Rowland Stephenson

Rowland Stephenson (1782–1856) was a British banker and politician who precipitated the collapse of a bank and took refuge in America.^[1]

The son of a banker and great nephew of another (his namesake, MP for Carlisle, 1787-1790), he had been born at sea when his family returned from Florida when their business failed after the American War of Independence. He joined Remington, Stephenson & Company on leaving Eton. He already had several properties in Essex, the manor of Cockermouth and How Hatch estate in Dagenham, before adding to his property in Romford by buying Marshalls in 1816.

He was treasurer of St Bartholomew's Hospital from 1824 until 1829, where he had an apartment. After several attempts he was elected MP for the Leominster constituency from February 1827 to February 1830, although only after the candidate who had beaten him in 1826 was disqualified.^[2]

Stephenson had apparently invested heavily in Thomas Hornor's London Colosseum and the bank was rumoured to want to remove him from partnership, when he was reported as having taken hundreds of thousands of pounds of securities and cash from Remington, Stephenson, & Coleman on 27 December 1828. He was then reported as cashing the securities, buying a brace of loaded pistols from a pawnbroker,^[3] and disappearing. The case achieved great notoriety: for example, his escape via Clovelly was included in a book of illustrations,^[4] and the American writer James Fenimore Cooper wrote of being asked in various places about why Stephenson had been allowed to remain in America after landing in Savannah, Georgia, being taken by bounty hunters to New York, but granted habeas corpus rather being returned England to stand trial.^[5]

His eldest son, Rowland Macdonald Stephenson (1808–1895), became a civil engineer and managing director of the East India Railway Company, for which he was knighted in October 1856.

References

1. Stephenson, Rowland (1782–1856), art collector, politician, and bankrupt in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
2. "Leominster". History of Parliament Online. Retrieved 9 November 2012.
3. Great City Failure Morning Chronicle 28/12/1828
4. Britton & Bayley (1832) Devonshire and Cornwall Illustrated, p.59
5. Gleanings in Europe (1836) V2,pp.147-149