They had known that the government was about to issue a lucrative contract to the British Marconi company for the Imperial Wireless Chain and had bought shares in an American subsidiary.
[2] In February 1913, the French newspaper Le Matin alleged that Sir Rufus Isaacs and Herbert Samuel had abused their position to buy shares in the English Marconi company.
The New Age (12 June 1913) described the trial If circumstantial evidence were ever sufficient to justify a charge, we do not doubt that in the case of Mr. Godfrey Isaacs v. Mr. Cecil Chesterton, the latter and not the former would have won.
The case of Mr. Chesterton was admittedly based on circumstances and on such reasonable deductions from them as on the face of the facts any average mind would have felt impelled to draw.
Unfortunately, however, for him the circumstances themselves proved insusceptible of any further evidence than their own existence.The court ruled against Chesterton and fined him a token[citation needed] £100 plus costs, which was paid by his supporters.
In the introduction, his brother G. K. Chesterton wrote this about him In collaboration with Mr. Belloc he had written The Party System, in which the plutocratic and corrupt nature of our present polity is set forth.
It was during the latter period that the great test case of political corruption occurred; pretty well known in England, and unfortunately much better known in Europe, as the Marconi scandal.
She concludes the chapter with these words, which suggest that, at the very best, the ministers involved lacked judgment, As the Times leading article of June 19, 1913, put it: 'A man is not blamed for being splashed with mud.
But it did not take an expert to know that some of the men involved in the Marconi Case had no very nice sense of cleanliness: and these men were going to be dominant in the councils of England, and to represent England in the face of the world, for a long time to come.The historian Ian Christopher Fletcher wrote: The Marconi scandal had unfolded in the context of bitter fights over such issues as Irish Home Rule and British land reform.
[9]In 1936, G. K. Chesterton credited the Marconi scandal with initiating a subtle but important shift in the attitude of the British public: It is the fashion to divide recent history into Pre-War and Post-War conditions.
[10]Bryan Cheyette argues that the negative 'Jewish financier' stereotype was present first and indeed was established in British culture quite some time before the scandal broke.