside three pint bottles.” —“A Little Nonsense: Told of the Colonel,” The Newcastle Weekly Courant, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, December 28, 1895

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Chapter 8

A Visit to the Nitrate Kingdom

“You are very clever, Mr. North.” —Pablo Neruda, Canto General, 1950.1

1

889 was a pivotal year for Colonel North. This was the year that he became chairman of the Nitrate Railways Company. He had already bought up a controlling interest in the company, in 1887, and had become a company director and deputy chairman in 1888. As we have seen, North’s investment in this railway was assuming quite a risk on his part. President Balmaceda of Chile was moving to break the company’s monopoly in Tarapacá, and if this was successful, North stood to lose heavily. Colonel North resolved to leave London for Chile in February 1889, having been away since 1882. He was worried about his railway concessions and the recent disquieting pronouncements from Balmaceda regarding foreign investment in the nitrate industry that threatened his business interests. The visit also led to the famous confrontation between Colonel North and President Balmaceda. But first, on January 4, 1889, before leaving England on the S.S. Galicia, North gave an extravagant farewell ball for over 1,000 guests at the London Hotel Métropole, which had been decorated with shields bearing the letter “N.” In attendance as guards of honor were volunteers of the 2nd Tower Hamlets (East London) Engineer Volunteer Corps, for which he had been made their honorary colonel four years previously. On the following day, The New York Times reported the event under the headline “The Nitrate King’s Folly. A Ball which all London talks about. Col. North spends $40,000 in an extraordinary entertainment—Wales is ungratefully absent.”2 The piece begins: A very remarkable ball was given at the Hotel Métropole to-night. It was not only remarkable in size and lavish expenditure, the cost

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Image 8.1 “Shipping nitrate at Pisagua, Chile,” Melton Prior. The Illustrated London News, January 24, 1891, p. 1.

being £8,000, but it furthermore punctuated strongly the gradual rise of finance in England over the old aristocracy. It was given by Col. John T. North, familiarly known as the Nitrate King. Col. North is a Yorkshire boy who went out to South America some twenty years ago and saw an opportunity. To-day he is the most talked of man in England. He is worth from forty to sixty millions of dollars.

The reporter then comments on the friendship between North and Lord Randolph Churchill3 (who had in December 1888 introduced North to the Prince of Wales at a dinner given by Baron Alfred de Rothschild), “and the result is that Wales was given 2,000 shares in a late allotment of new stock, which now stands at £7, making £70,000 for the heir apparent.” While the Prince of Wales did not attend the fancy dress ball—“the general opinion was that he is ungrateful”— Lord Randolph Churchill did, dressed in the “Levée Uniform of a Privy Councillor,” along with Lady Churchill as the “Morning Star”—“a costume of black lace, covered with diamonds and a blazing diamond star on her forehead.”4 Colonel North at this time had become very fat, and he came to the ball as Henry VIII! Invitations were sent to 1,400 guests. North took over everything in the Hotel Métropole that was vacant, including the entire first

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Image 8.2 Hotel Métropole, London. Vintage Victorian print.

floor, the Whitehall Rooms, and one hundred bedrooms for those who traveled from outside London.5 He spared no expense on this exuberant affair—“champagne flowed like spring water,” according to The New York Times. In London, The World 6 rejoiced at the ball “which will live long in the memory of those who witnessed it”: The corridors were converted into groves of palms; pages in seventeenthcentury costume presented each guest with a dance-card, together with a menu and plan printed on tinted silk handkerchiefs edged with écru lace; and Royal trumpeters proclaimed the approach of the procession to the reception-room, where Colonel North as King “Hal,” Mrs. North, in powder, as the Duchess de Maine, Miss North as an ideal Persian Princess, and Mr. [Harry] North as the Duc de Richelieu in the days of his youth, held a preliminary durbar. Mrs. Robert Harvey, whose husband is one of the great magnates in the nitrate world,

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personated “Fatima,” and wore diamonds which a duchess might reasonably envy; [and] Mrs. Jewell, the wife of Colonel North’s former partner, was Mary Queen of Scots.” (The World, January 9, 1889)

The celebrated cartoonist Phil May attended the fancy dress ball and contributed a drawing of the Norths with Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill and many of their celebrity guests, which was published in the St. Stephen’s Review. According to John Bennion Booth (1957, 187–8), the editor, William Allison, sent a representative to meet North, thinking that this would result in a commission of copies to be distributed among North’s friends. However, North was not amused by the legend that Phil May added to the drawing— “Cost me £8,000, and I can’t get a drink!” Booth comments that this was “a solid fact—the free fooders and free drinkers had eaten and drunk the Hotel Métropole dry,” but North tore up the drawing and threw out the paper’s representative. For his part, still according to Booth, Allison soothed North that the phrase stressed just how hospitable North had been, at which North put in an order for 1,000 copies of the newspaper. Not content only with being the talk of the town, North resolved to gain further publicity by taking with him to Chile an artist from the Illustrated London News named Melton Prior (who was also a director in the Nitrate Railways Company) and two journalists—Montague Vizetelly of The Financial Times and the veteran Times correspondent William Howard Russell. The Financial Times had been founded the previous year, in 1888, as “the friend of the honest financier and the respectable broker.” The rival newspaper—Colonel North’s nemesis, The Financial News—was not invited. Harry Marks, the founder, had been offended by remarks that North made in an after dinner speech in Liverpool soon before the voyage, and had issued a writ for libel damages amounting to £20,000, with the promise to his solicitors that £1,000 would be added if they could serve it while the Galicia was in British waters. A tug was apparently chartered and pursued the steamship, but in vain.7 William Howard Russell is considered now to have been one of the first modern war correspondents, having spent twenty-two months covering the Crimean War in 1854 and 1855,8 and other conflicts such as the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian War, and the Anglo-Zulu War. Russell went to Chile with his wife as the result of “an accidental meeting and a few minutes’ conversation with Colonel North at a luncheon party on 28th January” (Russell 1890, 1). This led to an invitation to “see and report what had been done and what

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was being done, and to examine the works which had transformed the desert of Tarapacá—wastes without a sign of life or vegetation—into a centre of commercial enterprise,” (Russell 1890, 2)9 and a change in his plans to holiday with his wife in Egypt. It had been asserted in certain journals that commercial enterprises in that region were shams . . . and that a railway [North’s Nitrate Railways], in which the public had invested largely, was “a tramway ending in a marsh.” (Russell 1890, 2)

Russell determined that “All I would have to do was to judge for myself and relate what I saw” (Russell 1890, 2). His account of the visit was duly published in 1890 as A Visit to Chile and the Nitrate Fields of Tarapacá and was illustrated by sketches drawn by Melton Prior.10 North and his entourage sailed to Chile on the S.S. Galicia of the Pacific Steamship Navigation Company. North took with him as gifts to the nation two valuable horses, a complete fire engine for the city of Iquique and the silver-mounted capstan of the Esmeralda with the dedication “To the Republic of Chile. John T. North.”11 The La Industria newspaper of Iquique of April 13, 1889 reported how the previous day North had given President Balmaceda “the rich shield of gold and silver in which is inset the bronze plaque, with the national star that covered the top of the capstan of the Esmeralda”12 (author’s translation). Some sources say that the horses were intended for the president, and that Balmaceda did not even look at them. Hernán Ramírez Necochea (1958) writes that North’s presents for the president were roundly rejected.13 However, Maurice Hervey (special correspondent of The Times in Chile, and no sycophant to North) writes that “of this there was not the smallest evidence” (Hervey 1891).14 William Russell, who was there, wrote in 1890 that “Colonel North, at a formal audience, delivered the Esmeralda shield to the charge of the President, who took charge of it on behalf of the State” (1890, 120). The fire engine was delivered to Iquique with the plaque “Presented to the Town of Iquique by Col. J. T. NORTH on the Coming of Age of his son HARRY NORTH. Dec. 26, 1887.”15 Parts of this machine have survived; the driver’s seat with a bronze plaque reading “Diploma of Honour. Highest Award, Italian Exhibition, 1888” can be seen at the headquarters of the 7th Fire Company “Tarapacá” in Iquique. The newspaper El Ferrocarril on June 11, 1889 mentions that North also gave a silver helmet to be worn by the general commander of the Iquique fire brigade.16

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They arrived at the port of Coronel in Chile on March 16, 1889, where North showed off the railway bridge then being built at Concepción over the River Bío-Bío for his Arauco Railway. North learned in Coronel that President Balmaceda had left Valparaíso on March 4 to tour northern Chile and that he was making troublesome pronouncements, especially at Iquique, “which indicated the possibility of important changes, affecting materially the great interests of the strangers within her gates . . . and the mining and nitrate houses, and the railway companies based on concessions, which were chiefly owned by foreigners” (Russell 1890, 42). In his speech at Iquique, nine days before North arrived in Coronel—which surely was no coincidence—Balmaceda outlined his views on the future of the nitrate industry. The private property [in Tarapacá] is almost all in foreign hands and is actively concentrated in individuals of just one nationality [i.e. British hands]. It would be preferable if that property was also Chilean; but if national capital is indolent or mistrustful, we should not be surprised that foreign capital fills with foresight and intelligence the vacuum that the negligence of our compatriots makes in the progress of that region . . . The application of Chilean capital in that industry will produce for us the benefits of the export of our own wealth and the regularity of the very production, without the dangers of a possible monopoly. The moment has come to make a declaration to the face of the entire republic. The industrial monopoly of nitrate cannot be the business of the State, whose fundamental mission is only to guarantee property and freedom. Neither should this be the work of private individuals, whether national or foreign, because we will never accept the economic tyranny of many or of few. (La Industria, March 9, 1889, author’s translation)

Turning to the issue of railway concessions, Balmaceda added in his speech that he hoped “that very soon all the railways of Tarapacá will be national property. I aspire, sirs, to Chile being the owner of all the railways that cross its territory.” North took fright—“it was not known how far the reports of the President’s discourses were correct, but it might be inferred that they were not all accurate, because he had already found it necessary to make a formal correction of, and explain away, one important passage which had caused serious uneasiness,” wrote Russell (Russell: 81). North resolved to leave for Santiago three days after his arrival in Coronel, leaving his traveling companions behind, to catch up with the president in Valparaíso. He was ferried across the River Bío-Bío

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at night (“a very long, cold, and unpleasant passage”17) to catch the train going north from Concepción. Russell caught up with North, and in Viña del Mar, near Valparaíso, joined him for the first of three meetings with President Balmaceda, who had just returned from his tour of the province of Tarapacá. William Russell found that Balmaceda’s bark was worse than his bite. He attended the first meeting, along with Melton Prior, Ernest Spencer (a member of Parliament, and chairman of the Tarapacá Nitrate Company), and John Dawson, who acted as interpreter. Russell noted that “the gist of the interview was that he had not the smallest intention of making war on vested interests.” Oddly enough, Russell reported that the president “was especially full of praise for the Nitrate Railway . . . and he said ‘he considered it a complete model of good management and organization,’ ” and that “Colonel North was very much gratified by the assurances of President Balmaceda” (Russell, 1890: 82). Michael Monteón (2003, 83) believes that “by that time the British and Chilean press had reacted with hostility to his plans and Balmaceda had retreated from them.” Russell’s opinion of Balmaceda as president was that his powers were “nearly despotic,” and he detected “signs in the press of a strong feeling that the powers of the President were exercised in a manner, especially in decrees touching expenditure and finance, which trenched upon constitutional rights” (1890, 83). Some sources are doubtful about Russell’s impartiality; about his reliability as a witness to these meetings; and whether the discussions were really so cordial. But for Russell to embellish his reports on these meetings would have been entirely out of character. He was sixty-nine years old, very successful, and very well-known as an uncompromising journalist and writer, with a substantial reputation that he could only lose. In the Crimean War, he had written about the British army’s logistical and medical incompetence and the suffering of the soldiers, and criticized several senior officers (including Lord Raglan); he had attacked British snobbery in India during the Mutiny and their treatment of the inhabitants there; he was threatened with death for his reporting in the United States on the American Civil War; and he had angered the establishment by exposing British misconduct during the Anglo-Zulu War. He had also made clear to Colonel North at the outset that on accepting the invitation to join the visit to Chile he would write honestly and independently on what he saw and experienced. And he was not the only witness to the conversations between Colonel North and President

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Balmaceda. Finally, contemporary newspaper accounts such as those published in El Ferrocarril and La Tribuna endorse how affable Balmaceda had been in the meetings.18 British historian Harold Blakemore (1993, 49) writes that after the meetings with North, notwithstanding these pleasantries in Viña del Mar, “The Chilean government pursued its attack on North’s railway monopoly in Tarapacá, skillfully exploiting other British interests which were equally opposed to it, but it did little to undermine the predominant foreign interest in the nitrate industry as a whole.” Incidentally, the main British opposition came from Gibbs & Company, who rather resented North’s late arrival to the nitrate business, and for enjoying the railway monopoly that seriously affected their own nitrate output and profits. After spending a week in Valparaíso, the group traveled on by train to Santiago. On his arrival, Colonel North was first accosted at his hotel by “ladies of mournful aspect, their heads wrapped in mantas, some with babies in their arms, [who] filled the corridors and passages, all provided with petitions and supplications for the boundlessly wealthy, generous English Colonel” (Russell 1890, 89). A message arrived from President Balmaceda that he would receive Colonel North on March 29. Russell attended this second interview with several others, including John Dawson and Edward Manby (the designer of the railway bridge in Concepción). Russell has little to say about the meeting, except that the president was critical of North’s purchase of a nitrate property (presumably this was the Lagunas salitrera) because there were doubts over the legal validity of the “owner” (Delano), and it was worth much more than he had arranged to pay for it. However, “at the same time he is very anxious to encourage foreign capitalists to push forward Chilian railways” (Russell 1890, 91). The party spent more time in Santiago, Viña del Mar, and Valparaíso, with the pleasant distractions of banquets, and the groups of “gaping petitioners” (1890, 121) blocking movement at every hotel. One lady had three charming children; she was beloved by a young man of an honourable family, who would marry her and acknowledge the dear ones as his own if the generous and great-hearted English lord would let her have a dot of $5,000. If she could not repay him on earth, he might rest assured he would receive compensation from the angels in heaven . . . [Another] had a mine of wealth which she could not work, but which, to meet pressing necessities, she would sell for a tenth of its value. (Russell 1890, 122)

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Finally, on May 1, the party left Valparaíso by steamer bound for Iquique, stopping at ports along the way. North spent a week in Iquique, and departed on May 13 in a specially commissioned train for a tour of his “Nitrate Kingdom [where] the lieges assembled sought to testify their loyalty by firing off squibs and crackers, cheering and waving flags” (Russell 1890, 166). They visited several oficinas, starting with Pozo Almonte, then the Buen Retiro “established by Colonel North, in conjunction with Mr. R[obert] Harvey, some years back, and . . . subsequently transferred by them to the Colorado Nitrate Company” (1890, 171); the San Donato, the Ramírez (belonging to North’s Liverpool Nitrate Company, which Russell visited twice); and the Primitiva, where the visitors were entertained by the oficina administrator, James Humberstone, who had introduced the revolutionary Shanks process to the process of nitrate refining; the Agua Santa; the Jaz-Pampa; the Esmeralda; the San Pablo; and the Peruana (belonging to North’s Colorado Company). William Russell found the Agua Santa oficina particularly interesting; “Agua Santa is now the property of a company, chiefly Chilian,” but had originally been purchased by Campbell, Outram and Company who “are or were the leaders in the war waged by the nitrate makers against the Nitrate Railway and its rates and claims” (1890, 197). There was a visit too to the Lagunas salitrera, the subject then of legal wrangling in the Chilean courts, which Russell did not accompany. The group left Iquique on June 7, and visited Panama, where they crossed by train to Colón (known then to Americans as Aspinwall) and observed from the carriage windows the aborted workings of the canal construction. The company led by Ferdinand de Lesseps had become bankrupt in May that year. They arrived in New York on July 1, where Colonel North was joined by his wife. On the steamer before arriving there had been an incident that was widely reported in the newspapers. Colonel North complained that he had been insulted by captain of the ship. One Sunday Miss North was “humming a tune” on board the steamer when the quartermaster told her to desist. On the conduct of the quartermaster being reported to the captain, it is said the latter stated he was acting under orders. When the party came to remonstrate with the captain, he, it is said, turned his face away and thus submitted them to an indignity. The affair was being much talked about. The captain, on his part, said throughout he was carrying out the regulation of the company for the discipline of the steamer, and for the protection of all passengers alike . . . He turned a deaf ear to their remonstrances

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because he did not wish to have any words with them. (The Pall Mall Gazette, July 17, 1889)

Colonel North and his entourage created a tremendous stir in the United States, where The New York Times carried a lengthy report on July 3, 1889 entitled “The Nitrate King is Here: A Chilian Monte Cristo on his Travels.”19 North was described by the newspaper as not looking his age of forty-five and being “Yankee in physique as well as in mind.” His clothes . . . are of the quiet kind which English gentlemen affect, and his flash jewelry is his only indication of the nouveau riche. He talks quietly with a strong English accent, from which the Yorkshire burr has not yet been eliminated by a score of years of Spanish.

