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In one respect at least, Horatio Bottomley resembled many of the most notable - and some of the most notorious - men in history. After every big physical and mental effort, whether in finance, the law, public oratory, journalism, or politics, he turned with unfailing regularity to the fair sex for solace, oblivion, and refreshment. Now officially bankrupt, Horatio still managed to arrange things so that his extravagant lifestyle continued unabated. His main source of income was from lotteries and sweepstakes run through John Bull. These were operated from outside the UK to circumvent gambling laws, and were rarely honestly run. Horatio faced legal charges on multiple occasions when it was suspected that winners were actually his employees or relatives. He managed to dodge these charges though. John Bull itself swiftly rose in popularity, with Horatio claiming a circulation of two million. (The actual figure was probably a still impressive three quarters of a million.) He even tried creating a spinoff aimed at women, Mrs Bull, though this was less successful. Then in 1914 the first World War broke out. And where many saw tragedy, Horatio saw opportunity. Horatio Bottomley on stage. Bottomley's obituaries dwelt on the common theme of wasted talent: a man of brilliant natural abilities, destroyed by greed and vanity. "He had personal magnetism, eloquence, and the power to convince", wrote his Daily Mail obituarist. "He might have been a leader at the Bar, a captain of industry, a great journalist. He might have been almost anything". [147] The Straits Times of Singapore thought that Bottomley could have rivalled Lloyd George as a national leader: "Though he deserved his fate, the news of his passing will awaken the many regrets for the good which he did when he was Bottomley the reformer and crusader and the champion of the bottom dog". [148] A later historian, Maurice Cowling, pays tribute to Bottomley's capacity and industry, and to his forceful campaigns in support of liberty. [108] In his sketch for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Morris delivers a different judgement: "[H]e claimed to serve the interests of others, but sought only his own gratification". [2] When Horatio was eight, however, George Jacob, who had large numbers of children of his own and could not afford any longer to keep him, sent him to the Josiah Mason Orphanage in Birmingham, where he remained until he ran away aged fourteen. Horatio did not shine academically at the orphanage, perhaps because he was too brilliant to have done so. But he must have been well taught there, the orphanage having been run in a comparatively enlightened way, and he was probably not too miserable either, for he remained attached to the orphanage and never failed to visit it when he was nearby, even making detours in his itinerary to do so.
What however of the elites in Britain; what did they think, and for what great cause were they fighting? The most celebrated propagandist of the British war effort was a magazine owner and former Liberal MP, Horatio Bottomley.Only five serving MPs have been expelled from the house in the past 100 years after receiving a criminal conviction. Among them are some of the shadiest characters to have ever walked the corridors of power. Faced with the history of these great patriotic assemblies which constitute the glory of Bottomley’s life, it would be unfair to dwell too long on the two major consequences of his performances. First, the star turn (Bottomley) made money in abundance for himself and for no-one else. Second, where he did persuade men to volunteer, Bottomley manfully contributed to a war in which more than 16 million people were killed. In every city in Britain, there were people who volunteered at his urging and returned from the war invalided for life, if they returned at all.
Cox, Howard. "Horatio Bottomley and the Making of John Bull Magazine". CPHC . Retrieved 6 July 2016. Intricate details of organization bothered him, and he would not patiently allow anyone to explain them to him. That was work he paid others to do for him, and he did not want to know how it was managed. "That is a matter of detail," was a favourite expression of his.
The hugely influential newspaper editor, politician, orator and crook had a remarkable journey from poverty to Westminster and back — he was well ahead of his time, writes STEPHEN ARNELL
Bottomley was far from crushed: he was more like a cork that bobs up after being pushed for a moment under the water. While still a Member of Parliament, he had begun to publish a wildly patriotic, not to say xenophobic, weekly journal called John Bull that soon had a circulation of half a million, and for which he was the leading writer. He had become by far the most famous journalist in the country. Hyman, Alan (1972). The Rise and Fall of Horatio Bottomley. Littlehampton, West Sussex: Cassell & Co. ISBN 0-304-29023-8, p. 232.
The young Horatio went to live with his maternal uncle George Jacob Holyoake, a radical propagandist, the editor of a rationalist and socialist review, the coiner of the terms “secularism” and “jingoism,” one of the founders of the cooperative movement that is still in existence today, and the author of a two-volume memoir, Sixty Years of an Agitator’s Life (1892) . (Horatio’s other maternal uncle was the fairly successful painter William Holyoake, whose portrait of his brother shows him to have been a respectable Victorian bourgeois gentleman.) I do not want you to be treated like children by the state or tied to the apron-strings of the parson or the priest. Why, half the work of bringing about a better understanding between masters and men – between Capital and Labour – has been done by the war itself. You will find new Rules of Trade Unions and Employers’ Federations – on a more humane basis; you will find brotherhood and humanity covering the whole relations in the financial, commercial and industrial field.” Taylor, James (2013). Boardroom Scandal: The Criminalization of Company Fraud in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-969579-9. The disciplined minds that go from [their university's] walls will be its jewels…It will worthily introduce them to the University of Life." ~ The New Englander and Yale Review (February 1853), p. 70. Sewell, Rob (16 May 2013). "1919: Britain on the Brink of Revolution". International Marxist Tendency. Archived from the original on 17 June 2014 . Retrieved 30 June 2014.
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Bottomley published a book of prison poems after his release, called Songs of the Cell, with a preface by Lord Alfred Douglas, who after all had a strong personal connection with prison poetry. Bottomley was in apostolic succession, as it were, to A. E. Housman and Oscar Wilde in their poetic accounts of execution by hanging: Death of Horatio Bottomley". The Straits Times. 27 May 1933. p.13. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014 . Retrieved 5 July 2014. Bottomley launched a new journal, John Blunt. He also went on a speaking tours. However, he was unable to overcome his image as a swindler and both ventures ended in failure. His biographer, A. J. A. Morris, has pointed out: "He cut a pathetic figure and, a broken old man, he stumbled into obscurity. In 1930 his wife died and his daughter emigrated to South Africa. Of his former friends and acolytes all deserted him except Peggy Primrose, who shared her home with him." A prisoner in the prison in which many years ago I worked as a doctor came into my consulting room with a volume of Wittgenstein under his arm. The farthing was the smallest coin in UK legal tender, worth one quarter of a pre-1971 penny. Its award as damages was a recognised gesture of contempt. [82]
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