The bank had been speculating by shorting East India Company stock on a massive scale, and apparently using customer deposits to cover losses.
He was Scottish, brother of James Fordyce, the distinguished clergyman and author of Sermons to Young Women, and was married to a daughter of the Earl of Balcarres.
[7] Others hit by the collapse included the Scottish architect John Adam and his younger brothers Robert and James Adam, who were in the middle of their ambitious Adelphi, London scheme,[8] and had to lay off two thousand workmen for a week.
[11] Among other stresses, the East India Company, already in financial difficulties, was further weakened by the crisis, and in 1773 managed to persuade Parliament to pass the Tea Act, exempting it from the duty all other importers in the colonies had to pay.
[12] According to a sermon of 1775, Alexander Fordyce:[13] had a mind not ill-formed for commerce, and from his early success in it was enabled, though of an obscure original, to live respectably.
His affairs were embarrassed, his difficulties increased, and at length grew inextricable; a total stoppage ensued; the issue of a commission of bankruptcy, by some chicanery, was prevented; and but a small part of his enormous debts hath been paid to this very hour.
It deserves, however, particular mention, that the news of his failure despatched one brother to the regions of the dead, and, which is yet more lamentable, drove another into a state of insanity.