William Russell summarized the trip for the benefit of the journalist, dwelling on the political issues surrounding the nitrate investments in Chile, and North’s “success” in convincing President Balmaceda and members of the Chilean Congress: that the nitrate fields would lie undeveloped for many years unless he should take hold of them, and [so] they suppressed their patriotic feelings in consideration of the revenue which he is to pay the Government for the new concession.20

Russell published his account of the trip in 1890, which one newspaper—The Daily News in London—reviewed with heavy sarcasm.21 Mr. Russell owns to the public-spirited anxiety to ascertain whether a railway in Chile which had been described as merely “a tramway ending in a marsh” really merited that description. It was very kind of Mr. Russell to go so far to clear up this point, and it is satisfactory to learn that he was partially repaid for the sacrifice by the enjoyment of considerable comforts on the voyage.

The journalist concluded by advising his readers, tongue-in-cheek, to “buy nitrate of soda as fast as you can. England is often too indifferent to these things. We go on in the confidence of our prosperity as though there were no Chile, no nitrate, no railway to bring it to the coast, and no Colonel North.” After leaving New York, Colonel North traveled on to Canada and then returned to England. Ringing in his ears was Balmaceda’s pronouncement to Congress, in his annual address of June 1, 1889, that his government proposed to dispose of 4,000 estacas (mining

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concessions) chosen from the best nitrate lands, with the aim of promoting Chilean businesses, whether formed by individuals in each province or by the provinces grouping together, with Chilean shareholders, nontransferable for a period of time, and thereafter only transferable to Chileans. This proposal to limit further foreign development of the nitrate fields, and to break the near monopoly of British control over nitrate in Tarapacá, never actually materialized, since from this time on Balmaceda’s relations with Congress quickly deteriorated. North faced another serious problem. During his short absence from Britain, nitrate prices had dropped significantly due to high production, and a crisis loomed for “the nitrate king,” showing just how much his own personality and style was behind the boom in investment. The Economist reported on August 3, 1889 that: It is seldom . . . that the movements of one individual have such important consequences as the goings and comings of Colonel North have with regard to the stocks which form what is the fashion to call the nitrate group. The market for nitrate shares is essentially a one-man market, for although many wealthy people are interested in it, they are like sheep without a shepherd when their leader is away. When the “Nitrate King” went to Chili . . . the market lost its buoyancy at once; prices fell away rapidly . . . [and] it was not until Colonel North had actually reached our shores that anything like strength was restored to the market.

North’s return served to restrain the worst losses, but only for a while, and by late 1889 the inherent weaknesses of world trade in nitrate could no longer be papered over. There then followed a year of political and constitutional crisis in Chile, with President Balmaceda opposed by many deputies in Congress. The cancellation of the Nitrate Railways concession (and therefore its monopoly) by Balmaceda’s administrative decree, and the denial of the right of appeal to the Chilean judiciary, was an affront to the rights of Congress, according to the mounting opposition, and a clear example of the president’s abuse of executive power. It was during yet another debate in Congress on the Nitrate Railways Company in January 1890 that Balmaceda closed the Congress and started to choose a new ministry without consulting the political parties, which triggered off a year of political crisis in Chile, during which the Nitrate Railways matter remained before the Chilean courts. The climax came a year later, on January 5, 1891, when the tensions between President Balmaceda and the Congressional Party could no longer be contained

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and Balmaceda unconstitutionally decreed that the estimates for 1891, which the Congress had resolutely refused to approve, should be the same as those for 1890. Two days later, in response to the appeal of the congressional leaders, and in defiance of Balmaceda’s orders, almost the entire Chilean fleet raised anchor at Valparaíso harbor to begin not only the Chilean revolution of 1891, but also “one of the strangest wars in modern history” (Blakemore 1964, 425). The army remained loyal to Balmaceda, and during February and March, the opposition gained control of the nitrate province of Tarapacá and set up the headquarters of the revolution in Iquique. There ensued several months of stand off, with the opposition in the north having a navy but no arms, and the government having arms but no navy, and the desert of Atacama lying between them. The matter had started as an economic question—the perception that Balmaceda intended to limit the participation of foreign capital in the nitrate industry, which had upset foreign (and national) business interests in Chile; quickly became embroiled in the country’s constitutional crisis; and then entered the international arena. In an exceptional example of Britain’s Foreign Office interfering diplomatically on the side of British commercial interests in Chile, the British government and the ambassador in Santiago declared their disquiet over how the Nitrate Railways Company was being dealt with and registered an official protest in February 1890. Naturally, the firm of Gibbs & Company had a different opinion, and in March 1890 they protested to the British government that Colonel North’s monopoly was actually detrimental to British capital invested in the same region. The Foreign Office was deeply embarrassed to discover that there was another side to the story. The president accused North of instigating and even funding the revolution, using the Bank of Tarapacá and London to send funds to the rebels. The insurgents did seize the nitrate fields; they launched their revolt from that region; North’s nitrate companies (and others) paid export taxes to the rebels; British managers of the oficinas released miners to serve in the rebel army—all of this is true, but there is no irrefutable evidence pointing to North’s complicity in setting off the conflict, nor to the involvement of his bank. Nevertheless, shareholders in the bank were told that the conclusion of the civil war was “very satisfactory,” with the opposition winning, although time would show that the new government would follow a policy very similar to that of Balmaceda’s, if not actually more rigorously set against monopoly. Several accusations were made against North during the course of the war, including the allegation that he had colluded with Chilean

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bankers in setting off the revolution. That “private capitalists” in Chile “liberally supplied”22 the opposition to Balmaceda was a view supported by Maurice Hervey, the special correspondent of The Times in Chile from February 1891 and “absolutely the only foreign special correspondent in Chile” at that time. In a cable dated March 31, 1891, sent from Santiago, Hervey admitted that “I stand well-nigh alone in my conviction that Señor Balmaceda is right and the Opposition wrong, that he will triumph, and that they will bite the dust.” In a clear reference to North and his associates, Hervey affirmed that: Without quoting names, some of which are as well known upon the London Stock Exchange as the cardinal points of the compass, the fact remains, beyond possibility of contradiction, that the instigators, the wire-pullers, the financial supporters of the so-called revolution were, and are, the English or Anglo- Chilian owners of the vast nitrate deposits in Tarapaca. (The Times, April 1, 1891)

Hervey was recalled by The Times in May for this show of partisanship and was challenged to substantiate his claims, which he was unable to do. On August 30 the same year, another journalist, “Our Correspondent,” reported on the triumph of the Congress party, adding that “The foreign residents here are unanimous in their expressions of satisfaction at the victory. It is considered that the Congressists are an honest party, and it is expected that there will now be a reasonable financial policy, less corruption, and a respectable administration.”23 Hervey later changed his mind, in his book Dark Days in Chile (1891), when he wrote of “the oft-heard boast of the revolutionists that they had the whole nitrate interest at their backs, as well as the moral support of the British Government, and of the British navy. It only remains for them to perpetrate the final indiscretion of informing the world who paid for the Itata’s cargo, and the repeating-rifles which eventually won the day.” The “Itata Incident” was an attempt to take arms on the ship Itata from the United States to Chile to help the Congressional forces during the civil war. The British minister in Santiago, Sir J. G. Kennedy, denied Hervey’s reports that British and Chilean business interests had instigated the rebellion against President Balmaceda. He insisted that the British community in Chile had remained formally neutral during the civil war. This was not quite true. He admitted after the civil war that the British community in Chile had given material assistance to the

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revolutionary forces, and it is clear that North’s sympathies lay with the opposition. The New York Times on May 9, 1891—during the war—printed a cable from London in which North complained of being misrepresented in an interview and that: He did not make the statement attributed to him that he believed that the Chilean insurgents would be crushed sooner or later. Then the Colonel remarked: “As the mistake has been published, I think it well to say now that from my private advices received from Chile I am informed that the best blood in that country is to be found among the members of the Parliamentary Party, whom the bulk of the people favor against President Balmaceda. Therefore, I am rather inclined to believe that the insurgents will ultimately succeed.”

North actually stood to lose from the civil war. His investments in the northern ports and mining districts left him vulnerable to the depredation of military action, and the interruption of commerce, and at the outset the result was far from a foregone conclusion. The risk of being seen to take sides against Balmaceda was great; his business interests could have been subjected to retaliation. Formally, North remained neutral, but once the war had started, in practice he openly favored the opposition to Balmaceda—the “insurgents”; the “Parliamentary Party.” But the question of North’s involvement in actually instigating and fomenting the civil war is another matter. Harold Blakemore (1974, 194) is also not convinced of the accusations and summarizes in this way, that “evidence of the complicity of nitrate interests in the revolution itself is not only sparse but partial, and close examination of the contemporary circumstances does little to support it.”24 It is interesting to note that the Nitrate Railways Company claimed the considerable sum of £48,755 against the new Chilean government “for services rendered and damages sustained during the civil war of 1891.” In his report on the year 1895, the chairman, Robert Harvey, explained that the claim had been brought before the “Anglo-Chilian claims tribunal,” “which was especially appointed for deciding this class of claim,” but that this had been “thrown out of Court on a technicality.”25 On the diplomatic front, North’s business associate Maurice Jewell—British consul in Iquique from June 1889—managed to be absent during much of the turbulent year of 1891, and this must have helped in preserving formal neutrality. Oliver Wooller’s research (unpublished) shows that while Jewell may not have been in Britain for his son’s birth on January 31, or his christening on March 22, he was definitely present for the census in England on April 5, where he

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proudly gave his profession as “Her Britannic Majesty’s Consul.” It is not clear when he returned to Chile, although on May 20 he was evidently thinking of going back; he gave power of attorney to handle his affairs in Britain to other close associates of North.26 The question of British interests personified in John Thomas North conniving to trigger the civil war and help the opposition forces is such a lingering polemic that it is worth examining further in some detail. Osgood Hardy, for example, argues that “many students of Chilean history have stressed the political factor to the point where they seem to have forgotten the causative effect of the Atacama Desert’s nitrates” (Hardy 1948, 165), and goes on to examine the “significant part” played by British nitrate interests in provoking the rebellion by the Chilean Congress against President Balmaceda. Nevertheless, Hardy’s final conclusion is balanced; that while “political rivalries undoubtedly were important factors in bringing about the Balmaceda Revolution . . . there is also no doubt but that the President’s ambition for Chilean domination of the nitrate industry ran counter to the interests of British capital as represented by Colonel North” (Hardy 1948, 180). The Chilean leftist historian Hernán Ramírez Necochea 27 goes much further in his criticism, in his study of the Chilean civil war, published in 1958. The trip that North made to our country has an extraordinary importance, given that this provided the opportunity for two absolutely incompatible tendencies to face off with each other; the expansionist eagerness of English capitalism on one hand, and the protectionist policy for the Chilean economy sustained with such energy by President Balmaceda. And together with the clash between these two tendencies there was also the clash between two personalities that genuinely embodied them; on one side, a cold calculating capitalist, capable of using all suitable means to fulfill his aims, possessed of grandiose plans destined to build up his businesses, and blessed with an iron will and an absolute lack of scruples, which have allowed him to carry them out; and on the other, President Balmaceda, a true statesman, enterprising, energetic, and whose sentiments of patriotic love have encouraged him to push through—without considerations of any kind—a vast plan of economic progress, the indispensable basis for shaping complete national independence. (1958, 94, author’s translation)

Ramírez Necochea argues that when North realized that he had failed to impress President Balmaceda, he turned to propaganda and gifts, as well as to lawyers, influential politicians, and journalists in

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the ranks of the opposition to the president. It is certainly true that before leaving Chile, North hired a lawyer called Julio Zegers as his main lobbyist and spent a considerable amount of money on his lobbying effort. Zegers was a prominent Liberal politician who had long been an associate of Balmaceda. He had been appointed to the Council of State by the president until he resigned over the Nitrate Railways Company issue, on account of his conflict of interest. He later played a prominent role as leader of one Liberal faction called the convencionalistas in mounting the opposition to Balmaceda in Congress during 1890, and it was the withdrawal of Zeger’s support that denied the president of his majority in Congress, precipitating a major crisis. Nevertheless, as Michael Monteón (2003, 83–4) argues, “North did not need a war, he needed time”—time to keep his companies paying dividends while the matter was tied up in the courts, and in Congress. At the same time, “His lobby undoubtedly gave heart to opposition congressmen, who cited the Nitrate Railways case as one of many examples of executive abuse” (Monteón 2003, 84). The “propaganda” included Abel Rosales’ pamphlet El coronel don Juan Tomás North: De como un inglés empleado a sueldo llegó en Chile a ser un millonario, de credito i fama universal (“Colonel John Thomas North: How a salaried Englishman came in Chile to be a millionaire of universal credit and fame”), published during the visit, and—still according to Ramírez Necochea—North bought up the La Industria newspaper while in Iquique. But not all newspapers in Chile were favorably disposed to North. Ramírez Necochea (1958, 90) quotes from the El Heraldo newspaper of April 27, 1889: “The unfortunate phrase that he used in England that five minutes of conversation of the Colonel with a Chilean Minister would be enough to convince the latter has caused the English industrialist serious damage, who has found doors closed to him, even in matters where justice was on his side” (author’s translation). The El Ferrocarril newspaper on May 26, 1889 worried that foreign capital had transformed the nitrate region into “a kind of English India, usufructed [i.e. deriving profit from land which is not theirs] by a multitude of limited companies organized outside Chile, without any national interest, whose directors can easily come to understandings on monopolies of production and consumption, leaving the nation with a sovereignty more nominal than real” (author’s translation). North was also the object of more virulent attacks. For example, in February 1890 El Ají, a semiofficial publication of the Democratic Party, accused the press in Santiago as having

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been bought up by “the Jew Mr. North, who they called the Rey del Salitre [Nitrate King].” Despite his strong criticism of North and praise for Balmaceda as a progressive nationalist, Ramírez Necochea recognizes later in his book that during 1889 Balmaceda lost the support of all the political parties in Congress, except for a small group of Liberals, and that “the common aim of all of them was to reduce the President of the Republic to impotence by means of setting up a parliamentary regime” (1958, 206, author’s translation). Balmaceda was opposed by several factions, including the nitrate lobby (both foreign and national), but also by the great landowning families, the bankers, organized labor, and the church—which detested the liberal and anticlerical tendencies of the government, starting with the previous government of President Santa María, for whom Balmaceda was his minister of the interior. There were also the industrialists (whose economic interests were threatened) and the nation’s congress that “wanted to annul Balmaceda in particular and executive power in general” (Ramírez Necochea 1958, 216, author’s translation). Viewed from a certain perspective, then, North offers a tempting target for accusations of capitalist manipulation in triggering and sustaining the civil war, but there is at least one major flaw in the argument—it cannot account for the fact that the “proletariat” in the northern provinces willingly formed an army that joined the forces organized to topple Balmaceda. One reason may be that on his visit to the nitrate fields in March 1889, when North was about to arrive in Chile, Balmaceda apparently offered the workers generous salary increases, and did not keep his promise.28 The president’s program of public works had largely ignored the northern provinces, and he seems to have hoped that his belated war of words with North would sway the workers to support him. However, as Julio Pinto Vallejos points out, Neither did the confrontational tactic that was being adopted [by Balmaceda] with regard to certain groups of English investors, principally North’s [group], seem to provoke very visible effects. In fact, the visit that Balmaceda made to Tarapacá in March 1889 found no perceptible echo amongst the working class, despite the fact that his controversy with North had already acquired a certain notoriety. On the contrary, the presence of the president—the first since the annexation of Tarapacá—aroused more enthusiasm among the regional business sector and the oligarchy than in the popular sectors. (Pinto Vallejos 1991, 120, author’s translation)

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An even more compelling reason is that in the following year, 1890, Balmaceda sent soldiers to bloodily suppress striking workers in the nitrate region and trample on unionized activity. Furthermore, at the outset of hostilities, in February 1891, soldiers loyal to Balmaceda clashed with workers at North’s Ramírez oficina, in a skirmish that left some fourteen or fifteen workers dead and several others wounded. When the fight was over, eighteen “ring-leaders” were summarily shot without trial. This was a key watershed in the conflict, after which the forces loyal to Balmaceda had to live with the reputation of having carried out a massacre of nitrate workers.29 In recent years, several academics have contested leftist historians’ allegations that economic imperialism destroyed Balmaceda. In 1975, Michael Monteón argued that “that interpretation of the Revolution of 1891 has failed to implicate either the British government or the British merchant sector in London in the overthrow of Balmaceda” (Monteón 1975, 131). Writing in 1982, Bowman and Wallerstein (1982, 422) noted that “In recent years . . . the prevailing ‘myth’ of the Balmaceda regime—and the significance of its downfall—has come under attack by historians who have been unable to locate the progressive social classes Balmaceda was supposed to have represented and who have found little evidence that the pattern of Balmacedist policy could be distinguished from that of his predecessors and immediate successors.” A little later, in his book The Civil Wars in Chile (or the Bourgeois Revolutions That Never Were), published in 1984, Maurice Zeitlin strenuously argued that “the antagonists were drawn from Balmaceda’s own class” (1984, 71), and “the civil war split the dominant class along deep structural fissures within it. Balmaceda’s nationalist policies were undoubtedly crucial in sparking the struggle. But it arose, not primarily as a struggle between class and state (nor between “imperialism” and “nationalism”) but between relatively discrete segments of the bourgeoisie itself, each possessing its own distinctive economic base and specific intraclass situation” (1984, 74–5). Zeitlin concludes: “In my view . . . the impact of Balmaceda’s policies on the nitrate industry was crucial in nurturing and giving birth to the movement to overthrow him. But I reject the narrow thesis that ‘English imperialists’ (particularly John T. North’s nitrate group) and other foreign capitalists generated the opposition and sustained the armed insurrection against Balmaceda, and especially its vulgarization that their bribery of public officials and retention of Chile’s leading attorneys determined the alignments in the conflict” (1984, 92–3). In support of his views, Zeitlin examines “some rather critical historical facts” that argue against

