Coolamon businessman Nicholas Mutton was taken to the Brussels International Exhibition in 1935. Image: Chris Roe.
At the end of a colourful and successful life, Coolamon entrepreneur Nicholas Mutton would reflect on his encounter with conmen in Europe as a costly highlight.
While the adventure cost him a small fortune, the wealthy merchant apparently enjoyed the opportunity to engage in some amateur “sleuthing” with detectives from Scotland Yard as he became a key figure in the operation to capture an international gang of thieves.
“All my life I have had to pay for experience, but never so heavily,” he told London reporters following a trial in 1935.
“I was fooled alright!”
Mutton was born in Cornwall in 1872 and migrated to Australia at the age of 21 to join his uncle who worked as a butcher in the rapidly growing Riverina railway town of Coolamon.
Over the next four decades, he established himself as a major figure in the district’s agricultural economy and his name remains firmly connected to the famous Up-To-Date Store.
Mutton purchased the property in 1908 and commissioned the iconic brick building that opened in 1909 and remained in the family’s hands until 1987.
Mutton’s European escapade began in 1935 while he was visiting England for King George V’s Silver Jubilee celebrations.
According to a 1937 account in The Daily Advertiser, the 63-year-old had promised himself the trip after a “romantic” career.
“He came to Australia from the Old Country as a youth with only £12 in his pocket and built up a fortune out of wool and wheat,” the story said.
In London he met another Australian man named “Marshall”, whom he said had “an engaging personality” and “an intriguing story”.
Marshall claimed to be a wealthy speculator and invited his new friend to join him on a trip to Belgium to see the international exhibition being held in Brussels.
Marshall soon introduced Mutton to a well-dressed man calling himself “Mr Gilmour” who claimed to be an agent for some of Europe’s wealthiest investors and he just so happened to have a hot tip on the stock exchange.
“They spoke to Mr Gilmour and found him the friendliest and most genial of financiers,” reported the Advertiser.
“Soon the three of them were on their way to Antwerp. Mr Gilmour came across with his stock exchange tip all right. It was a good one. They were all in on it.”
At this point Gilmour baited the trap with both the good and the bad news.
The transaction had apparently produced a profit of £67,000, with Mutton and Marshall entitled to £4000 each, however the stock exchange required a security deposit before the profits could be released.
Snap!
Mutton was persuaded to cable home to Australia and secure £25,000 as a guarantee while Marshall promised to contribute another £20,000. Eager to cash on his windfall, Mutton converted his money into Belgian francs.
At this point, suspicion must have tickled the back of his mind, and, before handing the enormous fortune over to his new ‘friends’, Mutton jotted down the serial numbers of around 20 of the notes.
Gilmour never returned from the stock exchange with the cash and, despite promising to join his fellow countryman on the next leg of his voyage, Marshall didn’t board the ship before it departed for Canada.
Now fully aware that he had been swindled, Mutton wired all the details to Scotland Yard from on board the ship. An investigation led the police to arrest Ernest James Slater at Victoria Station in London carrying more than £10,000 in Belgian and English currency, including seven notes bearing the numbers that Mutton had copied in his pocketbook.
At the London trial, prosecutors revealed that Slater had previous convictions in Australia and was part of the biggest “confidence scheme” that Scotland Yard had ever handled with more than £250,000 believed to have been stolen by the gang.
The so-called Marshall and Gilmour remained at large, but Slater was packed off to jail and the recovered money was returned to the Riverina traveller.
As he watched the convicted conman leave the dock to start his sentence, Mutton told reporters, “I can do a little sleuthing on my own and help Scotland Yard to get those other two. I’ll not rest until they are caught.”
The story caused a great sensation across the globe and at home and Nicholas Mutton retired from business on his return to Coolamon but remained an active member of the community until his death in 1949.
His obituary in the Coolamon-Ganmain Review remembered him as “perhaps the district’s most colourful character who had led a varied and interesting life, and one, who by building up an important business organisation, played a considerable part in the development of the district”.
