Shark on the Titanic! Card ace fleeced millionaire passengers

A PROFESSIONAL card player targeted millionaire passengers on the Titanic to fleece them, a fascinating document has revealed 110 years on.

Card shark George Brereton had with him a list of all the first-class passengers when he boarded the ship for its maiden voyage to New York in 1912.

He identified the wealthiest and circled or starred their names on the list as a potential ‘mark’. He even wrote the word ‘millionaire’ next to the name of Charles Hays, president of Canada’s Grand Trunk Railway and a VIP guest of White Star Line boss Bruce Ismay.

Brereton ensconced himself in the first-class smoking room. When the Titanic started to sink, he was recorded as being in the room ‘at work’. He took to the lifeboats but Mr Hays was among the 1,500 who died in the disaster.

In Brereton’s pocket was the list in a 20-page booklet given to first-class passengers. It could fetch £60,000 in a sale this weekend at Henry Aldridge & Son Auctioneers of Devizes, Wiltshire.