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this “narrow thesis”—namely, that several British business interests in Chile actually sided with Balmaceda on the Nitrate Railways monopoly issue (especially Gibbs); that once the conflict was over the Congressionalists maintained Balmaceda’s policy against the monopoly; and that during his presidency British investments in the nitrate industry “rose dramatically” and Balmaceda neither proposed legislation to congress nor used his executive powers to limit this growth.30 Furthermore, as Zeitlin points out, there is the “central irony” that the Chilean nitrate capitalists, whom Balmaceda presumed to represent, were among those most hostile to his government and actively supported the opposition in the conflict (1984, 102–3). Before President Balmaceda ended his life in September 1891, after taking refuge in the Argentinean embassy in Santiago, he first wrote his political testament. It is significant that “as in his dramatic address to the nation which began the revolution of 1891, Balmaceda made no mention of those economic interests, foreign and national, against which the government had thundered during the civil war” (Blakemore 1974, 209). Now back in Britain in the 1890s, Colonel North embarked on several schemes, replacing much of his dependence on nitrates by investing in industries in France, goldmines in Australia, plantations in the Congo, and even in tramways in Egypt. He discretely divested himself of thousands of shares in nitrate industries, and in the Nitrate Railways Company, and he was wise to do so, since there was a glut of nitrates in the world market, and the price plummeted, and so of course did the dividends paid to shareholders. The empire he had built up came to a sudden end when North collapsed and died on May 5, 1896, while chairing a meeting of his Buena Ventura Company when he was in London, a short time after entertaining 300 guests at his palatial Avery Hill home. He was just fifty-four years old. In an interesting contrast, Balmaceda has, over time, enjoyed a rehabilitation in Chile—seen by many today as “the ‘presidential martyr’ of national development, the tragic figure of a once possible but now lost future.”31 This reassessment started as soon as the civil war was over, when Balmaceda acquired among the great majority of nitrate workers the heroic mantles of nationalism and antiimperialism. Jorge Pinto Vallejos’ study of El balmacedismo como mito popular: los trabajadores de Tarapacá y la guerra (“Balmacedism as popular myth: the workers of Tarapacá and the war”) concludes that: “After his death Balmaceda was converted into one of the most powerful and lasting symbols that our popular culture has constructed . . . nevertheless, this was a phenomenon whose posthumous

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projections the ‘Martyr President’ would with difficulty have been able to plan, or even conceive of” (Pinto Vallejos 1991, 126, author’s translation). Emblematic of the beginnings of this revaluation were the changing attitudes of Juan Rafael Allende—the influential Chilean satirist (and newspaper owner) of the period—who was initially set against Balmaceda but later supported the memory of the president. Salinas Campos et al. (2005, 157) describe in their study ¿Quiénes fueron los vencedores? (Who were the winners [of the civil war]?) how a caricature by Allende contributed to the post–civil war “popular glorification” of Balmaceda. This caricature appeared on March 30, 1893, in a newspaper called Poncio Pilatos, and shows Balmaceda crucified under the words “democratic president,” with the “Chilean republic” hugging the base of the cross. There are two crucified “thieves” on either side of Balmaceda—the conservative Carlos Martínez Walker and the lawyer and congressman Julio Zegers. Salinas Campos et al. point out that in another newspaper published by Allende—El Padre Padilla—the same biblical scene had twenty-one months before the outbreak of the civil war represented Balmaceda rather differently. This time the “Chilean republic” was crucified between two “thieves”; the despotic President Balmaceda and John Thomas North.32 While the civil war was in progress, Allende wrote in late April 1891 that “an Englishman, Mister North, has been the hidden author of this civil war” (author’s translation).33 A lake, a village, and an airport in southern Chile are named after Balmaceda, as are numerous street names throughout the country, and the Balmaceda Foundation exists to promote liberal ideas in politics. John Thomas North, on the other hand, has largely been forgotten, or is remembered only to be vilified. There is no memorial to Colonel North, the nitrate king, in Chile. Chilean historians Pedro Bravo Elizondo and Bernardo Guerrero Jiménez argue in their Historia y ficción literária sobre el ciclo del salitre en Chile (“History and literary fiction regarding the nitrate cycle in Chile”), published in 2000, that the time has come for a fresh look at Colonel North’s legacy in Chile. They remind us that the nitrate region in the north of Chile was at that time like the American Far West, waterless, and without communications on land. At more than a hundred years from his death, we have to judge him from the nortino [Chilean northerner] point of view; it is our right, since it was our grandfathers who lived on these lands, and knew and

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suffered and enjoyed what their existence there had given them. North was part of this network: he promoted the nitrate, he traded it in the great foreign cities, since this was his work. We forget that the first cargo [to Liverpool] had to be thrown into the sea. (Author’s translation)

Millionaires at Play I once went to a gorgeous midnight supper given at the Cafe Royal by the hospitable George Edwardes [the successful English theater manager]. The principal guest was Colonel North, the Nitrate King, who was on the eve of returning to South America. He arrived, nearly an hour late, with his secretary. They had come straight from a City dinner. There were several other industrial monarchs: Silver Kings and Diamond Kings, Railway Kings, and Oil Kings; I think there was a Pork King too. After a magnificent banquet, followed by music and singing . . . we got into private omnibuses which were in attendance, and all drove to one of the big hotels in Northumberland Avenue. I don’t know why, but I presume Colonel North was staying there, and we were loath to part with him. I was interested to watch millionaires at play. It was after 3 a.m., but their keen brains were still alert. They needed more relaxation before they could compose themselves to sleep. So they got hold of the night-porter, and for over half an hour they threw him sovereigns to take them one by one to the top of the great hotel and down again in the lift. They were as eager as schoolboys. The porter must have made three or four years’ income in about thirty-five minutes. —Charles H. E. Brookfield, Random Reminiscences, 1911

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Chapter 9

A Millionaire Stripped Bare

After lunch, a mutual friend came up to me and inquired significantly: “Have you heard the news from Gracechurch Street?” “No, what’s up?” “Nitrates are down, and your friend the Colonel sent in his cheques!” “Good God! You don’t mean that?” “I do, though. There has been a stormy meeting. He got hot over it, but carried his point as usual. He had, however, no sooner uttered the word ‘Passed’ than his head sank quietly upon his shoulder, and he himself had ‘passed.’ ” —John Coleman, Fifty Years of an Actor’s Life

O

n hearing of North’s sudden death on Tuesday May 5, 1896 in his office at 3 Gracechurch Street in London, William Howard Russell wrote in his diary: “It was not a surprise, but it was a great shock to think that I shall never again see or suffer the great, kindly, blusterous Boreas so full of goodness. To me and my wife he was ever courteous, considerate, and attentive . . . He was dearly loved and was in many ways lovable.”1 Colonel North was just fifty-four years old, and in the weeks leading up to his death there had been little indication that anything was amiss with his health. A few weeks previously, North had entertained more than 300 railway officials in the Picture Gallery at Avery Hill.2 On the day of his death, Colonel North left his home in Eltham at around half past ten and went directly to his office, arriving there just before midday. His son Harry North accompanied him. “He seemed to be in excellent spirits, looked as cheery and well as ever, and chatted affably with those around him.”3 After midday he left his building to attend a meeting at one o’clock of the Lagunas Syndicate at Lime

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Street, after which he returned to Gracechurch Street. At around a quarter to three, he went to the Woolpack restaurant, in the same building as his office, and had a “light luncheon.” Significantly, for those seeking an explanation for his unexpected death, North went immediately afterward to his private office on the second floor where a waiter from the restaurant served him with a dozen oysters and a small bottle of stout.4 Just after three o’clock, North began to chair a directors’ meeting of his Buena Ventura Nitrate Company in the boardroom.5 Among those present were his son Harry and his brother Gamble North. “The proceedings at this gathering of directors—of whom only two or three were present—were of a perfectly quiet and harmonious character, and nothing happened during the proceedings calculated in any way to excite the deceased.”6 Much to the alarm of the gentlemen present, the Colonel, in the course of the proceedings, was seen to suddenly turn pale, and to fall back in his chair with a groan, and feebly call for brandy. Mr. Harry North at once went to his father, and asked what was the matter, but he received no answer, and although restoratives were applied, the deceased soon lapsed into a state of unconsciousness, from which he never recovered. (The Sidcup and District Times, May 8, 1896)

An inquest was held the following day, on Wednesday morning. Harry North said that his father’s health had been generally fair and “he never saw him in better spirits,”7 although he had been under medical treatment recently, but not for anything serious. Harry remembered that “A few minutes after his father had written the word ‘passed’ in a minute-book he saw him turn pale and look as if he were about to faint.”8 In his evidence, Colonel North’s doctor, Dr. Jeken, explained that he had attended North for over thirteen years, during which the Colonel’s health had been generally good, although he suffered occasionally from dyspepsia, and he had noticed “a weakness of the heart” recently. “He was quite satisfied that syncope [loss of consciousness] from heart failure was the cause of death.” 9 The jury returned a verdict of death from natural causes. Messages of condolence were delivered to Mrs. North during the following days from the Prince of Wales, King Leopold II of the Belgians (who sent Baron Whettnell, his aide-de-camp, to convey his condolences personally), the Khedive of Egypt (Abbas Hilmi Pasha), the Stock Exchange, and many others. The funeral was held on Saturday, May 9, at the Eltham Parish Church of Saint John the Baptist, close to his mansion at Avery Hill,

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“amid a manifestation of popular sympathy such has seldom been witnessed at the obsequies of a private individual.”10 All of Eltham was in mourning. “There was not a window but had its blinds drawn, not a shop or place of business but put up its shutters or closed its doors . . . and literally there was scarcely a dry eye amongst all the villagers as the funeral cortège passed or whilst the funeral service lasted, or the body was being consigned to its final rest.”11 Many mourners came from outside Eltham by road and rail, and the mile and a half from Avery Hill to the church was lined with carriages and crowded with “many thousands of spectators.”12 There were numerous wreaths that resonated with incidents from Colonel North’s life, including those from nitrate companies (the Liverpool, Colorado, Primitiva, and San Donato), from King Leopold II, the Anglo-Belgian Chamber of Commerce at Antwerp, the Khedive of Egypt, “The Bank at Tarapacá,” the staff and workers at North’s Navigation Colliery in Wales and at the North’s Typewriter factory in Hatton Garden,13 the North Portland Cement Works at Antwerp, the Columbia Lodge of Freemasons (founded by North), the owners of the Hotel Métropole, the National Sporting Club, the Yorkshire Coursing Club, Colonel Weathering of the Tower Hamlets Engineers, the Leeds and County Conservative Club, as well as “The Poorest of Eltham,” and “The Working People of Eltham.” Colonel North had wanted a simple and unostentatious funeral, and his wishes were observed, to the point that the offer to send a guard of honor from the Tower Hamlets Engineers was turned down by his widow, and only around sixty of his closest friends and business associates were invited to the funeral. The Yorkshire newspapers, naturally, carried lengthy obituaries. The Yorkshire Owl began its valedictory on May 13 with these words: Colonel North is dead. There is not a heart in the whole city [of Leeds] that will not beat with sympathetic vibration at the sad news, and few indeed are the persons who will not consider his loss in the light of a personal affliction.

The Owl found that North had endeared himself to millions, not just for his fortune, but for “his sympathetic and disinterested gifts, rare in the extreme, especially among the class of men he was supposed to represent.” Colonel North was a self-made man; a man who rose from the humblest ranks to the most enviable of positions by his own efforts.

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Dame Fortune certainly did smile upon him with her most winning smile, endowing him with an almost Midas-like touch. Everything he touched seemed to yield him gold, but Dame Nature also having endowed him richly with those rarer gifts of human feeling, his great fortune did not in the least spoil him nor convert him into the most despicable of men—the parvenu. He was as different to the ordinary self-made man as night is to day. He was not ashamed of his birthplace and his once humble calling. Rather the reverse. He was most proud of it, and spoke of it on every possible occasion.

The Leeds Mercury, on the day of the funeral, had the same opinion: “It is to his credit that he never turned his back on his early comrades, nor did he seek to put any manner of gloss on his humble origin.”14 These newspapers accepted there were things to criticize in his character and activities, but that “he could do handsome things in a way that covered a multitude of defects,”15 especially the gift of Kirkstall Abbey and its grounds that “will ever stand a lasting and most beautiful monument of his unequalled generosity.”16 Also on the day of the funeral, The Kentish Independent editorialized that of North, “It will be ever remembered . . . at Eltham as well as Leeds, that his hand was ever open to the poor.”17 He was one of the toilers all his life, and he never desired or pretended to be anything else. Those, therefore, who sneer at his manners and speech, ought rather to give him credit for his honesty and consistency, and dwell rather upon the goodness of the man, his generous genial qualities, and the example he offers by his industry, courage, and perseverance, and put to the credit the fact that he was not one of the social order to whom the good things of the world have come by no merit of the individual.

At the national level, The Times on May 618 also stressed that North had no “accidental advantages of fortune, patronage, or friends,” but this was compensated for by “indomitable courage and energy.” But not all the obituaries were so generous. The Economist on the day of the funeral used the opportunity to reflect on “Millionaires in Business,” with a long piece that begins: The late Colonel North . . . was, so to speak, a millionaire stripped bare. He obtained, and knew that he obtained, his position in the City and in a certain kind of society solely through his money. He must have possessed inherent ability and power of governing, and he was a bold man, and one who when unresisted was capable of kind acts, but for the rest he was from first to last just a workman who had made a great

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fortune, and who loved to proclaim it by extravagant expenditure, by ostentatious display, and by bearing everybody down.19

By becoming so very rich, “he was followed and flattered and toadied by men far above him in birth and cultivation,” and perhaps this helps explain The Economist’s animosity; “His money was to him a weapon, and with it he hewed his way through all opposition—social, mercantile, or other.” This prompted the writer to muse on Colonel North as “the new-made millionaire,” and to “enquire whether on the whole this new aristocracy which is standing forward so prominently among us is beneficial even to the industrial and speculating world. It certainly benefits no other.” They force themselves by sheer dint of weight into the first places, are the welcomed associates of princes because they can entertain and assist them, and even when, as is sometimes the case, they are personally estimable men, they lower the general standard as to what constitutes true refinement in life.

The writer concluded that it is doubtful whether the “new millionaires”—“this new aristocracy”—actually contributed greatly to industrial growth, other than displaying a daring in their business practices. The argument has a modern resonance. They are apt to “finance” their undertakings rather than conduct them, and to repay themselves by keeping, either openly or by indirect methods, founders’ shares, which are really heavy fines levied upon those who contribute capital in smaller sums.

