Toby Farrier and the Gypsy's Curse
Towards the end of the story I found I needed to know who my villains were. They had to be wealthy with a past that was hidden from the public. Evil had to visit them and colour their judgement through the generations. Here is the back story of Banker Bill Ryan and his descendants.
Banker Bill Ryan was not such a mean
man more of a calculating one. He’d watched his father and uncles fail at the
diggings and as much as they followed the gold by the end of the nineteenth
century they were still penniless. On the diggings five year old Bill witnessed
the futility in shifting dirt for little reward and wanted something more. A
rudimentary education in a shanty school house showed him how to count, read
and write. Good tools for someone in the city but wasted as a digger.
William Ryan however
found a way to begin building his fortune on the diggings. Men would pay him to
run errands and by the time he was twelve he had enough money to follow the
example of Sidney Myer and set up his own store to cater more for the whims of
the diggers and their wives.
Smart enough
to understand compound interest a lesson learnt when he defaulted on an
account in Mr Myer’s store young Bill Ryan started to sell goods on credit and
each day he would total his ledgers. If the client’s account was outstanding Bill
would add a percentage, a late payment fee he would call it. No more than a boy
he had control over many men.
One night a
digger unhappy with the way his account had blown out over a month, and
spiteful that Bill had accosted his wife for payment gave the young
entrepreneur a beating. The beating prompted Bill to move on his plans and he
sold the business to one of the late arriving diggers for a tidy profit.
Pickaxe Jack a
rough hard drinking digger, who owed Bill plenty of money and with no hope of settling
his account, became Bill’s debt collector. When a debt was too far overdue Jack
was there, he took part of his fee in cash and the balance reduced his account.
Jack too was becoming wealthy.
Bill had seen
enough of the squalor, dirty men with uncouth habits. He knew the gold would
peter out and though it would be wise to leave before it did, at the news of
the next big strike he’d sell. He didn’t wait long, Patrick Long hauled out a
twenty ounce nugget and the camp went wild. Bill found a buyer and broke camp.
From the lessons he had learnt from lending decided now was the time to set up
his own bank. Pickaxe Jack would accompany him on his new adventure.
During the
evenings in the camp he hadn’t drank with the others in the saloons and
gambling halls, he had studied, reading everything he could on banking law.
Bill was ready moving to Melbourne and letting a shopfront on Collins Street
opened the Investment Bank of Ireland and Victoria. He’d learnt much about the
benefits of interest and he loved the foreclosure laws of the time. Jack had
sobered up and bought a nice property on the Maribyrnong River. Collection
served him well and the small farm became a model for horse breeders of the
area.
Bill took note
of Jacks success and offered loans to would be farmers, at the first sign of
default he would withdraw the loan and foreclose. Bill only lent to those who
farmed where the city would expand too. He leant to business too, Shipbuilders
being a favourite. A Steam engine manufacturer and a steel mill in New South
Wales over extended and Bill moved quickly. He restructured and extended more
capital. Always holding a controlling share he offered inducements for workers
to take loans and become share holders. Bill’s empire grew. He paid small but
secure interest to depositors and set up trusts for women and orphans.
On the surface
Bill looked as upstanding and moral as anyone of the time and his wealth and
influence grew. Married to socialite
Esther Porteus-McBride they had two children William and Lois, William followed
his father into banking and Lois died in her late teens. She drowned when she
fell into Port Phillip Bay from the family yacht.
Bill and Bill
courted government ministers and government officials, at the first hint of
Victoria entering a war they would move on a woollen mill, shipyard, or farming
property. Having secured the assets they would tender for supply to either army
or navy. It was lucrative and the family’s wealth grew.
William
learnt fast and with the rise of gangsters and stand over men in Melbourne saw
another way to increase his fortune. He offered a safe house for their
extortion racketeering and stand over money.
Considered by
the police of the time as ruthless but petty criminals, history never thought
of Squizzy Taylor and his like as being organised like Capone in the United
States. William Ryan ensured their money was safe and he kept it that way until
in nineteen twenty nine he disappeared without trace. Widowed not long after
the death of his daughter Bill the banker had died five years before his son.
William’s
twelve year old son, Young Bill inherited, but had little or no knowledge of
the background to the business. He stayed with it until his twenty first year. Attaining
the age of majority, he instructed the family solicitors to dispose of the
industrial investments and consolidate most of the family assets into a trust.
He personally negotiated the sale of the working assets of the bank, taking
cash and shares as payment.
Demolished to
make way for an electrical substation, the original building disappeared and
Melbourne grew. By the end of the thirties the family had ensconced themselves
in Melbourne society, but rumour still plagued the family.
Shamus O’Toole
worked for a disgruntled group of stockholders who wanted to find out why a
bank that had been dispersing good dividends and had a solid, borrowings to
equity ratio, sold so cheaply. They felt dudded by the Ryans and wanted him to
gather enough evidence to support challenging the Banker Bill's family through the courts.
More than once Young Bill mounted his
own investigations to ensure the dispelling of the rumours. He went to his
deathbed not knowing the truth about the family fortune. Like most family
legends this began with truth and had an open ending. Bill spent a fortune but
much of the evidence was lost or destroyed. Banker Bill took much care
recording who owed him money. Not so careful with those he owed money to.
Young Bill a
trained solicitor was more suited to running the country estates and developing
Melbourne. A suburb of post war homes in the east, followed by a shopping strip
development in Brunswick. These were the attractions for him. By the late
seventies shopping centres in the expanding suburbs made sense and the Ryan
money made it happen. Income from rent and leasing doubled the family fortune
each year.
Shopping
Centre Bill as his friends now called him now lived in leafy Toorak, his wife
provide the couple with two sons, William and Phillip. Phillip flashy and
gregarious always wanted more and worked to excel at everything he tried. A
risk taker he gambled and loved the yacht club. Frustration would find him when
whispers would start about his fortune and often the Ryan name found itself
bandied around with the less scrupulous of Melbourne’s families. His desire to
prove society and its matrons wrong grew.
A professor of
history provided a perfect opportunity to research his family but in fifteen
years he had unearthed nothing new. Then this Farrier kid shows up with the
journal desk and other paraphernalia. Stuff that could lead to the truth and he
had to have it. He had to know why his family was laughed at.
