This ed. first published as: The land boom and bust. Melbourne : Heritage Publications, 1972. CONTENTS A golden street in marvellous Melbourne (Collins Street) p4. The lush 1880s p7. The perilous course of events p18. The hungry 1890s p37. Victorian politics 1875-1895 p49. F.T. Derham, Postmaster-General and speculator p66. The curious case of the City Road Property Company p73. The Chaffey brothers and the Mildura crash p75. The Railway and Tramway boom p83. The run on Goldsbrough Mort p93. Wild days on the stock exchange p97. James Balfour floats away p107. When McEwan's floated and fell p112. The boom and crash in Sydney p119. Maurice Brodzky, editor of Table Talk p130. The Meudell mystery p137. John Bellin and the General Mutual Building Society p144. James Mirams and the Premier Building Association p147. Matthias Larkin and the South Melbourne Building Society p158. William McLean and the Melbourne Permanent Building Society p162. James Hunt and the Modern Permanent Building Society p165. J.B. Lawrence and the Australian Widows Fund p168. C.H. James and the Dominion Bank p174. Frederick Illingworth and the Centennial Bank p182. G.N. Taylor and the Land Credit Bank p185. William Greenlaw and the Colonial Bank p190. Joseph Clarke invests in the Kooweerup (Koo Wee Rup) Swamp [includes Loreto Mandeville Hall] p194. Sir Benjamin Benjamin and the Imperial Bank p203. C.R. Staples and the Anglo-Australian Bank p211. Henry Hayter and the Metropolitan Bank p216. Colin Longmuir and the City of Melbourne Bank p221. H.G. Turner and the Commercial Bank p228. James Munro and his clan p242 (see also ADB 5:312). Munro and Baillieu, partners in audacity p252. W.L. Baillieu, the triumphant survivor p257. Edward Latham the brewer p267. Keeping the Federal Bank in the family p271. Theodore Fink, a solicitor of the Rialto p274. Benjamin Fink, the greatest of them all p281. Georges of Collins Street p290. G.W. Taylor, another land-booming Mayor of Prahran p294. Mark Moss, temporary King of Norwood Castle p299. The rise and fall of Sir Matthew Davies p306. The network of Davies companies p315. The Mercantile Bank cases p328. How Thomas Bent escaped the net p344. The cautionary tale of David Munro p356. Church, society and state p362. Feeding the hungry p370. Reforms and remedies p377. Appendix A: The secret compositions of 1892 p391. Appendix B: The secret compositions of 1893 p393. Appendix C: Occupations of those who made secret compositions in 1892 and 1893 p394. Appendix D: Insolvent stockbrokers of the 1890s p395. Sources p397. Bibliography p398. Sources of illustrations p401. Index p403.
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Boom or bust? What was the truth of the great land booms that swept Australia in the 1880s and 1890s? How was it that some speculators amassed prodigious fortunes, while others went so spectacularly broke? Seventy years after the events, historian Michael Cannon began sifting through thousands of records and documents, long since filed and forgotten. He pieced together an incredible trail of corruption and roguery, rarely if ever equalled in any parliamentary democracy. When the bare bones of this expos were first published in 1966, it caused an immediate sensation as the forebears of many well-known families were involved. Never before had any Australian historian been able to document such unbridled greed and over-riding ambition. Extended and revised, The Land Boomers is generously illustrated with cartoons, photographs and etchings of the time.