The Economist felt that “our English method” of running businesses through “representative committees” instead of the American preference for “small syndicates of millionaires” is safer and ultimately more profitable to everyone; the businessmen and the investors. This soul-searching was very much in vogue at the time. The Spectator had earlier, in 1890, 20 shown its apprehension “not [as regards] the millionaire, but the millionaire as the popular ideal” in the United States. This journalist argued that this was not yet the way in Europe, and certainly not the norm in England, where “those who desire to be as the Nitrate King, and who watch him, to catch if they may his secret of success, are certainly not the community.” John Thomas North’s will has survived and can be viewed in the Avery Hill Archive.21 Dated January 25, 1895, and not altered in his lifetime, North appointed his wife Jane, his son-in-law George

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Alexander Lockett, and the solicitor John Wreford Budd as the executors. North left his “personal jewellery, chains, rings, and articles of a like nature to my son Harry” as well as use during his lifetime of North’s “presentation plate.” To his wife Jane he assigned up to the value of £2,000 of “my plate and plated articles (except presentation plate) linen, china, glass, books, pictures, articles of vertu furniture” and up to £500 “of my horses carriages, saddlery harness, and stable furniture,” as well as her jewelry for which within six months of his death she would need to provide a declaration to the trustees of the estate. The will provided legacies of £5,000 to his sister “Emma Taylor” and £2,500 to each of her daughters, Louisa Maud Dickinson and Florance Pratt. He added that his “niece” Mary Emma Beasley should receive £5,000 and her children Beatrice and Mavin £2,500 each. It is odd that Mary Emma should be mentioned separately, and provided with a larger sum, since she too seems to be a daughter of his sister Emma, but perhaps this was because she was the first-born. To his niece Rosa North, daughter of his late brother Harry, he bestowed £2,500, and £2,500 each to the children of his brother Gamble North. He also provided for the upkeep of the Avery Hill mansion, and stipulated that the “benefit and enjoyment” of the mansion for his wife and children should be “without charge to them,” and that his stables and greyhounds should be looked after. His wife Jane (as long as she remained a widow), his sons Harry and Gamble, and his daughter Emma were also guaranteed income from his investments. Probate of the will was granted to his executors on July 2, 1896. The full amount on which estate duty was paid following North’s death came to just over £453,091, not including his real estate overseas. This, then, was John Thomas North’s will after a life that was short, even by Victorian standards, but intensely lived through. But what is the testament by which he should be remembered today, when he is largely forgotten in the country of his birth, and “he remains a major source of conjecture, anger, and debate within Chile” (Monteón 2003, 71). North needs, first and foremost, to be seen in the context of his times. He was the beneficiary of Britain’s economic ascendancy in the world in the second half of the nineteenth century. As the first of the industrial nations, she could supply the finished goods undeveloped countries wanted, as well as provide a market for their produce. British ships carried the trade which was often organized and financed by British merchants. In short, Britain could offer

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a more complete range of goods, services, and capital more cheaply and more efficiently than her competitors, and at the same time buy at least some of the produce of her trading partners. (John Mayo, Britain and Chile, 1851–1886: Anatomy of a Relationship, 1981, 97)

In 1890, at the height of the nitrate boom, Britain took 67 percent of Chile’s exports, and accounted for 43 percent of her imports, 22 in commerce that involved both British and Chilean businessmen. North was one of the many British investors with a focus on Chile, several of whom actually started earlier and lasted longer in that country. For example, North’s nemesis Gibbs & Company—second only to North in the nitrate business—started in Chile (in Valparaíso) in 1822 as Antony Gibbs & Sons, and as a separate Chilean subsidiary from 1880. Gibbs lasted until 1934, when the company merged with another of the British merchant houses with interests in nitrate—Balfour Williamson—which had started up in Chile in 1852. Graham Rowe & Company operated in Chile from 1842, the year of North’s birth, until liquidation in 1931. Duncan Fox & Company and Buchanan, Jones & Company both commenced trading in Chile from 1876. What North had in common with these British merchants was a limited commitment to Chile in terms of long-term investment. In the second half of the nineteenth century, they kept little capital in Chile, and the owners planned for their retirement back in Britain. This is true, but at the same time, [The] commitment of their skills was unqualified, and the sectors in which they worked were the most modern in [Chile]. Operating in collaboration with the local elite, their joint success was so great as to render unnecessary the exercise of new initiatives by the latter . . . What the British did, then, was to link Chile firmly with the world economy, in which the republic earned great sums, and to assist in the modernization of sectors of the economy. Beyond this, their role was passive—in itself a contribution to Chile’s skewed development, but not the only cause. (Mayo 1981, 114)

The main cause, cited by John Mayo (1981, 115), was the practice of the ruling elite in Chile who invested their profits largely in mining and banking, and very little in national industry. There were substantial Chilean funds available that could have been invested in innovation in industry, but this did not happen during the “nitrate age.” “Chile was, then, clearly a dependency of the British economy” (Mayo 1981, 116), and this was both an advantage and a disadvantage.

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Chile participated profitably in the global market and witnessed the modernization of certain sectors of her economy with the introduction of the latest technology from Britain. The chief disadvantage, according to John Mayo, was that these British merchants in Chile did not invest in Chile’s nascent industry or contribute to innovation in the economy. North is frequently pictured as the quintessential imperialist capitalist plunderer, and there is some truth in this. There is a similarity to modern-day global speculators who rate financial gains higher than any negative political and economic outcome for the developing nations they invest in. However, Examination of the case of Chile demonstrates that the Anglo- Chilean connection was the result of the collaboration of British merchants and Chilean capitalists, based on Chile’s capacity to export raw materials. The determinants of the relationship were Chilean ability and willingness or need to absorb British goods and services. (Mayo 1981, 99)

The criticisms that cannot be ducked relate to North’s questionable business practices—questionable even when judged by the comparatively unregulated norms of his day. In modern parlance, there is a certain resemblance to the fraudulent Ponzi schemes of the twentieth century, in that profits (in dividends) were initially paid from capital derived from acquisitions sold on to companies expressly formed to exploit the assets, and enthusiastically promoted by North’s ebullient personality, rather than solely from any real profit earned. A kinder epithet, again in modern terminology, would be to characterize North as a “venture capitalist.” He saw opportunities for investment, took risks, and used “venture capital” to promote and develop the products that he acquired. Our opinion of North’s bullish approach to business might be mitigated if he had been a social crusader and true philanthropist, of which there were several in the Victorian period. His contemporaries included such social reformers as the confectionary manufacturers Joseph Rowntree (1836–1925), who founded Rowntree & Company in 1897, and George Cadbury (1839–1922). There was also William Hesketh Lever (1851–1925), the British soap manufacturer and philanthropist. But as a nitrate investor and mining tycoon, North has more in common with his contemporary John Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913). Morgan was the financier, banker, and art collector who came to dominate corporate finance, steel,

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and railways in the United States, and was similar to North in his flamboyance. Of course, North could be generous with his fortune, if impulsively so—witness the gift of Kirkstall Abbey—but this does not make him a committed philanthropist. For the cynics, such acts helped cultivate his public image and kept his name (and his companies) in the headlines. However, “while North undoubtedly benefited from reports of his benevolence, all the evidence suggests that it sprang from his expansive nature as much as from less attractive motives” (Blakemore 1974, 40). Nevertheless, he was given to charitable acts, and there are suggestions that he developed a social conscience as he grew older. There is perhaps an indication of this later in his life when he invested in Antwerp. He has cement works in Belgium which bring him in a fortune and which were until he saw them nothing but a brick yard. Happening to pass by them in a trip to the continent he noticed the clay, saw that it was of a superior quality and at once bought the whole field. He has now in this place immense works which employ thousands of hands and he has put up for his employees sanitary cottages and has built churches and schools for them. He has never had a strike and his people all like him. (The Illustrated Buffalo Express. “A talk with one of the richest men in the world.” December 27, 1892).

His public persona was important to North, and he quickly became the darling of the world’s press. North also craved acceptance in the highest social echelon, but felt more at home with his Yorkshire friends and business associates. A story carried by The New York Times on May 8, 1910, in its obituary for Edward VII, captures this. The story may be apocryphal, but the point is that it could just as well be true. When he was Prince of Wales . . . the late Col. North, the nitrate king, came up to him in the royal enclosure at Ascot and slapped the Prince on the back with the expression, “Buck up Bertie; come and have a cold bottle with me.” The Prince looked around at the Colonel and then walked away. He never spoke to him again.

Colonel North was certainly gregarious, and grew increasingly eccentric in his dealings with people as he got older. In the early days of his city career it was not difficult even for outsiders to understand the qualities which had enabled the homely,

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unpolished, red-faced man to become a millionaire. He was even then always surrounded by swarms of sycophants and promotion touts and general hangers-on, and he rather liked it. There was a room at his office full of such cattle from morning till night, poorer folk haunting the stairs in order to way-lay the “jolly colonel.” But none of these men ever penetrated to North’s private sanctum. In the mornings he arrived at ten sharp, and, passing through the mob waiting to see him with a short nod here and “how—d’ye—do” there, disappeared into his private office . . . At 1.30 there was invariably a splendid lunch laid below for about twenty people. Here one met the oddest assortment of city, sporting, mining, theatrical and press men, all of course wanting something . . . On the solitary occasion I went there—taken by a mining engineer to see the show—our host rattled on for half an hour, the impersonation of rough good-fellowship, whilst the company wallowed in turtle and plovers’ eggs, and galantines and champagne. At two sharp North rose; “Gentlemen, I must ask you to excuse me. I am wanted at a meeting. Pray make yourselves quite at home, and order what you want,” and disappeared. (The Star, New Zealand, “An Extraordinary Man,” July 2, 1896)

The following quotation from William Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well sums up well the contradictions common to many lives, and is especially apposite in the case of Colonel John Thomas North, “the nitrate king”: The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.23

Colonel North was a born gambler and risk taker, boldly aggressive in business, but capable of carefree munificence. He was not one to suffer opposition—“in manner he is bluff and hearty when in good humor, but when crossed in his purposes he is not so smooth,”24 and he never shied away from litigation. He was clearly charismatic and unconventional, and a showman—increasingly a self-parody of his innate vain, eccentric, and flamboyant personality. He was loved and he was derided. He was the target of satire, irony, and parody during his lifetime, 25 and the subject of much criticism thereafter. He was ostentatious with his wealth, to the point of appearing nouveau riche, boorish, and lacking in culture. He cultivated the down-toearth “Yorkshireman” image, but was genuinely loyal to his roots, and to his friends. More than anything else, one feels that he enjoyed himself, and enjoyed himself immensely, especially in the role of

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entertainer, whether at his Avery Hill mansion, or in his London office, or visiting Chile as a travelling nitrate monarch, or standing on the election platform. *

*

*

A simple ceremony was held on March 29, 1994 at Avery Hill in the University of Greenwich attended by Vera Proctor, granddaughter of John Thomas North’s brother Gamble North, and other North family descendants. Two Araucaria trees (monkey puzzle trees) were planted outside the building’s Common Room and there is a plaque commemorating the occasion. This is entirely appropriate, since the Common Room today was the Drawing Room in Colonel North’s time at Avery Hill, and the Araucaria tree was originally native to Chile.

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Epilogue

I Have Enjoyed Myself Thoroughly

On February 13, 1896, three months before his unexpected death, Colonel

North attended the jubilee dinner of “The Eltham Oddfellows,” as chairman for the evening, and declared “I have enjoyed myself thoroughly.” At this gathering it was announced that there were three old members living who joined the lodge at its commencement, one of whom was present. On hearing this Colonel North sent a five pound note to the feeble old man, adding, “We are all brothers, but he is poor and I am a rich man.” He also kindly offered to pay the subscription of the three old members as long as they lived, and, beside this, defrayed the whole cost of the banquet, which was a considerable item . . . At this gathering the Colonel seemed very delighted with his position as chairman, and he seemed to prefer to follow his own inclinations rather than keep to the programme drawn up. On more than one occasion he called upon the speakers “to cut it short,” and when the programme was yet unfinished he . . . called upon one of the brethren of the lodge for a song, adding “If you will sing, I will accompany you on the piano.” The brother in question consented, but Colonel North withdrew from his part of the agreement in regard to the accompaniment, and kept his seat, contenting himself with jocularly informing the accompanist that he was playing in the wrong key . . . The mirth occasioned by the Colonel at this meeting, however, reached its climax towards the close. His health had been drunk, the toast being accompanied by a lusty rendering of the refrain, “For he’s a jolly good fellow.” “Yes, I know I’m a jolly good fellow,” he said, in replying to the toast. After the response, the company again took up the refrain. This was too much for the Colonel, and he could contain himself no longer. Overjoyed at such flattery, he mounted a chair, and, waving his right hand in the air, joined with might and main in the chorus “For he’s a jolly good fellow” . . . By way of varying his attitude while mounted on the chair, he would pretend to be accompanying the refrain as on a banjo, amid roars of laughter. He then led the cheers for himself in a sonorous manner, and,

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descending from his pedestal, left the room in company with his friends, amid the ringing cheers of the assembly, and joined his carriage, which was waiting outside. —The Sidcup and District Times, “Death of Colonel North,” May 8, 1896

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Appendix

Family tree of John Thomas North

John Thomas North1 Born January 30, 1842, at Holbeck near Leeds. Married Jane Woodhead in 1865. Died May 5, 1896, in London.

Grandparents: Grandfather: John North of Huddersfield 2 John North was a coal merchant and had four children: James, John, Reuben, Harriet.

Parents: James North. Also a coal merchant. Born 1813. Married Mary Gambles (or Gamble) of Batley in 1838. Mary Gambles born circa 1818.3 James North died in 1867.4

Wife: Married Jane Woodhead in 1865, daughter of John Woodhead, painter, of Park Lane in Leeds.5 Jane North died May 15, 1924, aged 81.

Siblings: Emma North Born in Holbeck, Leeds, in 1839.6 Married (1) John Dickinson in 1861. John Dickinson was a civil engineer. He worked in Chile for a time, and died in 1883 in England of tuberculosis.

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3 daughters: ●

Mary Emma Dickinson. Born June 29, 1861. Married Arthur William John Beazley. Their children: a daughter, Beatrice, and a son, Mavin John, who was born in 1884 in Iquique. Mary Emma divorced Arthur William in 1891 and took up residence at Avery Hill with her family. (Note: Colonel North’s will of 1895 refers to “Mary Emma Beasley [sic]” as “my niece,” whereas the other daughters are referred to as his sister’s “daughters”).

●

●

Florence Dickinson. Born 1865. Married George Pratt in 1889, and had four children: George Leslie, Stuart Harvey, Vera, Elaine. Louisa Maude Dickinson. Born 1877. Married Francis John (Francis Joseph?) Branthwaite in 1900. No children.

Married (2) Andrew Taylor, a photographer. Colonel North’s will of 1895 refers to “my sister Mrs. Emma Taylor.”

Harry North Born in 18457 Married Rebecca Dryden in 1874. Died in Chile? It is certain that Harry North was already dead by 1895 (see Colonel North’s will of that year). (Note: There is a tombstone in Tiliviche cemetery, in the nitrates region of modern-day Chile, which reads: “In memory of Henry North who died in Pisagua South America June 9th. 1883, aged 38 years.”8 It is possible that this refers to Harry—the age seems to correspond, and the names “Henry” and “Harry” were sometimes used interchangeably in this period. Census information supports this: the 1851 census for the North family in Leeds gives “Henry North aged 5”; the 1861 census gives “Henry North—15—Millwright.” Also, certain sources mention a brother of Colonel North’s working in South America. One daughter: Rosa Hannah North, born 1875. (Rosa married Gerald Glascott, a railway engineer. Rosa died in 1964.)9

Gamble North Born in 1854. Married (1) Sarah Kate Beecroft. (Sarah Kate died April 18, 1889, aged 27).10 Died June 21, 1941.11

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3 children: ●

● ●

John Tom North (later Major John Tom North OBE), born 1884, married Paula Peterson. Victor Beecroft North, married Edelora Monton. Ruby Kate North, (or Kate Ruby North), who didn’t marry.

Married (2) Leila Emily Hunt: July 1890. ●

There may have been a son named Richard.

Gamble North became prominent in the nitrate business.

Colonel North’s children: ●

Harry

Born December 26, 1866. Married December 5, 1894: Jessie Louisa Evans, second daughter of David Evans, of Grangemouth, Yorkshire12 “J.P. [Justice of the Peace] for the North Riding of Yorkshire, and also for Monmouthshire.”13 Jessie was born in 1869; died July 24, 1942, aged 73. Knighted by King Edward VII in 1905. Died: Lieutenant Colonel Sir Harry North, November 26, 1920, aged 53.14

Children: ● ●

● ●

Vivian North, died circa 1941. Olga Yvonne North, born September 15, 1898, died May 12, 1979 (married Syd John Bowyer in 1925). Daughter Barbara North born and died March 1, 1910. Diana Isobel North, born 1914, died 1973 (married George De VisdelouGuimbeau).

When Harry died, “He left a widow, one son, and two daughters.”15 ●

Emma

Born in 1868. (She was 73 years old at her death. She came of age in 1889.) Married George Alexander Lockett, born 1855, died September 10, 1923, aged 68.16 Wedding: Church of Holy Trinity in Eltham, on November 3, 1892, followed by a reception at Avery Hill.17 Died Emma Lockett OBE, December 15, 1941, aged 73.

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Arthur Jewell

Born September 30, 1883. (Almost certainly named after North’s business Partner, Maurice Jewell.) Educated at Harrow. Married Adelaide Louise Garratt on September 26, 1905 (born December 15, 1878; died December 11, 1972), daughter of Job Garratt, sometime mayor of Dudley. Died September 27, 1918. Killed in action, aged 34. Captain 4th Northumberland Fusiliers.18

Children: ●

● ●

●

●

Nina Mary North, born 1907, died circa 1932. Married Geoffrey Hugh Mitchell. Angela North, born circa 1909, died circa 1927. Betty Estelle North, born July 21, 1911, died May 31, 1982. Married Cecil George Hodson. John Garratt North, born 1912, died May 19, 1981. Married Corona Leckie Watson in 1965. Richard Arthur North, born May 4, 1918, died May 8, 1973. Married Sonia Helen Veronica Taylor in 1947.

The North Grave in the Cemetery of St John the Baptist, Eltham East facing IN LOVING MEMORY OF JOHN THOMAS NORTH WHO DIED MAY 5TH 1896 AGED 54 YEARS “THY WILL BE DONE” ALSO OF HIS BELOVED WIFE JANE NORTH WHO DIED MAY 15TH 1924 AGED 81 YEARS

South facing IN LOVING MEMORY OF JEWELL NORTH MC CAPT 4TH NORTH D FUSILIERS

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A PP ENDIX

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YOUNGEST SON OF JOHN THOMAS NORTH KILLED IN ACTION IN FR ANCE SEPTEMBER 27 TH 1918 AGED 34 YEARS

West facing IN LOVING MEMORY OF BARBAR A INFANT DAUGHTER OF SIR HARRY & LADY NORTH BORN & DIED MARCH 1ST 1910 ALSO OF LIEUT COLONEL SIR HARRY NORTH HML WHO DIED NOVEMBER 26TH 1920 AGED 53 YEARS ELDEST SON OF COLONEL J.T. NORTH AND OF HIS BELOVED WIFE JESSIE LOUISA NORTH WHO DIED JULY 24TH 1942 AGED 73 YEARS

North facing IN LOVING MEMORY OF GEORGE ALEXANDER LOCKETT WHO DIED SEPTEMBER 10TH 1923 AGED 68 YEARS SON-IN-LAW OF JOHN THOMAS NORTH ALSO OF HIS BELOVED WIFE EMMA LOCKETT OBE WHO DIED DECEMBER 15TH 1941 AGED 73 YEARS

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Notes

Preface: John Thomas North, a reappraisal 1. Harold Blakemore, British Nitrates and Chilean Politics 1886–1896: Balmaceda and North. University of London Institute of Latin American Studies Monographs 4, London: The Athlone Press, 1974. 2. ‘Jehu Junior,’ ‘Men of the day. No. CCCXLVI. Colonel John Thomas North,’ Vanity Fair, November 2, 1889, 293. 3. “As a citizen of Iquique, I recognize his merits for what he meant for the province of Tarapacá.” Pedro Bravo-Elizondo to Juan Ricardo Couyoumdjian, e-mail July 21, 2010.

