ABSTRACT
In Victorian Britain, there used to be professional company promoters. These promoters were often dishonest and acted fraudulently. The Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company, mercilessly lampooned by Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit , is typical of the sort of situation that arose. Indeed Albert Grant, who features in some of the prominent late Victorian cases concerning company promotion, is assumed to be the inspiration for the villain Augustus Melmotte in Trollope’s The Way We Live Now .
