Curbster Curbed

Subpoenaed last week by the Bureau of Securities of the N. Y. State Attorney General's office was Edward J. Harrison, a U. S. financier whose calling cards gave his address as "St. James Court, Buckingham Gate, S. W. I." Mr. Harrison was already under Federal indictment for flagrantly misrepresenting the assets of a certain Big Wedge Gold Mining Co., of California. This time his promotion of "The London Curb Exchange, Ltd." had aroused suspicion. Mr. Harrison, free under bond, had been around New York for some time trying to sell stock in this enterprise. The royal neighborhood of his address was not inappropriate, because the chief backer of the London Curb was none other than Martin Coles Harman, famed onetime "King" of the island of Lundy.

Beetle-browed King Harman was exiled by the British Government in 1933 after a reign of eight years on his cold granite island twelve miles north of the Devon coast. His exile was spent in Wormwood Scrubs prison, where he served 18 months for misappropriating the funds of Chosen Corp., Ltd., a holding company for Korean mining stocks. His only previous brush with the law occurred in 1931, when a Devonshire Court fined him -L-5 for coining Lundy money in the form of 50,000 "puffins"' and "half puffins" bearing his own likeness and that of Lundy's "national bird," the parrot-beaked sea-puffin (TIME, Jan. 26, 1931). In his day of power, wealthy King Harman often proposed a London Curb Exchange to British financiers, who saw no earthly reason for it because the London Stock Exchange, unlike U. S. exchanges, deals in all securities, whether formally listed or not.

Mr. Harrison's recent campaign was apparently directed wholly at U. S. brokers handpicked .for their innocence. According to the instrument giving him his commission he was to have deposited to his account -L-200 for each -L-500 membership sold, a 40% fee. He at first announced that only 50 memberships would be allotted to New York, but last week it came out that he had authority to sell as many as he could.

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