Introduction 1. See Rippy 1948, 460. 2. See Centner 1942, 81. 3. Not all newspapers in Britain were so prompt—The Express of Dartford, for example, published the news more than a week later. “Colonel North presided on Thursday night at the annual dinner of the Leeds Licensed Victuallers’ Association, at the Queen’s Hotel, Leeds. As he was leaving the room he slipped and twisted his ankle. Dr. Robinson attended him at the Hotel, and it was found on Friday that a complete dislocation of the ankle is the result of the accident.” (The Express, Dartford local paper, January 17, 1891).

1 We Had Adventures of All Sorts 1. Quoted in The Leeds Mercury, “Sudden Death of Colonel North: Sketch of his Career,” May 6, 1896. 2. Life and Career of the Late Col. North: How He Made His Millions. As Told By Himself. Leeds: E. A. Tempest, 1896, 2. 3. Ibid. 4. One source gives 1863 as the year he completed his apprenticeship and went to the Steam Plough Works, but this seems unlikely; see Life and Career of the late Col. North: How He Made His Millions. As Told By Himself.

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NOTES

5. James North may in fact have died earlier. The 1861 census, which gives the North family living at 78 Grape Street, Hunslet, cites Mary North as “head” of the household, and her status as “widow.” Since James North (her husband) appears on the marriage certificate for his daughter Emma on January 17 that year, this suggests he may have died in the period up to the census (probably taken in April or May), or that the fact that he was deceased was not given on the marriage certificate. 6. “The Life and Career of Col. North: From Apprentice Boy to Millionaire,” The Kentish District Times, 1896. 7. Michael Monteón 2003, 73. 8. Other sources: “He left Fowler & Co. in 1869 and proceeded to the West Coast of S. America.” (East London Advertiser, February 5, 1887); North “went to Peru in 1869 at the age of 27” (BulmerThomas 1989, 8); “in 1869 he was sent out to Peru [by Messrs. John Fowler and Co., Leeds] to superintend the erection and working of machinery” (Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Proceedings of 1896, Vol. 50, April 1896); “North travelled to Peru in 1869,” The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 41, 106–7; North was sent in 1867 “to supervise locomotive erection for the Carrizal Railway,” David Burrell, The Nitrate Boats, (1995, 16). 9. Many nineteenth and even early twentieth century documents use this spelling for the country, as “Chili.” See, for example, the publication by A. Aldana & A. E. Harris entitled Chile and the Chilians, published in London in 1910. 10. The Express, “Colonel John Thomas North at Avery Hill, Eltham,” September 1, 1888: “He took service, on his arrival, with the railway company in Carrizal, and afterwards joined his brother (since dead) at the Santa Rita Nitrate of Soda Works in Pisagua.” (Avery Hill archive R. 1.55). Presumably this brother was Harry North. The chronology may have been different, and perhaps John Thomas North was joined by his brother. 11. Oswood Hardy (1948, 171–2) tells of Fowler’s sending North to Tarapacá in 1869, “but something went wrong,” and after arriving in Valparaíso in March 1869, the future “nitrate king” decided to stay at his own expense and “he got a job as mechanic in a machine shop at Caldera and became a locomotive engineer on the Carrizal railroad.” Hardy is not always reliable as a source on the early years; he writes, for example, that North returned to England in 1875 and lived at his Avery Hill mansion until 1880 when, “now a colonel,” he returned to Iquique during the War of the Pacific. 12. Quoted in translation in The Leeds Mercury edition of May 6, 1896, the day that John Thomas North died, under the heading “Sudden Death of Colonel North: Sketch of His Career.” 13. Four steam tank locomotives for the “Nitrate Railway, Chile” were manufactured by Fowler’s in late 1884, followed by a further order

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151

for four engines in early 1885. These orders continued in 1887 for North’s “Arauco Co. Ltd., Chile” and the “Primitiva Nitrate Co. Ltd., Chile per W. & J. Lockett”; in 1888 for the “Nitrate Railway, Chile” and the “Liverpool Nitrate Co., Chile”; in 1889 for the “Primitiva Nitrate Co., Chile,” “Liverpool Nitrate Co. Ltd., Chile,” “London Nitrate Co. Ltd., Chile,” and “Arauco Co. Ltd, Chile”; in 1890 for “Nitrate Railways, Chile”; in 1892 for the “Liverpool Nitrate Co., Chile” and the “Lagunas Syndicate, Chile”; in 1894 for “Nitrate Railways, Chile” and “Lagunas Syndicate”; and in 1895 for “Lagunas South No. 2, Chile.” John Thomas North died in 1896, and it is interesting to see that the next order for Fowler’s locomotives for Chile came only in 1907, although Fowler’s continued afterwards to export sporadically to Chile’s nitrate provinces until 1924. One Fowler’s locomotive closer to home was a saddle tank engine called “Emma” (presumably after North’s daughter, or his sister) manufactured in 1891 for “North’s Navigation Collieries Ltd., South Wales.” See Frank Jux 1985. 14. Life and Career of the Late Col. North: How He Made His Millions. As Told By Himself. Leeds: E. A. Tempest, 1896.

2 I Was Better Acquainted Than Any Other Foreigner 1. Osgood Hardy (1948, 172) believes that North’s reputation as a good engineer had preceded him; that González Vélez had immediately offered him the post of chief engineer on his arrival in Iquique; and that his new employers gave him space to experiment. 2. Harold Blakemore 1974, 25. 3. While not a source that gives one much confidence, there is an interesting account by William Eleroy Curtis (1900) in which he relates a conversation with a friend of North from his early days in Peru and Chile named Mr. Speedie. “One day [North] conceived the idea of buying an old hulk that lay in the harbor and going into the water business . . . He repaired the vessel with his own hands, divided the hold into tanks, rigged pumps that would fill and empty them rapidly, and when his novel craft was afloat she drove the sailboats out of the business and paid for herself every month. North used to say that in all his speculations he had never known or heard of a business that paid a bigger profit.” This text carries a rare mention of North’s wife in this period: “Mrs. North was a sort of general manager for the distribution business, and took orders for water and collected the bills . . . She employed agents who drove tank carts from house to house and filled buckets and bottles as they were brought out to them in the same way and for about the same price that milk is sold in our cities.”

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NOTES

4. Reported in The Leeds Mercury, May 6, 1896, “Sudden Death of Colonel North: Sketch of his Career.” 5. See www.albumdesierto.cl (accessed August 12, 2010), and http:// www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/cronologia.asp?id_ut=laimagendech ileentheillustratedlondonnews (accessed August 12, 2010). Ramírez Necochea (1958, 76) reports that North sold the Porvenir contract to Henry B. James and George Brooking, who were committed to paying him seventeen centavos of a Peruvian Sol for each quintal of nitrate produced, as well as 10 percent of the net worth of the iodine. 6. The Chilean Census of 1875 shows that 15,000 Chileans lived in Tarapacá (Peruvian) and 4,800 Chileans worked in the salitreras of Antofagasta (Bolivian). See Couyoumdjian 2000, 13. 7. The main shareholders were Agustín Edwards (a Chilean of British descent) and Gibbs & Company. 8. One Spanish quintal was equivalent to 4 “arrobas,” or 46 kg, or 101.44 lb. 9. In the 1870s, “Not only did (Chileans) serve as laborers and managers for Peruvian (oficina) owners, but they were also entrepreneurs in Bolivia’s desert territory” (Osgood Hardy 1948, 169). 10. Valparaíso in Chile was the center for commerce in nitrate from the earliest days, from 1842. At the beginning of the 1870s three quarters of nitrate transactions were carried out in this port. See Couyoumdjian, 2000, 13. 11. The Peruvian Ley de Expropiación (Expropriation Law) of March 28, 1875 was supplemented by a decree on December 14, 1875, which stated that the owners of the nitrate fields would receive certificates— essentially IOUs—payable within two years with bonds issued at London at the exchange rate of forty-four pennies for each Peruvian Sol. See Ramírez Necochea 1958, 57. 12. Reported in The Leeds Mercury, May 6, 1896, “Sudden Death of Colonel North: Sketch of his Career.” 13. The New York Times, “Death of Col. J. T. North,” May 6, 1896: “the guano deposits fetched £160,000, or four times the amount for which they were pledged [by the Chilean government].” 14. Osgood Hardy (1948, 172) cites Patricio Lynch’s report of 1882 for the total amount of guano sold to North, Memoria que el ContraAlmirante presenta al Supremo Gobierno de Chile (Lima: 1882, 161–74). 15. Life and Career of the late Col. North: How He Made His Millions, As Told By Himself, 1896. 16. Ramírez Necochea 1958, 12. 17. Reported in The Leeds Mercury, May 6, 1896, “Sudden Death of Colonel North: Sketch of his Career.” 18. Ibid.

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3

153

Don Juan Tomás North

1. In Arturo Alessandri’s Revolución de 1891 (Santiago: 1950), quoted in Collier and Sater (2004, 144). Domingo Santa María was president of Chile, elected during the War of the Pacific, from September 1881 to September 1886. His successor was José Manuel Balmaceda. 2. Quoted in Hernán Ramírez Necochea 1958, 60 (author’s translation). 3. See Ramírez Necochea 1958, 61 (author’s translation). 4. “The nitrate establishments of the territory of Tarapacá that were bought by the Government of Peru and in payment for which the latter had issued certficados de pago no cubiertos [uncovered payment certificates] will be provisionally returned without prejudice to the rights of third parties to those who will deposit at least three-fourths of the certificates issued for the value of each salitrera and who will deposit in a fiscal treasury in money a sum equal to the price of the other fourth part, which part will be returned to the interested party when he shall turn over all the certificates issued for the value of the respective salitrera.” Decree of June 11, 1881, quoted in Osgood 1948, 169–70. 5. The decree was modified on September 6, 1881, allowing for the provisional return of the salitreras to private ownership for those who could submit more than half of the relevant certificates and deposit the rest of the face value of the certificates at the rate of 44 pennies for each Peruvian Sol. In the same month, the Chilean government authorized the renting out of the salitreras still in the hands of the treasury. 6. Thomas F. O’Brien 1979, 107. 7. The actual figure was £4,194,263. 8. Thomas F. O’Brien estimates that the British share of Peruvian bonds amounted in 1881 to between £24,000,000 and £25,000,000 (O’Brien 1979, 107). 9. Thomas F. O’Brien (1979, 112) quotes from the third letter of protest sent by Francis Pakenham to the Chilean foreign minister, “I will not attempt to conceal from Y E [Your Excellency] my belief that this enforced alienation of British property by the authorities of Chile will be viewed with profound surprise & concern by the Govt. of the Queen.” 10. J. R. Brown argues in his Nitrates Crises, Combinations, and the Chilean Government in the Nitrate Age that the “Nitrate Era” which lasted for four decades from 1880 brought prosperity to Chile. The government made most of its revenue from taxes on nitrate exports, and “their rich harvest aroused the awe and envy of the world” (Brown 1963, 230). Brown concludes that “The Chilean government shared with producers responsibility for the course of developments in the Nitrate Age. Although quick to establish a high tax on nitrate exports, the government was slow in taking positive measures

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154

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

24. 25.

NOTES

to alleviate crises or to promote long-range interests connected with the industry” (1963, 246). It is possible that North was buying up certificates in Peru even earlier, perhaps from late 1879. See Blakemore 1974, 26, footnote # 119. See http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/cornishlatin/Sirrobertharvey.htm (accessed August 12, 2010). The company’s name was Compañia Salitrera del Rimac. Harold Blakemore (1974, 27) believes that this appointment was “probably on the recommendation of Admiral Patricio Lynch.” See, for example, Michael Monteón (2003, 75): “He may have known the contents of the Chilean decree before it was announced, but this cannot be proved. [However] he certainly knew which factories were the most valuable.” See www.albumdesierto.cl (accessed August 12, 2010). See http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/cornishlatin/Sirrobertharvey.htm (accessed August 12, 2010). A second Chilean bank, the Banco Nacional, was also lending to those who wanted to purchase certificates. Also, some Chilean speculators bought up certificates cheaply, among them Agustín Edwards Ross. “Chilean banks were, then, the source of resources which the English speculators used” (Ramírez Necochea 1958, 60, in translation). See David Joslin, A Century of Banking in Latin America, 1963, 180. Oliver Wooller, The Consul and the Colonel (unpublished), citing census returns for 1891. I am grateful to Oliver Wooller, Community Archivist, Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre, Bexley Council, for a copy of his paper “The Consul and the Colonel” (unpublished), and copies of the Letters Patent from the Maurice Jewell Collection (PE/JWL/1/1 & PE/JWL/1/2). I am also grateful to Oliver Wooller of the Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre for pointing out that Whitakers Almanac of 1888 gives Maurice Jewell as British Vice Consul in Iquique, and since there is no vice consul listed for previous years, then he was probably appointed in 1887. The London Gazette carried this notice on June 21, 1889: “Foreign Office, June 1, 1889. The Queen has been graciously pleased to appoint Maurice Jewell, Esq., now British Vice Consul at Iquique, to be Her Majesty’s Consul at Iquique.” The Letters Patent in the name of Queen Victoria reads, in part, “We have thought it necessary for the encouragement of Our Subjects trading to Iquique, to appoint a Consul to reside there to take care of the affairs of Our said Subjects, and to aid and assist them in all their lawful and mercantile concerns.” Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre, PE/JWL/2/1. Couyoumdjian (2000, 19) mentions that the Esmeralda oficina belonged to “Jewell and Company” after the War of the Pacific, and later came into the properties owned by “North and Jewell.”

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26. The Porvenir oficina may well have been North’s first nitrate investment, in 1878. 27. William Russell met with “Mr. Jewell,” the manager of the Esmeralda oficina, on his visit in 1889 to Colonel North’s nitrate investments in Tarapacá (Russell 1890, 211). 28. Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre, PE/JWL/2/2 & PE/ JWL/2/3. 29. Maurice Frederick Stewart Jewell was born in Iquique on September 15, 1885 and became a successful cricketer for the county of Worcestershire. 30. The London Gazette on July 26, 1895 carried a notice requesting that any creditors to the estate of Maurice Jewell “who died at Viña del Mar in Chili on the 14th. day of March 1895” should make their claims known. 31. Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre, PE/JWL/2/10. 32. Ibid. 33. Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre, Maurice Jewell’s will, PE/ JWL/3/5.

