Stardens Newent - Cotswold Cider swindle late 1940s (General)

by slowhands , proud of his ancient Dean Forest roots, Monday, February 14, 2011, 08:26 (5036 days ago) @ Brian Henry

The house was then owned by a number of people until it was bought by Eustace Hamilton Ian Stewart-Hargreaves. Mr Warde added: "He ran the great Cotswold Cider swindle and was given an eight-year sentence and died in jail. I have heard great tales about how he went on the run from Stardens. It then went through the solicitors and was owned by various people and the house was even a nightclub before it burned down in 1980 and then was rebuilt and made into apartments."

STEWART-HARGREAVES, EUSTACE HAMILTON IAN,
Man on the Run
Wingate, 1957. F 1st Edition.

Author Name: White Frank James
Title: The Hargreaves Story
Binding: Red Cloth
Book Condition: Fair
Jacket Condition: No Jacket
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: London Bodley Head 1953
Seller ID: 000520
The autobiography of the author who was better known under his alias of Eustace Hamilton Ian Stewart-Hargreaves. Including a full history of the Cotswold Cider Company; 191pp .

This is the confession of the author, though written strictly, for the most part, in the third person. The author came out of prison in 1945 (for deception, not his first conviction, he having come before the courts on nearly a dozen previous occasions). Finding his wife and children in straitened circumstances in the Cotswolds, he decided to set up a business (with money he had but also largely on credit) to make something of himself, he says, honestly. He must have had a silver, if not golden, tongue: he persuaded his solicitor to allow the firm's Gloucester office to be used as a postal address; the Chief Constable allowed him to bend his parole rules, as well. So was born the "Cotswold Cider Company".
Cotswold Cider was born at a time in the immediate post-WW2 era when almost everything was rationed and even beer was often in short supply. Cider was not rationed. The author sold it by the kitschy oak barrel, taking a deposit on the barrel. There was never actually "Cotswold" cider as such; the cider came from Malvern. The idea took off hugely. Soon sales were as much as £15,000 per week, at a time when £100 was a lot of money. You have to multiply by maybe 30x to get an idea of the money this man was making.

The author took on the lease of first one, then two country houses, one for his wife and family, another for himself and as an office. Later, his interest in his wife sexually having waned from a never-ardent start point, he took on a luxury apartment in Mayfair and a couple of unsatisfactory mistresses.

Eventually, after several successful years,custom dropped as alternative drinks came onto the market again and the Press hounds got hold of his record, trashed him in the newspapers and the police moved in on the "fraud" (alleging that he was in fact embezzling the barrel deposit monies). On bail, he skipped overseas and, after (for some reason undescribed) adventures in places like Tangier, was brought back and imprisoned again. He says that he was trying to run an honest business and goes into his own background, saying that what started his spiral of deceptions was a small crime as a youth when he was tricked by police into pleading guilty and then (instead of promised non-custodial sentence) getting a year in prison. An interesting last thought. Reading it all, the reader has another thought: what happened later in his life? A pretty interesting read.

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Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>