Brodrick C. D. A. Hartwell

Born near Kingston, Somerset, Hartwell was the only son of Royal Naval officer Edward Hughes Brodrick Hartwell, who in 1878 became the inspector-general of police in Jamaica[1] and was later the British Consul in Naples, Italy,[2] and Augusta Henrietta, daughter of police magistrate Stewart Henry Paget, grandson of Henry Paget, 1st Earl of Uxbridge and John Fane, 10th Earl of Westmorland.

[6] He became a non-commissioned officer with the rank of lance corporal in the Ceylon Mounted Infantry and his contingent was sent to South Africa where they joined Lord Roberts during his advance on Bloemfontein.

[8] In August 1900 The London Gazette published the transfer of Lance - Corporal Brodrick Cecil Denham Arkwright Hartwell, from Ceylon Mounted Infantry, to The Leicestershire Regiment, Supernumerary to the establishment.

[12] He saw service in the Gallipoli Campaign and later became a Lieutenant-Colonel with the 1st Garrison Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry assigned to the British Convalescent Section, Dagshai, India.

[22] In a 1915 court case relating to failed national sweepstakes, his name was linked with that of Horatio Bottomley, publisher of the magazine John Bull who was later jailed for fraud.

[26] The scheme involved Hartwell buying consignments of whisky and transporting these across the Atlantic where they were to be sold off-shore to dealers who operated from smaller boats.

Hartwell used the ocean going steam yacht Istar, formerly named Nahma, a luxury 300ft vessel originally built for the New York property millionaire, Robert Walton Goelet and used by the US Navy during WW1.

[31] This publicity came to the attention of some members of the British Parliament who raised the matter with the then Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, who described Hartwell's operation as a "disgraceful blot".