Accles & Pollock

Yes!!

I remember these two

Also there were all sorts of things advertised on the cards inside the tube cars. One l clearly remember was for the Pinnock Finance Co offering 8% p.a. interest to investors whereas this was about double the going market rate. It sucked in shedloads of money, and then the company went bust, and I think the owner had disappeared by then.

This is from Wiki > > > >

On 1st August, 1967, the Board of Trade appointed Mr. Basil Wigoder, Q.C., and Mr. P. Godfrey to investigate the affairs of the Pinnock Finance Company (Gt. Britain). On 25th September of the same year, at the request of these investigators, the inquiry was extended to cover the 11 Pinnock associated companies incorporated in the United Kingdom.

Thus began the unravelling of one of the most complicated and gigantic frauds in the history of private enterprise in the United Kingdom. For eight years, from 1959 to 1967, the gullible, and perhaps greedy, British investor ladled £13 million into the grasping maw of the Pinnock group—a concern which purported to be making sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, small tractors and cultivators, and sundry electrical appliances.

It was eventually discovered that there were about 80 companies located in most parts of the world: 21 in the United Kingdom; six in the Irish Republic; 23 in Australia; two in New Zealand; one in the U.S.A.; two in Canada; one in Panama; four in the Bahamas; two in France; three in Belgium; two in Holland; one in Switzerland; three in South Africa; two in Singapore; and one each in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Rhodesia.

This ramshackle set-up was so complex, the documentation so unsatisfactory, unreliable and often contradictory, that the investigators had great difficulty in unravelling the fraud. Many of the officers and employees of Pinnock were either unable or unwilling to give reliable evidence. I will quote from the report—which makes horrific reading—paragraph 13: "From all the documentation and verbal information we have obtained we came to the inescapable conclusion that this man"——" and I shall say who the man is in a moment—— "engineered the complex structure of the Pinnock group as part of a deliberate policy to hide the true state of affairs from the depositors, or potential depositors." The whole wretched story began in Australia in 1955. Numerous companies were formed there by the arch-villain of the conspiracy, a Mr. William Ross 774 Wright. By June, 1960, the aggregate loss on his five Australian companies was about £30,000. By 31st March, 1967, less than seven years afterwards, the losses had rocketed to over £1.8 million Mr. Wright got those funds, as he subseqeuntly did in this country, by offering succulent high rates of interest to gullible depositors. As none of the companies ever made profits, from the very beginning the Australia depositors were paid interest only from subsequent deposits. But in spite of that, the companies felt able to advance some £120,000 to Mr. Wright personally before June, 1958, and a further £280,000 in May, 1959.

With those successes under his belt and with his own bank balances in a "flush" state, Mr. Wright decided to try his luck with the astute, shrewd British investor. So he came to these shores. Pinnock Finance (Gt. Britain) was incorporated in August, 1959. From then on intoxicating success came to Mr. Wright. The funds came flooding in. This success was swiftly followed by the formation of all those other Pinnock companies throughout the world. In world coverage, Pinnock and Mr. Wright exceeded that of the British Empire even at the pinnacle of its glory. Most of the companies performed no useful function at all. Such manufacting as there was of sewing machines in Australia, of electrical and other appliances in Great Britain—and I understand that the lawn mowers produced in Britain would not cut the grass—resulted inevitably and consistently in enormous losses. For example, Pinnock Electrical Appliances Ltd. (Gt. Britain) was incorporated in July, 1959; by June, 1967, it has lost £944,000. The losses were made good out of the funds that kept pouring in from these poor depositors.

Sounds like a predecessor of the Northern Rock!!

Was 774 part of his name?

There were the Guinness adverts - I remember a toucan and one with a man carrying an RSJ.

Also the little blue sticker on the District route maps saying that the South Acton branch would close soon - this must have been pre 1959.

Did anyone ever travel on the 1956 Stock prototype where all the advertising was sold to London & Manchester Assurance? Very sophisticated, every bay panel had the same row of co-ordinated ads. I remember the leading car was 40001, (became 1005?) but I was too young, and surprised, to identify whether that set was the MetCam, Birmingham or Gloucester built train.
I thought it was absolutely way out as a kid from Birmingham, where sophistication in modern rail travel was a MetCam 101 or a Swindon 120, particularly as it was on a journey from Finsbury Park back to Paddington, change to Bakerloo at Piccy Circus, for in those days, a 'King' back to Brum.
I definitely remember the Accles & Pollock ads in tube cars - Precision Steel Tubes from Oldbury - not far from BRC&W's works. And their own send up, Shackles and Wedlock, Tickles and Stopup, etc, but they never used B*ll*ck, of course, in politer times! My Dad supplied them some machine tools in those days when we had Industry!