4

The Nitrate King

1. Cinderella’s father to his creditors in the pantomime “Cinderella” performed at the Prince of Wales Theatre. The Birmingham Daily Post, “Boxing Day Amusements,” December 26, 1889. 2. See Harold Blakemore (1974, 29). The dates of purchase for these oficinas are unknown, but probably date from 1881/1882. 3. William Russell, A Visit to Chile and the Nitrate Fields of Tarapacá, 1890, 204. 4. See Jack B. Pfeiffer, Notes on the Heavy Equipment Industry in Chile, 1800–1910 (1952). The other firms are Lever, Murphy & Company; Balfour, Lyon & Company; Hardie & Company; and Morrison & Company. Pfeiffer’s source for information on North, Humphrey & Dickinson is the U. S. Department of State, Bureau of Statistics, Monthly Consular Reports, No. 68, Sept. 1886, p. 610. 5. The “W. and J. Lockett” (“merchants and shipowners”) partnership of John Waite, Richard Robertson Lockett, William Jeffrey Lockett, and George Alexander Lockett, with business addresses at 12 King Street, Liverpool, and 93 & 94 Gracechurch Street, London, lasted until March 31, 1894, when “by mutual consent” John Waite withdrew from the partnership (The London Gazette, April 3, 1894). The company continued to trade with South America for many years, as “W. & J. Lockett” in Peru, and as “Lockett Brothers & Company” in Chile (in Iquique and Valparaíso). 6. See Rory Miller 1998, 248–9, footnote #52, “in 1895 three members of the Lockett family between them held fourteen directorships

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NOTES

7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

in North’s companies.” As an example, two of the three directors of the Colorado Nitrate Company were Richard Cyril Lockett and William Jeffrey Lockett (see the Stock Exchange Year Book, 1908). Aldana and Harris 1910, 30. See Juan Ricardo Couyoumdjian 2000, 12, for an excellent short history (in Spanish) of the early development of sodium nitrate exploitation. See Soto Cárdenas 1998, 54. See also Oscar Bermúdez 1963, 106. This may have occurred at an earlier date too: William Bollaert (1851) writes that some nitrate was sent to England in 1820 but that on account of the high import tax it was thrown overboard. George Smith had revolutionized nitrate extraction at his La Noria oficina in the early 1850s, and Melbourne Clark joined Smith in 1854 as a partner and manager of operations. This business relationship remained close until Smith died in 1869. According to O’Brien (1982, 15), Smith’s relationship with Gibbs started in 1856, with a loan to George Smith & Company, and was consolidated from 1860 when Gibbs’s profits from Smith (and other nitrate companies) came to rival their income from the monopoly on Peruvian guano. These percentages are taken from Ramírez Necochea 1958, 65. See Rippy 1959, 57–9: “It would hardly be an exaggeration to assert that North was mainly responsible for founding all of the British joint-stock companies organized over a period of fourteen years for the purpose of engaging in the production, transportation, and sale of nitrate of soda. Companies which he did not himself establish were founded by his close associates or by men who were swept into the business by the stimulation of his activities and by reports of the profits that he and his associates were harvesting.” See Rippy 1948, 460: The total nominal capital (paid-in) of North’s companies, and those associated with him, was £7,171,400. The companies founded by North (with the date of founding) were: Nitrate Railways Company Ltd. (1882); Liverpool Nitrate Company Ltd. (1883); Colorado Nitrate Company Ltd. (1885); Primitiva Nitrate Company Ltd. (1886); Tarapacá Waterworks Company Ltd. (1883); Bank of Tarapacá and London Ltd. (1888); Lagunas Syndicate Ltd. (1889); Paccha & Jazpampa Nitrate Company Ltd. (1889); and Lagunas Nitrate Company Ltd. The companies founded together with associates were: San Pablo Nitrate Company Ltd. (1888); San Jorge Nitrate Company Ltd. (1888); Nitrate Provisions Supply Company Ltd. (1889); San Donato Nitrate Company Ltd. (1889); San Sebastian Nitrate Company Ltd. (1889); Santa Elena Nitrate Company Ltd. (1889); New Tamarugal Nitrate Company Ltd. (1890); and the Nitrate Producers’ Steamship Company Ltd. (1895). Note: the Nitrates Railways Company was not actually founded by North; he purchased a controlling interest in 1887. Rippy’s list does not include the Arauco

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NOTES

15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24. 25.

26.

157

Coal and Railway Company Ltd., founded by North in London in 1866, and linked to the nitrates industry in the north of Chile. González Miranda (2001) notes that until 1910 the Jazpampa oficina belonged to “The New Paccha and Jaz Nitrate Company,” whose representative was Gamble North (John Thomas’s brother), with an address in Pisagua, from where the nitrate was exported. Both names come from the Quechua language, meaning divided plane (jaz) and land or space (paccha). Ramírez Necochea (1958, 66) gives the San Pablo Nitrate Company as founded in 1888 by Robert Harvey and James Inglis. The figure of £50,000 is given by Osgood Hardy 1948, 173–4, and Harold Blakemore 1962, 469. J. Fred Rippy (1948, 462) gives £110,000 as the company’s capital. Some machinery may also have been commissioned in Chile. Pfeiffer (1952, 139) mentions that in 1882 Robert Harvey purchased three nitrate crushing machines from the foundry of North, Humphrey & Dickinson in Tarapacá. It is worth remembering that John Thomas North cited that he was a “partner in the Engineering Works of North, Humphrey and Dickinson” in his application in August 1882 for membership of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Alejandro Soto Cárdenas (1998, 50) provides figures by nation for nitrate production prior to 1879, when the War of the Pacific broke out, showing Peru at 58.5 percent, Chile at 19 percent, Britain at 13.5 percent, Germany at 8 percent, and Italy at 1 percent. Hernán Ramírez Necochea (1958, 66) gives the London Nitrate Company as founded by James Inglis in 1887, together with the Puntunchara oficina. The Agua Santa oficina was the first to introduce the revolutionary Shanks system for processing the caliche, and the innovator was the British engineer James Humberstone. James Inglis & Company purchased the San Donato oficina for £90,000 and sold it a month later for £150,000 (see Couyoumdjian 2000, 21). Ramírez Necochea (1958, 66) gives the San Donato Nitrate Company as founded by Harvey and Lockett in January 1889, following their joint investment in the San Jorge Nitrate Company in December 1888. One estimate is that at least three quarters of the nitrate output was used as fertilizer; see Brown 1963, 231. The export tax on nitrates was imposed on October 1, 1880 (during the War of the Pacific) and remained unchanged throughout the “nitrate age” of 1880–1919 at two shillings and four pence per Spanish quintal, payable in gold (Brown 1963, 230). Nitrate prices fell by at least 25 percent from 1881, when Chile decided to return the industry to private hands, to 1884; see Brown 1963, 232.

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NOTES

27. Figures taken from Ramírez Necochea (1958, 56). 1 quintal is the equivalent of 100 pounds. 28. James Humberstone, an English chemist, introduced the “Shanks” process into the nitrate industry in around 1878. This grew out of a system developed by James Shanks in Lancashire for the production of carbonate of soda. See Monteón 1975, 120. 29. Eighteen nitrate companies were founded in Britain in 1888 (seven) and 1889 (eleven); see Rippy 1959, 59. 30. In 1894, the Permanent Nitrate Committee expanded its activities by setting up the Asociación Salitrera de Propaganda (the Nitrate Propaganda Association) based on Iquique. Couyomdjian (1987, 435) notes that the committee comprised representatives of the British nitrate companies until 1911, when Chilean and other foreign company representatives joined the board. 31. The Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, Bristol, August 4, 1894. 32. See Brown 1963, 235–7. North’s “nitrate ring” controlled the “Triple Syndicate,” made up of the Second Combination, the Nitrate Railways Company, and the Bank of Tarapacá and London. 33. The Chilean government took the initiative to form a third combination, which lasted from March 1896 to October 1897, but this was a complete failure. There was a fourth combination in 1901, which lasted for five years and was much more successful, and a fifth combination from 1906 to 1909, both supported by the government. 34. Hernán Ramírez Necochea (1958, 55) writes that North acquired the nitrate salitrera of Lagunas for £110,000 and invested £140,000 on installation costs, giving a total investment of £250,000. This was the basis for setting up his two Lagunas companies, which, together, came to have a capital of £2,122,000—a ninefold increase on the original investment. J. Fred Rippy (1948, 462) gives “£210,000 or less” as the price paid by North. 35. See, for example, The Glasgow Herald edition of June 21, 1894. 36. These shares were later sold by the Lagunas Syndicate at a profit of £24,000. 37. The Economist, June 23, 1894. 38. John Thomas North was appointed honorary colonel of the 2nd Tower Hamlets (East London) Volunteer Corps in March 1885, a title of which he was inordinately proud. See The London Gazette, March 24, 1885. 39. Court of Appeal, Lagunas Nitrate Company v. Lagunas Syndicate: 1896 L. 1196, Law Reports Citation 1899, 2 Ch. 392. 40. The Times, July 3, 1896. 41. The Times, February 10, 1898, report on proceedings in the High Court of Justice. 42. The Times, July 14, 1898, report on the judgment given in the case. 43. The Economist, June 23, 1894.

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159

44. Rippy (1959, 63) writes that the Primitiva company was exceptional; “most of the enterprises founded by North and his close associates yielded high—sometimes enormous—dividends on their inflated securities.” From 1888 to 1896, the Liverpool Nitrate Company returned dividends amounting to 306 percent; the Colorado Nitrate Company, 72 percent; the Nitrate Railways Company, 174 percent, and the Lagunas Syndicate 100 percent (to 1895). Other companies in Colonel North’s portfolio did not do so well: the Bank of Tarapacá and London averaged less than 5 percent annually; the Tarapacá Waterworks Company between 6 and 10 percent annually; and the Nitrates Provisions Supply Company only ever paid one dividend, of 5 percent. 45. The Express, September 28, 1889, “Colonel North’s Views” (Avery Hill archive, R. 1.55). This piece actually quotes from an interview with North published in The New York Herald. 46. “The Nitrate Trade” published in The Times, December 6, 1890. 47. “Nitrate Companies” published in The Times, November 9, 1894. 48. “Nitrate Company Finance: Tomorrow’s Primitiva Meeting” published in The Pall Mall Gazette, November 27, 1895. 49. The Economist, November 2, 1895. 50. The Economist, November 9, 1895. 51. The Economist, November 30, 1895. 52. The London Gazette, December 24, 1895. 53. The Economist, November 30, 1895. 54. The New York Times, August 16, 1896. 55. Conditions for miners and factory workers in Britain during the North’s lifetime were probably not a great deal better, although there was some legislation to improve their lot. The 1874 Factory Act reduced working hours to ten per day, and forbade the employment of children under the age of ten, with full time work allowed only from the age of fourteen. The Factory and Workshops (Consolidation) Act of 1891 raised the minimum age at which a child could be set to work, from ten to eleven.

5

The Grand Promotion Army

1. The Star, New Zealand, “A Dangerous Enemy,” April 6, 1889. 2. The London Gazette, March 24, 1885. 3. Centner (1942, 77) gives 1885 as the year that the Arauco Company Limited was founded, and this may have been an earlier company before the railway interest was added. 4. Russell 1890, 48–58. 5. The Pall Mall Gazette, “The Arauco Collapse,” March 31, 1897 (Letter to the editor). 6. The Pall Mall Gazette, “City Notes: The Arauco Collapse,” March 29, 1897.

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160

NOTES

7. J. Fred Rippy (1948, 458) believes that North organized the first Nitrate Railways Company in August 1882, and that this was “the first of his joint-stock promotions.” This seems doubtful. 8. See, for example, The Life and Career of Col. North, 1896, 10. 9. The Leeds Mercury, “Sudden Death of Colonel North: Sketch of his Career,” May 6, 1896, quoting from an interview with Gastón Calmette (Editor of Le Figaro) on April 23, 1895. 10. Michael Monteón 2003, 77. 11. The Agua Santa concession was one of the largest oficinas in Tarapacá, dating from 1874, and completed in March 1878, while the territory was still Peruvian. This was the first oficina to introduce (in 1878) the revolutionary Shanks process developed by the English engineer James Humberstone for the more efficient refining of nitrates. The state acquired the company in 1915, and the railway line continued to function until 1931 (see Couyoumdjian 2000, 17). 12. “Nitrate Railways Company,” The Times, June 3, 1896. 13. Quoted in Zeitlin 1984, 99, and Binns 2007, 37. 14. Robert Harvey commented in his review of the annual report for 1895 that for about three years “a great commercial firm [which must be Gibbs] had been using its best influence to obtain permission from the Chilian Congress to construct a line from the Alianza grounds to the Caleta, or small port of Chucumata,” and that while this had been fought off for the moment, “with the cooperation of many Iquique commercial firms,” this development plus the reduction in nitrate production meant that there would be no interim dividend paid in July 1896 (“Nitrate Railways Company,” The Times, June 3, 1896). 15. “Nitrate Railways Company,” The Times, June 3, 1896. Notwithstanding these setbacks, the dividend paid for 1895 was 12½ percent; “a good return” according to Robert Harvey. 16. Quoted in Binns 2007, 13. 17. North held 16,000 shares in the Nitrate Railways Company in 1888, reduced to fewer than 400 by 1896. See Blakemore 1962, 472–3. 18. See, for example, the prospectus published in The Liverpool Mercury on March 19, 1888. 19. William Howard Russell, A visit to Chile and the Nitrate Fields of Tarapacá, 1890, 150. 20. Harold Blakemore calls him “Carlos Wüth’ (1974, 59). 21. The Tarapacá Waterworks Company lasted for many years after North’s death, as a company registered in London. A liquidator was appointed on February 22, 1956. See The London Gazette, February 28, 1956. 22. The Nitrate and General Investment Trust Company seems to have been removed from the register of joint stock companies in 1893. See The London Gazette, January 17, 1893.

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161

23. David Burrell’s source for the story is John Latta’s account of what happened, published in the magazine Syren and Shipping in 1935. 24. The actual colors chosen for the steamer funnels were certainly inspired by North’s racing colors—a five-pointed yellow star superimposed on two bands of light blue and red. There is also a similarity with the national flag of Chile, which presumably was no coincidence. 25. John Masefield, “Ships,” first printed in The English Review in July 1912, and included in Heinemann’s Collected Poems published in 1923. 26. The Glasgow Herald, “Commercial News,” June 7, 1895. 27. The fourth steamer built for the Nitrate Producers’ Steamship Company was named the George Fleming; all the subsequent ships had the Anglo prefix.

6

Colonel North

1. See The 2008 Avery Hill Management Plan, Appendix IV “Site Heritage & History,” p. 27. http://www.greenwich.gov.uk/NR/ rdonlyres/C68719B8- FF89- 451E- 9DE6-212C19B846CE/0/ AveryHillPark.pdf (accessed August 12, 2010). Other sources give twenty-three acres (see David Shorney 1990, 2). 2. Frances Consitt (1949, 22) believes that the title deeds date back to the early seventeenth century. 3. The London Gazette, March 24, 1885. 4. The Corps had the secondary designation of “The East London Engineer Volunteer Corps,” and consisted of six companies. This secondary title became the sole name of the corps in 1900, and then changed to the 1st London Divisional Engineers in 1908 when the Territorial Army was formed. See Walter Richards 1911, 37–8. 5. The Express (local newspaper in Dartford), “Volunteer Camp at Eltham,” August 7, 1886. Avery Hill Archive: R. 1.55. 6. The Express, “Colonel John Thomas North at Avery Hill, Eltham,” September 1, 1888. Avery Hill archive R. 1.55. See also “Chat of the gossips” published in The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times, London, August 25, 1888. 7. David Shorney (1990, 3) writes that price paid was £17,500. 8. The Leeds Mercury, April 30, 1888, “The Italian Exhibition in London.” The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times of July 7, 1888 also reports that Colonel North was “the courteous President of the Reception Committee” for the Italian Exhibition. 9. The British Architect for June 26, 1891 carries a lengthy summary of the trial under the heading “Colonel North and his new house” (Avery Hill archive R. 1.42 [xii]). This was not the only litigation arising out of the renovation work; The Times of May 30, 1891 reported on the case brought by the builder in Chappell v. North, which claimed that he was owed £5,453. Colonel North characteristically

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10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25.

NOTES

counterclaimed for £1,200 “for delay and inferior work.” The counterclaim was dismissed. See The Pall Mall Gazette, “The Nitrate King’s Castle at Eltham: Action by the Architect,” London, June 22, 1891. The Times on June 23 also gave ample coverage to the trial. In this context, by a public school, North was referring to his state school education. The Pall Mall Gazette, “The Nitrate King and His Architect: Verdict for Plaintiff for Full Amount,” June 23, 1891. The Times of June 24 also gave extensive coverage to the resumption of the trial and the verdict. The Express, “Colonel North’s Views,” September 28, 1889. (Avery Hill archive, R. 1.55). The Express on August 9, 1890 reported that “Colonel North’s new residence, which might well be described as New Eltham Palace, is now quite complete. The Colonel has been holding high festivities there. Every Sunday he receives an army of guests . . . I may mention that he has a succession of his carriages kept waiting at the station for all and sundry who are bound for his residence.” The British Architect, “Avery Hill: Rambling Sketches No. 710,” January 3, 1890 (Avery Hill archive R. 1.42 [ii]). For example, Joyce Wood, “Avery Hill College—The Original Building” (Avery Hill archive, R. 1.45). Other sources mention that the doors may have been stolen, or that when they were made they proved to be the wrong size. Harold Blakemore (1963, 470) writes that “At the entrance to the main hall stood two large gates of decorative ironwork, reputedly seized from the Cathedral of Lima by Chilean troops in the War of the Pacific.” The British Architect, “Avery Hill for Colonel North. The Lavatory,” March 14, 1890. Faïence (or faience) is earthenware decorated with colorful opaque glazes. The Yorkshire Post, “The Late Colonel North,” May 11, 1896 (Avery Hill archive: ref. R.1.14). The Times, “The Italian Exhibition,” June 11, 1888. Giuseppe Sciuti, Italian artist, 1834–1911. More recent times have been kinder to this painting. In 1998, the United States Postal Service issued a set of twenty commemorative stamps entitled “Four Centuries of American Art,” one of which featured Albert Bierstadt’s The Last of the Buffalo. The Art Amateur, “The London Letter: Curious prices at auction for pictures by Mr. Frith and M. Bierstadt,” May 1898, p. 129. John Adrien Raemaekers, according to Gerald L. Carr, Bierstadt’s West, 1997. The New York Times, November 10, 1895.

