MEET THE AUTHOR
ANNE FLETCHER’s From the Mill to Monte Carlo tells the story of her relation, a textile worker whose system beat a Monaco casino
Why did you research Joseph Hobson Jagger?
I grew up on Joseph’s story because I’m his 3x great niece, and my father had always been fascinated by it. However, when I was an adult I started to think about the story and thought, “This doesn’t quite add up to me.”
How could a man like this, who worked in a mill in Bradford, go to Monte Carlo and win millions? How would that be possible? In addition, our family wasn’t wealthy at all, so it seemed odd that somebody could have won millions and there would be no sign of it. So I started looking into the story.
How difficult was it to trace Joseph’s story?
I think the issue for family historians is that you’ve got the census every 10 years, so you’ve got those 10-year gaps, and with working-class ancestors there’s just very little else to go on. I think you have to be a lot more creative – you have to use newspapers quite a lot, and see what you can pick up through that. I was very fortunate with a couple of instances where I came across things quite by chance that really unlocked quite a lot of the story.
How do you feel about Joseph now?
I’m very proud of him – I think what I found out about him has made me prouder. This is because I was told initially that he was the subject of the song The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, and when you look at the lyrics of that he’s quite a dodgy character, he’s a womaniser and a fraud and not somebody that you’d be particularly proud of. So I was quite relieved to find out that the song wasn’t written about him. It is actually about Charles Wells, the most famous person who broke the bank.
What I found out about Joseph is that he did it legally, he used his own money, and he kept the winnings to help his family. He was very entrepreneurial, he was in a desperate situation and needed money to help his family, and he came up with an extraordinary way of doing that, so you have to admire that sort of mind. At a time when education was really not available to men like him, he was clearly very intelligent and capable, and perhaps didn’t have the opportunity to show that. We got a single glimpse of what he was capable of in this adventure and this incredible scheme that he came up with.