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This is a fictionalised account of a true incident.
In 1895, Sir Peter Spokes, a London businessman and a director of several companies, discusses the finances of the Grosvenor Hotel with his accountant son Russell. The Grosvenor was a large hotel with many distinguished patrons and yet the shareholders had been receiving very small dividends and that year they were to receive no dividends at all. Father and son decide that there is something very far wrong and they invite the MP Sir Henry Kimber round to discuss possible action. Kimber is an expert on company law and always likes to expose corruption and scandal. Kimber sends a circular to all the shareholders of the Grosvenor Hotel asking for checks on supplies to be made and for full information about contracts of provisions supplied. Later he decides to call a meeting of friendly shareholders and ask the Board of Trade to appoint inspectors to examine the affairs of the company.
Kimber meets with much opposition but eventually there is an investigation followed by a court case in 1898 and the corruption is exposed. A major shareholder, a Richard Drew, a butcher, had been supplying the hotel with inferior meat at exorbitant prices. As if this was not enough Drew had also been buying supplies for the hotel and other members of his family filled in where necessary. For example, the poultry was supplied by his wife's father, the laundry was washed and ironed by his brother-in-law and the wine supplied by another relative.
The reader is given great detail about the actual frauds and the court case is described meticulously.
All the above is hard fact but Ann Spokes Symonds has fictionalised it by introducing a new maid Jennie. Through the character of Jennie and by means of her romance with Pierre, a French chef, we are taken behind the scenes of the great hotel and shown something of the work which keeps it going. The fictional element also allows for little cameos of Victorian life such as tea at the Star and Garter Hotel, Richmond, and bicycling in Battersea Park.
But despite the fictional element the bulk of the book is about the fraud and the court case. In many ways this is like the specialised books found on the local history shelves of libraries. Books which can be of great assistance to researchers who can bring the facts so revealled into wider works. But here Ann Spokes Symonds has tried to reach a wider readership by introducing Jennie and the romantic element.
This book has been very carefully researched. Sir Peter Spokes was the great-grandfather of the author and so, as well as the resources of Richmond-upon-Thames library, she had access to letters, reports and contemporary accounts from newspapers -- all which had been carefully preserved and handed down. In fact her research has led to high praise from no less than the distinguished historian Asa Briggs who described the book as A fascinating glimpse into the Victorian World as it was.
Very true. But at the same time it must be admitted that the appeal of this book will be more to non fiction afficiandos and to researchers than to conventional readers of historical novels.
Teenage to adult