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NOTES

163

26. The Illustrated Buffalo Express. “A talk with one of the richest men in the world.” December 27, 1892. 27. John Bennion Booth, Palmy Days, 1957, 179. See Chapter XV, “The Nitrate King.” 28. The Leeds Mercury, “Sudden Death of Colonel North: Sketch of his Career,” May 6, 1896. 29. The New York Times, “Turf Luck of Last Year: Englishmen Who Have Made Large Winnings,” February 2, 1891. 30. The Leeds Mercury, “Sudden Death of Colonel North: Sketch of His Career,” May 6, 1896. Also: The Life and Career of Col. North, “His Winnings on the Turf,” 1896, 16; The Times, “Obituary: Colonel J. T. North,” May 6, 1896. 31. The Times, “Sale of Colonel North’s Stud,” June 11, 1894. 32. John Bennion Booth, Palmy Days, 1957, 185–6. See Chapter XV, “The Nitrate King.” 33. Graham Rock (The Times, February 28, 1989) estimates that 850 guineas would be equivalent to £50,000 (in 1989). 34. The Express (Dartford local newspaper), January 18, 1890. (Avery Hill archive R. 1.55). 35. See The Times, “The Colonel North Sale,” March 17, 1898. 36. The Express, “Stag Hunt at Farningham,” December 29, 1888. (Avery Hill archive R. 1.55). Colonel North participated in this “Kentish Stag Hunt.” It seems that a deer was “uncarted” at a nearby farm, and then the pursuit began. On this occasion, “The rain . . . which came on later in the day spoiled the pleasure somewhat.” 37. See “The North Scratch Medal” (Avery Hill archive R. 1.46). 38. This would be Albion’s centre-half Higgins, who returned to the game with his head heavily bandaged from a cut, although his side lost in the end 1- 0. 39. The Times, “The Late Colonel North’s Mansion,” July 28, 1896. 40. See “Opening of Avery Hill, Eltham,” London County Council, 1903, page 5. (Avery Hill archive R. 1.26). 41. Southwood House is now the University of Greenwich administrative centre. It seems that Colonel North also stayed at the Hotel Métropole during renovation work: see The Express, “Odds and Ends,” August 3, 1889. (Avery Hill archive R. 1.55). 42. See http://www.gre.ac.uk/pr/articles/latest/a1772-listed-ladiesloo-open-to-visitors-on-february- 6 (accessed August 12, 2010). 43. The Winter Garden and Avery Hill Park were used as locations in the 1978 film “The Big Sleep” directed by Michael Winner, and starring Robert Mitchum, James Stewart and Sarah Miles. 44. See “New Life for Avery Hill Winter Garden: An Oasis of Tropical Tranquillity,” The Bexley Chronicle, September 2009. 45. Life and Career of the Late Col. North: How He Made His Millions, As Told By Himself, 1896, 12.

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NOTES

46. I am indebted to Eveleigh and Michael Bradford for having shared with me their excellent history, “Notes on Kirkstall Abbey: Purchase and gift to Leeds” (unpublished). 47. Life and Career of the Late Col. North: How He Made His Millions, As Told By Himself, 1896, 9. 48. See The Leeds Mercury, “Sudden Death of Colonel North: Sketch of His Career,” May 6, 1896. 49. The actual check for £10,000 bearing North’s signature is in the archives of the Thoresby Society in Leeds. 50. The Leeds Mercury, “The Gift of Kirkstall Abbey to Leeds,” January 26, 1889. (Avery Hill archive R. 1.12). 51. The Leeds Mercury, “The Gift of Kirkstall Abbey to Leeds,” January 26, 1889. The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times of February 2, 1889 also gives the same figure of £900. 52. The Derby Mercury, “Colonel North at Leeds,” January 30, 1889. The Illustrated London News, “Leeds Honours to Colonel North,” February 2, 1889. 53. Abbey House was sold to Leeds City Council in 1925 for £6,000, and in 1927 became the Kirkstall Abbey House Museum, designed to display and preserve the history of people in Leeds, and which can be visited today. 54. Figures vary in sources. The Glasgow Herald of December 22, 1888, for example, gives £3,000 as North’s donation toward the Leeds Infirmary extension. 55. The Pall Mall Gazette, “The Nitrate King’s Latest Gift,” September 20, 1889. The British Architect edition of January 3, 1890, “Avery Hill: Rambling Sketches No. 710,” also mentions that North “endeavoured to purchase Holbeck Moor (his birthplace) as a recreationground for his townsmen.” 56. The Pall Mall Gazette, “The Nitrate King and the Carlton Club,” January 10, 1889. 57. The Leeds Mercury, July 8, 1895. 58. The Leeds Mercury on May 6, 1896, the day that North died, recalled in its obituary, “Sudden Death of Colonel North,” that “In the strict sense of the word he was no politician, and was not ashamed to admit the fact . . . [On the political platform] he alluded to any subject under the sun except politics.” 59. The Times, “Obituary: Colonel J. T. North,” May 6, 1896. 60. The Leeds Mercury, “Sudden Death of Colonel North: Sketch of his Career,” May 6, 1896. The actual numbers were 6,314 votes for Herbert Gladstone, and 6,218 for Colonel North.

7

The Sensation of the Hour

1. “Where did you get that hat?” was a popular music hall song by Joseph J. Sullivan (1888) and James Rolmaz (1901), originally

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NOTES

2.

3. 4.

5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

165

sung by J. C. Heffron, and later performed and recorded by Stanley Holloway. “Colonel South” in the lyrics clearly refers to John Thomas North, and the song was allegedly written at the time that the Prince of Wales visited Colonel North’s mansion, Avery Hill. See http:// theelthamsociety.org.uk/articles/The_Road_to_South_America. pdf (accessed August 12, 2010). This may in fact have been in Antwerp. The Yorkshire Post on May 11, 1896 includes “the North Portland Cement Works at Antwerp” among the wreaths received at North’s funeral. The New York Times of the same day (“Death of Col. J. T. North”) says that North bought land near Antwerp “and organized model cement works.” The Maravillas (British) Silver Mining Syndicate Ltd. Debenture: A long-term debt instrument that is not secured by a specific asset. In the event of default, the holder does not have a claim against any specific asset(s) of the issuing firm. In this case, the Llynvi Company had issued two sets of debentures secured on different parts of the company’s property, but there was a portion of the property not included in either set. See “The Colliery Disaster in South Wales: The Inquest,” The Times, August 30, 1892. The company secretary, Mr. Briggs, told the coroner that “anything that the company could do to relieve the distress [of the relatives of those who had died] should be done,” adding that Colonel North “was on the Continent, but they had received a telegram from Ostend from him, and he would be down in a few days.” The Times, October 30, 1889. In 2001, the Bridgend County Borough Council gave listed building status under the 1990 conservation act to the Colonel North Memorial Hall, as part of the Maesteg Town Centre Conservation project, “an area of special architectural or historic interest.” The London Gazette, April 30, 2001. Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales), May 4, 1897. The Times, January 10, 1895. Annexation came in 1908, when the Belgian Congo was created. The West Australian, October 6, 1894. The Economist, “Business Notes: The Londonderry Mine,” December 14, 1895. The Glasgow Herald, “Our London Correspondence,” November 7, 1894. Ibid. See, for example, The Thames Star, New Zealand, April 10, 1895, “The Londonderry Mine: Gold Said To Have Been Stolen.” The Leeds Mercury, “Londonderry Gold Mine Limited: Reports from Experts,” April 11, 1895. Nevertheless, The Economist (April 13, 1895) congratulated North and his partners for placing their profits in the hands of trustees “to

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NOTES

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

be held until the company has earned profits equal to the amount of issued capital.” The Feilding Star, New Zealand (August 22, 1895), quoting a Press Association report. The Times, December 11, 1895. See Daily News, “Colonel North and the Londonderry Gold Mine: His Intentions Do Not Bind His Executors,” August 11, 1898. N.L. stands for a No Liability company in Australia and is employed only with companies involved in mining operations. See Williams K.L. and R. A. Both, Mineralogy of the mines and prospects of the Zeehan field, Geological Survey of Tasmania. Records 11, 1971. The Evening Post, “Mining News: The Nitrate King invests in New Zealand,” March 2, 1895, p. 2. See David Burrell, The Nitrate Boats (1995, 17). See Harold Blakemore, 1974, 232. This may have been an investment in the Société des Tramways du Caire (Cairo Tramway Company) established in 1894 by the Belgian engineer and entrepreneur Baron Empain to build and operate the Cairo tramways system. The Times, “Law Report,” February 14, 1893. The Daily Mail and Empire (Canada) quoted The New York Tribune on October 24, 1895 in reference to the Ostend Project: “Colonel North has agreed to invest $4,000,000 in converting [Ostend] into the sporting capital of Europe.” The newspaper reported that $1,500,000 was the cost of the concession from the Belgian government and that “King Leopold has added to the beach section a portion of his own estate,” adding that North was committed to spending $2,500,000 on the hotel and facilities. “This scheme has received the approval of the King of the Belgians and is to be carried out in detail over the next eighteen months with the capital supplied by the Nitrate King.”

8

A Visit to the Nitrate Kingdom

1. Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971. “Pablo Neruda” was the pen (and later, legal) name of the Chilean writer and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Bosoalto. Neruda’s Canto General was first published in Mexico in 1950. The 35th song entitled “Balmaceda de Chile (1891)” from the 4th Section (“Los Libertadores”) of this monumental work in Spanish contains the sentence—in English— “You are very clever, Mr. North” at lines 12, 56, and 74. The song begins “Mr. North ha llegado de Londres” (Mr. North has arrived from London), and refers to Colonel North’s return to Chile in 1889 with “two little Arab horses/ and a small locomotive/ all of gold,” which are “presents for the President,” José Manuel Balmaceda. In Neruda’s version, Balmaceda rejects the gifts without seeing them,

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NOTES

2. 3.

4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

9.

10.

167

and says to North that “This land, this richness/ will be Chile’s, this white material/ I shall convert into schools, into pathways/ into bread for my people,” adding that “I cannot/ give you these concessions,/ I cannot lash my country/ to the mysteries of the City.” Still according to this poem, North retires to drink whisky at his Club, and “pounds sterling” begin to weave a web of corruption that embraces lawyers and politicians, leading to civil war and Balmaceda’s suicide. (All translations into English are by the author.) The New York Times, “The Nitrate King’s Folly,” January 5, 1889. The reference to “Wales” is to the Prince of Wales. Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill, the father of Winston Churchill, became a friend of the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) in the early 1870s. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Randolph Churchill took an active interest in horse-racing, at the time that Colonel North was investing heavily in this sport. The New York Times, “The Nitrate King’s Folly,” January 5, 1889. The “List of Guests, with Characters Represented” has survived and can be consulted at the Avery Hill archive: ref. Proctor 15. This was not Colonel North’s first sumptuous ball. On January 21, 1887 he had taken over the Marlborough Rooms on Regent Street in London to offer the first Jubilee celebration for Queen Victoria. The East London Advertiser and Tower Hamlets Independent reported on February 5 that “The Marlborough Rooms were rather too full, that is all that can be said against the ball, but it was a fault on the right side; and when it came to the supper—well, there descriptive powers fail, for it was simply the best supper we ever sat down to.” Nor was this the first fancy dress ball he had organized; The Express on January 31, 1891 described a fancy dress ball for children held that month for children at Avery Hill at which “Little Master Arthur North, the nominal host, was attired in a handsome white satin costume as Edward VI,” and accompanied by his sister Emma, “the belle of West Kent.” The World, January 9, 1889, Avery Hill archive, ref. Proctor 15A. The Star, New Zealand, “A Dangerous Enemy,” April 6, 1889. William Howard Russell’s reports for The Times on the Crimean War were very influential with the British public and politicians, and contributed to improved conditions for the soldiers and to Florence Nightingale and her nurses being sent out. (See Roger T. Stearn, Russell, Sir William Howard (1820–1907), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Russell was knighted in 1895. Osgood Hardy (1948, 176) comments that Russell “was persuaded to cancel Mediterranean cruise plans by an honorarium of £15,000,” but provides no source for this information. Roger T. Stearn believes that Colonel North paid Russell £1,000 to accompany him (Russell, Sir William Howard (1820–1907), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Melton Prior (1845–1910) published his sketches of Chile in The Illustrated London News, starting in August 1889, and these were

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11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

NOTES

seen by readers all over the world. Most of the sketches were drawn on site, including those of the nitrate works, but others were copied from photographs by Luis Boudat, a photographer born in Iquique who in 1888 began to put together a collection of photos with the title Album de las Salitreras. See De la Taille et al. (1992). This relic was, and still is, of great importance to Chile. On May 21, 1879 in the War of the Pacific the Esmeralda took on the much superior Peruvian ironclad Huáscar in the naval battle of Iquique and was sunk with Captain Arturo Prat dying heroically on the deck of the Huáscar. North’s gift is now at the Escuela Naval Arturo Prat in Valparaíso. William Russell saw the trophy and describes how the capstan had been taken out of the wreck of the Esmeralda and mounted “by Messrs. Elkington as a shield, with relieves of great artistic excellence representing the incidents of the combat. It was arranged that the President should receive this shield in the name of the State and deposit it in the Hall of the National Assembly at Santiago. The brass top of the capstan is surrounded by a silver border decorated with raised stars, inside which are small discs bearing the names of those who perished in the action of the 21st May, 1879, which date is inscribed at the top of the shield. Four allegorical figures in relief surround the capstan, the centre of which bears the Chilian star, and the words, ‘Esmeralda—Chile” (Russell, 1890: 83). The Santiago newspaper El Mercurio reported on May 17, 2000 (“Las Reliquias de la Esmeralda”) that North commissioned a Mexican diver named Teófilo Clemas in 1883 to retrieve items from the wreck of the Esmeralda and that the clock from the officers’ cabin was found and given to the Chilean President Domingo Santa María, and that his descendants gave this clock to the Chilean Navy in 1974. The clock can now be seen in the Museo Naval y Marítimo in Valparaíso. See Bravo Elizondo and Guerrero Jiménez (2000). Michael Monteón (2003, 83) also writes that Balmaceda refused to accept North’s gifts. However, writing not long after the event, in 1900, Pedro Pablo Figueroa says in his Diccionario Biográfico de Estranjeros en Chile that North gave the capstan of the Esmeralda to the president and makes no mention of any controversy. William Russell mentions the “thorough-bred stallion and a very fine sire of the Cleveland type . . . which were later on handed over to the Government at Santiago,” and he too makes no mention of any controversy (Russell 1890, 84). Harold Blakemore (1974, 96) describes this as “another myth”—a “complete fabrication.” Ramírez Nechochea (1958, 92) quotes the newspaper El Ferrocarril of June 11, 1889 that the engine bore a plaque with the name “Balmaceda.” Information from the 7th Company of Firemen in Iquique states that the engine (manufactured by Merryweather & Sons) never in fact used the name “Balmaceda,” and that there was a debate over whether to call it “John Thomas North” or “Tarapacá”;

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NOTES

16.

17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

27.

28.

169

the final decision was in favor of the latter name. This was not Iquique’s first fire engine: the firm of North & Jewell had sent a fire engine named “Iberia” for the Primera Compañia de Bomberos Española “Iberia,” which arrived on the steamship Pizarro in December 1885 (Source: Historia de las Compañias de Bomberos de Iquique, Dimas Figueira, Editorial Bini, 1888, Iquique). Harold Blakemore (1974, 96) writes that the fire engine brought by North in 1889 was to replace the one he had earlier imported but had been lost in a shipwreck. See Ramírez Nechochea (1958, 92). The same newspaper account also mentions that North gave checks of $1,000 to the Sociedad de Beneficiencia de Iquique, and to the English Club and the Chilean Club in Iquique. William Howard Russell 1890, 43. See Harold Blakemore 1974, 104. An allusion to The Count of Monte Cristo, the mysterious and fabulously rich aristocrat of Alexandre Dumas’ novel, first published in English in 1846. The New York Times, July 3, 1889. The “new concession” is a reference to the Lagunas salitrera. The Daily News, “The Nitrate King,” August 23, 1890. The Times, “The Chilian Revolution: From Our Special Correspondent,” April 1, 1891. The Times, “The War in Chile: Latest intelligence. The Congressists Victorious.” August 31, 1891. Michael Monteón (2003, 72) has the same opinion: the accusation that the opposition to President Balmaceda was “serving foreign interests and selling out Chile’s future” can be put aside, “although it is the centerpiece of most of the literature about North and the civil war”—“Virtually no one who looks at the range of Balmaceda’s enemies believes in such simple causality.” Rory Miller (1993, 171) has similar views; while there is no doubt that British merchants supported the rebels, “whether the British companies conspired to initiate the revolution is a different question.” “Nitrate Railways Company,” The Times, June 3, 1896. Maurice Jewell resigned as vice-consul in 1892, and was succeeded by a career diplomat named Herbert Hervey. See The Consul and the Colonel, Oliver Wooller, Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre (unpublished). Hernán Ramírez Necochea (1917–1979) joined the Communist Party in 1934; became the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Education of the Universidad de Chile in 1968; was exiled to France following Pinochet’s coup of 1973, and never returned to Chile. Michael Monteón notes that “when Balmaceda turned on the working class in the crucial labor confrontation of 1890, he lost the only possible allies he would have had in the north” (Monteón 2003, 82).

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NOTES

29. See Loveman and Lira 1999, 227 for further details. 30. See Zeitlin 1984, 98–101. 31. Michael Monteón 2003, 69. Monteón argues for a revaluation of North’s impact on Chile. 32. El Padre Padilla, April 18, 1889. 33. Salinas Campos et al. (2005, 171), citing the newspaper El Recluta, April 28, 1891.

