Lachie hits London & the big time
After India and Egypt, with a little help from his inheritance from poor Jane, Macquarie estimated his worth in land, cash and investments to be in the order of £20,000 (with all the provisos regarding almost certain inaccuracy in either direction, £1.6 million on the inflation measure was very roughly $A3.2 million in 2015). This was (and is, at least in the circles in which I travel) a prodigious sum of cash, which perhaps made the syphilis in his pants a smidgen more bearable.
Mind you, the money may have just been a burden that meant he didn't have any excuse to avoid the treatments for syphilis in those days, mostly involving having the errant member dipped in mercury, and the errant soldier scoffing dilute nitric acid. Oddly, the pox seems to have been one of the few conditions which didn't appear to warrant whacking bloody (literally) great leeches on the errant soldier's all-too-errant member.
So, Macquarie, this once broke soldier, turned up back in Britain in 1803 as a Major, with his £20,000 in his pocket, or at least in his bank, Coutts of London. Showing his true allegiances, a comment which will become more relevant shortly, Lachlan first took the opportunity to head back up to Mull to visit his family and use around half or maybe three-quarters of his ill-gotten gains to buy an estate, apparently one his clan chieftain had to sell some years earlier - although another source describes it as an estate he bought from his Uncle, Murdoch Maclean, the 19th of Lambuie (which doesn't mean it wasn't previously Macquarie land, of course). Lachlan appears to have been both establishing himself as a leader within his clan, and rebuilding his clan's modest fortunes, with the probable hope of actually increasing them.
Apparently Macquarie, appointed as military secretary to London's military governor, danced, pranced, boozed, and whatevered his way through London society, even being introduced to the king and queen twice, the former unfortunate presumably not being in his strait jacket at the time.
Unfortunately, the taxman (we're not being sexist, it was always a man in those days) took an interest in his new moolah. Lachlan argued that £3,000 (£250,000, $A500,000) in shares really belonged to his brother, and £1,000 (£82,000, $164,000) found in his house belonged to a servant. Perhaps this was the hopefully former, by now, slave boy he brought back from India, who became a lifelong personal attendant to Macquarie - but who would, I think, at that time have been only somewhere around 13 or so. Or maybe another servant had won the lottery, or had a brother who was a jockey and who gave him tips on which horse had been picked to win by the nobblers this week! As if!
Unbelievably, he won these cases, which says much more about Britain's overly famous legal system, its equity, and its fairness than it does about Macquarie's veracity.
But then Macquarie took a step too far.
Mind you, the money may have just been a burden that meant he didn't have any excuse to avoid the treatments for syphilis in those days, mostly involving having the errant member dipped in mercury, and the errant soldier scoffing dilute nitric acid. Oddly, the pox seems to have been one of the few conditions which didn't appear to warrant whacking bloody (literally) great leeches on the errant soldier's all-too-errant member.
So, Macquarie, this once broke soldier, turned up back in Britain in 1803 as a Major, with his £20,000 in his pocket, or at least in his bank, Coutts of London. Showing his true allegiances, a comment which will become more relevant shortly, Lachlan first took the opportunity to head back up to Mull to visit his family and use around half or maybe three-quarters of his ill-gotten gains to buy an estate, apparently one his clan chieftain had to sell some years earlier - although another source describes it as an estate he bought from his Uncle, Murdoch Maclean, the 19th of Lambuie (which doesn't mean it wasn't previously Macquarie land, of course). Lachlan appears to have been both establishing himself as a leader within his clan, and rebuilding his clan's modest fortunes, with the probable hope of actually increasing them.
Apparently Macquarie, appointed as military secretary to London's military governor, danced, pranced, boozed, and whatevered his way through London society, even being introduced to the king and queen twice, the former unfortunate presumably not being in his strait jacket at the time.
Unfortunately, the taxman (we're not being sexist, it was always a man in those days) took an interest in his new moolah. Lachlan argued that £3,000 (£250,000, $A500,000) in shares really belonged to his brother, and £1,000 (£82,000, $164,000) found in his house belonged to a servant. Perhaps this was the hopefully former, by now, slave boy he brought back from India, who became a lifelong personal attendant to Macquarie - but who would, I think, at that time have been only somewhere around 13 or so. Or maybe another servant had won the lottery, or had a brother who was a jockey and who gave him tips on which horse had been picked to win by the nobblers this week! As if!
Unbelievably, he won these cases, which says much more about Britain's overly famous legal system, its equity, and its fairness than it does about Macquarie's veracity.
But then Macquarie took a step too far.