Court of the Queen's Bench, as the real author of Hooley's schemes. In 1897, Hooley was selected by the Conservative Party as their candidate to contest the parliamentary constituency of Ilkeston, Derbyshire at the next general election. His bankruptcy the following year made him ineligible to stand however. Hooley's bankruptcy was also a fraudulent affair. He did not, as has been much suggested, make over Risley and Papworth to his wife, but his trustee in bankruptcy sold them to her instead. Life for them went on very much as before – the press terming him 'The Splendid Bankrupt'. Hooley also continued his deceitful business activities, although on a smaller scale. He was made bankrupt again in 1911, 1921, and 1939, and jailed for fraud in 1912 and 1922. Hooley estimated that during his career over £100,000,000 had passed through his hands, and he remained unrepentant: "my spirit remains uncrushed ... Conscious that if I had done a certain amount of harm to my fellow-beings, any rate I had also done a very considerable amount of good ... Seemingly all the English people on the Riviera lunched and dined my expense, and some of them even came to breakfast." Despite his crimes, he also had admirers. The public prosecutor Sir Richard Muir, considered him the most attractive personality he encountered in his professional career, writing in his memoirs: "He might have made the greatest Chancellor of the Exchequer this country has ever known ... 'The Splendid Bankrupt' certainly had a wonderful way with him." However, Hooley's legacy was a string of ruined companies and firms floundering through overcapitalisation and shrunken share values, with the consequent losses for their investors. Companies floated by E T Hooley and the gross profits of each promotion Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Schweppes Bovril Trent Cycle Cycle Manufacturers' Tube Swift Cycle Dunlop Pneumatic (France) Clement-Gladiator and Humber Blaisdell Pencils Dee Estates Trafford Park Estates Raleigh Cycle Singer Cycle Humber (America) Humber (Russia) Humber (Portugal)£5,000,000 £1,250,000 £2,500,000 £100,000 £250,000 £375,000 £650,000 £900,000 £100,000 unknown unknown £200,000 £800,000 £200,000 £ 75,000 £100,000 from the statement prepared by the Official Receiver of his estate. By 1911, he was in serious legal and financial difficulties. He spent a month in Brixton Gaol for contempt of court and later in the same year received a twelve-month sentence for obtaining money on false pretences as part of a land deal. In the following year,