9

A Millionaire Stripped Bare

1. Quoted in John Black Adams, The Life of Sir William Howard Russell, 1911. Boreas was the god of the north wind in Greek mythology. 2. This may in fact have been the annual dinner of the Midland Railway Engine Drivers’ and Firemen’s Life Assurance Society held in Birmingham on May 1, 1896. See Life and Career of Col. North, 1896, 15. 3. The Sidcup and District Times, “Death of Colonel North: Special Memoir,” May 8, 1896. 4. The New York Times on May 6, 1896 reported that “The shells of the oysters are to be analyzed, though the general supposition is that Col. North died from heart trouble.” 5. The Buena Ventura company was previously named The Buena Ventura Nitrate Grounds Syndicate and had been voluntarily wound up in March 1896, with the liquidators, Harry North and George Alexander Lockett, authorized to register a new company as The Buena Ventura Nitrate Company Limited. See The London Gazette, March 27, 1896. 6. The Sidcup and District Times, “Death of Colonel North: Special Memoir,” May 8, 1896. See also The Leeds Mercury, “Sudden Death of Colonel North,” May 6, 1896; The Times, “Inquest on Colonel North,” May 7, 1896. 7. The Times, “Inquest on Colonel North,” May 7, 1896. 8. Ibid. 9. The Sidcup and District Times, “Death of Colonel North: Special Memoir,” May 8, 1896. 10. The Yorkshire Post, “The Late Colonel North: Funeral at Eltham,” May 11, 1896. Avery Hill archive: ref. R.1.14. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. North’s Typewriter Manufacturing Company. While Colonel North may have had shares in this company, it was actually founded in 1892 by Lord North and manufactured the last of four typewriters which had typebars that overlooked the carriage from behind, unlike the downstroke machines we are accustomed to, which send the keys

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NOTES

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

171

from the front. The North’s Typewriter is now a much sought-after collector’s item. The Leeds Mercury, “The Week,” May 9, 1896. Ibid. The Yorkshire Owl, May 13, 1896. The Kentish Independent, “The Death of Colonel North,” May 9, 1896. Avery Hill archive: ref. R.1.13A. The Times, “Obituary: Colonel J. T. North,” May 6, 1896. The Economist, “Millionaires in Business,” May 9, 1896, p. 580. The Spectator, “American Millionaires,” reported in The New York Times on February 23, 1890. Avery Hill archive ref. R. 1.15. See also the summary in The Times, “Colonel North’s Will,” July 6, 1896. John Mayo 1981, 101. William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, [IV, 3, 66 ff.]. First Lord to Second Lord. Harper’s Weekly, February 6, 1892, p. 142. A bizarre example of how North was parodied—perhaps plagiarized is a better word—is the novel entitled Romance of the Nitrate King; or Henry Cartwright of Leeds, by Thomas Loomes, published in London by John Heywood. The Glasgow Herald reviewed the book in its Literature section on September 12, 1889. “This has nothing to do, as might at first sight be thought, with Colonel North. It is an amazing story of a young Leeds’ mechanic, who is sent out to Chili by his employers to manage a branch of the business there, who embarks in speculations on his own account with the aid of a wealthy and seductive widow, makes an enormous fortune, returns home, and is rewarded with a wife and a peerage. It is not very clear what he has done to deserve his honors, except in resisting the advances of the amorous widow, but he succeeded in his speculations, and gave the most expensive ball ever given in London. All this, however, is not attained without a variety of adventures and a long series of plots and villainies, for everyone seems to conspire to wreck Henry Cartwright and to run away with his wife . . . We have not been able to evolve the moral and have some hesitation in acknowledging the interest.”

Appendix: Family tree of John Thomas North 1. I am very grateful to Karen Lawrence (whose husband is the greatgrandson of Colonel North’s niece Mary Emma Dickinson) for correspondence which contributed much to the information in this appendix. I am grateful too to Gwendoline Seabrook Smith of the Avery Hill archive for information relating to Colonel North’s siblings and children.

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NOTES

2. Tony Scott. Genforum, “North,” January 15, 2002. 3. The 1861 census gives Mary’s age as forty-three. She was the innkeeper of The British Queen Ann public house in 1861, and of The New Peacock Inn in 1871. 4. The Express (Dartford local newspaper), September 1, 1888. Also Tony Scott, Genforum, “North,” January 15, 2002. However, the 1861 census which gives the North family living at 78 Grape Street, Hunslet, cites Mary North as “head” of the household, and her status as “widow.” Since James North (her husband) appears on the marriage certificate for his daughter Emma on January 17 that year, this suggests he may have died in the period up to the census (probably taken in April or May), or that the fact that he was deceased was not given on the marriage certificate. 5. The Leeds Mercury, “Sudden Death of Colonel North: Sketch of his Career,” May 6, 1896. 6. Karen Lawrence: Genforum, “North,” June 8, 2002. 7. Ibid. 8. Text on tombstone text copied by Charlotte Hursey. See also: G. W. Wright, “English Graves at Tiliviche.” Notes and Queries. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 183 (1942), 216–7. 9. Genforum: “North Family,” March 16, 2002. 10. Daily News, April 23, 1889. 11. David Burrell, The Nitrate Boats. 12. Life and Career of the Late Col. North, The Leeds Mercury. 13. The Leeds Mercury, December 6, 1894. “The bridegroom presented [each of the six bridesmaids] with a diamond, sapphire, and ruby bangle.” There were over 600 presents, which included, for the bride, a diamond tiara and diamond necklace from her father; and a diamond and turquoise pendant from the bridegroom. 14. Until 1905, Harry was a captain and honorary major in the 4th Battalion (Militia) of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, and also honorary lieutenant-colonel of the City of London Royal Engineer Cadet Training Corps. Like his father, and his grandfather, he died young—at a very similar age in fact. 15. The Times: November 29, 1920. 16. See obituary in The Times on September 11, 1923: George Lockett came to head the firms of William & John Lockett (Liverpool. Lima, Callao), and of Messrs. Lockett Brothers & Company (Iquique and Valparaíso). When he died, he was a director of the Liverpool Nitrate Company, the Lagunas Syndicate Limited, and the Tarapacá Water Works Company. 17. The New York Times, November 4, 1892: “A special train conveyed the London guests to Eltham.” The Glasgow Herald, November 4, 1892: “The church was profusely decorated, and the men of the Royal Tower Hamlets Engineers . . . lined the aisle. Nine bridesmaids

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made an imposing cortege in white bengaline dresses, with folded empire sashes and narrow neck frills of pink crepe de chine.” 18. During the First World War, Arthur Jewell received a commission as a lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery and then as a temporary Captain in the Northumberland Fusiliers and was awarded the Military Cross for valour. He was killed in action on September 27, 1918—a month and a half before the armistice. After his death, the estate was administered by a trust for the benefit of his widow and children. The London Gazette [supplement] of January 11, 1919 gives the Military Cross citation: “Capt. Arthur Jewell North, 4th. Bn. North’d Fus. (T.F.) attd. 12th/13th Bn. For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. This officer led his company in the attack, only fours days after he had taken it over, capturing 70 prisoners and four machine guns. His leading contributed greatly to the successful issue.”

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Index

ABIR, Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company, 99–101 Allende, Juan Rafael, 126 Antofagasta, 17, 18, 19, 30, 41, 45, 71, 152 n. 6 Antofagasta Nitrate and Railroad Company, 18, 41 Arauco Coal and Railway Company, 43, 60–3, 112 Arauco Company, 35, 159 n. 3 Australia, 101–3 Avery Hill College, 82, 88, 162 n. 16 Avery Hill House in Eltham, 1, 72, 75–83, 84, 85, 86, 87–9, 97, 125, 129, 130–1, 133, 134, 139, 162 n. 16, 167 n. 5 Balmaceda, José Manuel, President of Chile, xiii, xvi, 4, 33, 47, 64, 66, 69, 71, 107, 111, 112–14, 116–26, 166 n. 1, 168 n. 15, 169 n. 24 Bank of Tarapacá and London, xvii, 32, 43, 48, 70–1, 118, 159 n. 44 Bierstadt, Albert, 81, 162 n. 22 Blakemore, Harold, Dr., xiii, 5, 8, 10, 11, 20, 21, 30, 33, 69, 114, 118, 120, 125, 137, 168 n. 14 Bolivia and the War of the Pacific, 17–19 Campbell, Outram and Company, 44, 65–6, 115

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Carrizal railway (Ferrocarril de Carrizal), 11, 12–13, 45, 61, 150 nn. 8, 10, 11 Churchill, Lord Randolph, 4, 93, 108, 110, 167 n. 3 City of London Exploration Syndicate of Western Australia, 101 Civil War, Chilean, 4, 47, 64, 66, 71, 117–22, 123–5 Colonel North, see under North, John Thomas combinations, see nitrate combinations coursing, sport of, see greyhound racing cricket, 87 Cutler, Thomas William, 78–80, 82, 161 n. 9 Darwin, Charles, 41 Dawson, John, xiv, 22, 32, 34, 70, 113, 114 Economist, The, opinions on North’s business activities, 46, 49, 51, 53–4, 65, 101–3, 117, 132–3, 165 n. 17 election, general, see under North, John Thomas Esmeralda, 111, 168 n. 11 fichas (tokens), 39, 54–5 Financial News, The, opinions on North’s business activities, 56–7, 59–60, 110

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184

INDEX

fire engine, gift of, 111, 168–9 n. 15 Fleming, George, 34, 35, 48, 161 n. 27 Fowler & Company (Leeds), 8, 9, 10, 11, 12–13, 37, 63, 150 nn. 8, 11, 13 Freeman of Borough of Leeds, see under North, John Thomas Frith, William Powell, 80–1 Fullerton, see greyhound racing Gibbs, Antony, & Sons, xv, 17, 25, 28–9, 41–2, 44–5, 66, 114, 118, 125, 135, 156 n. 12, 160 n. 14 gold mining, 101–4 golf, 87 Greenwich, University of, 1, 82, 88, 89, 139, 163 n. 41 greyhound racing, 85–7 Harvey, Robert, Sir, xiv, 21–2, 29–32, 40, 42, 43, 45, 48, 66–7, 70, 71, 109, 115, 120, 157 nn. 19, 23, 160 n. 14 Hervey, Maurice, 111, 119 Holbeck, 7, 92, 164 n. 55 horseracing, 83–5, 86, 87 Hotel Métropole, 91, 107–10, 131 Humberstone, James, xv, 115, 157 n. 22, 158 n. 28 Hunslet, 8 Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 8, 9, 11, 37 Iquique, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 22, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 48, 52, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 111, 112, 115, 118, 120, 122 Jewell, Maurice, xv, xvii, xix, 32–5, 48, 110, 120–1, 156, 154 nn. 22, 25, 155 n. 30, 169 n. 26

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Kirkstall Abbey, xx, 73, 89–92, 93, 132, 137, 164 n. 53 Kitson & Company, 8–9 Leeds, Freeman of, see under North, John Thomas Leeds, University of, 92 Leopold II, King, 4, 100, 104, 130, 131, 166 n. 28 Lockett, George Alexander, xvii, 35, 40, 133–4, 145, 147, 172 n. 16 Lockett, William & Jno. (John), xiii, 39–40, 48, 51, 72, 155 nn. 5, 6 Londonderry Gold Mine, 101–3 Maesteg, 97, 98, 99, 165 n. 7 Melbourne Clark & Company, 17, 40–1, 42, 156 n. 12 mining ‘kings,’ 3 Montt Álvarez, Jorge, President, 47–8 Navigation Collieries Limited, 97–9, 131 Neruda, Pablo, 3–4, 107, 166 n. 1 New Zealand, 103–4 nitrate (sodium nitrate), early history of exploitation, 40–1 nitrate combinations, xv, 46–8, 158 n. 33 nitrate companies & oficinas, 156 n. 14; see also individual companies Antofagasta Nitrate & Railway Company, 18, 41 Colorado Nitrate Company, 40, 42, 115, 131 Lagunas Nitrate Company, 4, 35, 48–51, 114, 115, 158 n. 34 Lagunas Syndicate Limited, 48–51, 129 Liverpool Nitrate Company, xv, 31, 39, 40, 42, 43, 75, 115, 131

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INDEX

Paccha and Jazpampa Nitrate Company, 35, 37, 42, 45, 115, 157 n. 15 Peruana oficina, 31, 37, 42, 115 Porvenir oficina, 16, 17, 33, 152 n. 5, 155 n. 26 Primitiva Nitrate Company, 37, 42, 51–4, 115, 131 Ramírez oficina, 37, 39, 42–3, 115, 124 San Pablo Nitrate Company, 42, 77, 115, 157 n. 16 Tarapacá Nitrates Company, 42 Nitrate & General Investment Trust Company, 43, 71, 160 n. 22 Nitrate King, The, see North, John Thomas Nitrate Producers’ Steamship Company, 4, 71–3 Nitrate Provisions Supply Company, 43, 71 Nitrate Railways Company, xvi, 43, 48, 63–7, 68, 110, 113, 115, 117, 118, 120, 122, 125 nitrate workers, treatment of, 54–5 North, Arthur Jewell, (son), 10, 76, 146–7, 173 n. 18 North, Emma, (daughter), 10, 40, 82, 92, 109, 115, 134, 145, 147 North, Gamble, (brother), 8, 72, 92, 130, 134, 139, 144–5, 157 n. 15 North, Harry, Sir, (son), 10, 35, 87, 92, 99, 109, 111, 129, 130, 134, 145, 147, 172 n. 14 North, Harry/Henry, (brother), 8, 134, 144, 150 n. 10 North, James, (father), 7–8, 10, 143, 150 n. 5, 172 n. 4 North, Jane, née Jane Woodhead, (wife), 10, 35, 81–2, 87, 92, 95, 99, 109, 133–4, 143

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185

North, John Thomas Balmaceda, President José Manuel, meetings with, 112–14 banking investment, see Bank of Tarapacá and London business associates, see Dawson, John; Harvey, Robert; Jewell, Maurice; Lockett, William & Jno. (John); Waite, John coal investments in Chile (Arauco), 43, 60–3; see also Arauco Coal and Railway Company; Arauco Company in Wales, see Navigation Collieries Limited colonel (honorary) of 2nd Tower Hamlets (East London) Engineer Volunteer Corps, 1, 60, 76–7, 87, 107, 131, 161 n. 4 death, 54, 125, 129–30 decorations bestowed upon, 4 early years in Chile/Peru to 1871, 11–13 early years in England, 7–11 early years in Iquique to start of War of the Pacific (1879), 15–16, 18 Freeman of Borough of Leeds, 91–2 funeral, 130–1 general election, candidate in (1895), 92–5 Gibbs and Company, relationship with, 41, 45, 114 gold mining investments, see gold mining home in Eltham, see Avery Hill House; paintings and sculptures horses, see horseracing nitrate certificates, purchase of Peruvian, xiv, 4, 20, 21–2, 25, 29, 31, 153 nn. 4, 5

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186

INDEX

North, John Thomas—Continued nitrate company investments, see under nitrate companies nitrate railways, see Nitrate Railways Company obituaries, 94, 95, 131–3 personality and appearance, xiv, xxxi, 6, 7, 13–14, 22–3, 35–6, 45, 64, 73–4, 75, 83–5, 91, 92, 104–5, 110, 115, 116, 127, 136–9, 141–2 as philanthropist, 136–7 rubber investments, see ABIR steamship company, see Nitrate Producers’ Steamship Company during War of the Pacific, 20–1 water, investments in provision of, see Tarapacá Waterworks company will, 133–4 North, Mary, née Mary Gamble[s], (mother), 8, 143, 150 n. 5, 172 nn. 3, 4 Ostend tourism project, 104, 166 n. 28 paintings and sculptures, acquisition of, 80–2 Pall Mall Gazette, The, opinions on North’s business activities, 52–3, 62, 63, 78–9 Permanent Nitrate Committee, 47, 71, 158 n. 30 Peru and the War of the Pacific, 18–19 Pisagua, 13, 16, 39, 64, 66, 67, 70, 108 Prince of Wales, 1, 4, 97, 107–8, 130, 137, 164 n. 1, 167 n. 3 Prior, Melton, 38, 81, 108, 110, 111, 113, 167–8 n. 10 railways, see Antofagasta Nitrate and Railroad Company; Arauco Coal and Railway Company;

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Carrizal Railway; Nitrate Railways Company Ramírez Necochea, Hernán, 10, 20, 27, 30–1, 33, 43, 44, 68–9, 95, 111, 121–2, 123, 158 n. 34, 169 n. 27 robber barons, 3 Russell, William Howard, Sir, 12, 39, 61–2, 67, 69, 110–11, 112–15, 116, 129, 167 nn. 8, 9 Sciuti, Giuseppe, 80–1 Shanks refining process, 46, 55, 115, 157 n. 22, 158 n. 28 Steam Plough Works, see Fowler & Company (Leeds) Tarapacá and London, Bank of, see Bank of Tarapacá and London Tarapacá Waterworks Company, xvi–xvii, 15–16, 20, 43, 67–9, 160 n. 21 Tower Hamlets (East London) Engineer Volunteer Corps, see under North, John Thomas Valparaíso, 12, 17, 19, 22, 32, 34, 44, 46, 51, 60, 68, 70, 112, 113, 114, 115, 118, 135, 150 n. 11, 152 n. 10, 168 n. 11 Waite, John, 39, 155 n. 5 War of the Pacific Chile’s decision to honor nitrate certificates, 25–9 effect on the Nitrate Railways Company, 64 origins, see Bolivia and the War of the Pacific; Peru and the War of the Pacific Waterworks Company, see Tarapacá Waterworks Company Zegers, Julio, 122, 126

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