The criminal record of these years would be incomplete without a reference to the collapse in 1913 of a number of Indian banks. The most notable of all, the Indian Specie Bank, was never made the subject of a criminal investigation, though the apathy of its Directors was unquestionable, and its manager, who had set out to “corner” silver against the Indian Government with the monies of the bank’s depositors, found it desirable, when the crash came, to die suddenly at Bandora. Orders were issued by the Bombay Government to the Police to investigate the transactions of several lesser banks and bring the guilty to trial; and accordingly a protracted and intricate inquiry was commenced by Inspector Morris of the C. I. D. into the accounts and balance-sheets of the Credit Bank, the Bombay Banking Company and the Cosmopolitan Bank. In the case of the first-named bank, charges of criminal breach of trust and falsification of accounts were proved against the manager, who was sentenced in 1914 to ten years’ rigorous imprisonment, while the manager of the Bombay Banking Company and his nephew were likewise convicted of criminal breach of trust and cheating and sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment with hard labour. In the third case the police proved clearly that the bank was not a bank at all, and had neither funds, business nor influence; but the manager and the “bank’s” broker, who were charged by the police with cheating, were eventually discharged by the trying magistrate. These bank-failures were not confined to Bombay, but took place in other Provinces also, notably in the Punjab. When the collapse commenced, an attempt was made to draw some of the European-managed banks into the vortex, with the object of showing that the failures were due rather to general economic conditions than to bad management. The attempt failed; for the Scotchmen, who form ninety per cent of the European banking community in India, were too cautious and too solidly entrenched to succumb to any artificial panic, and despite the assertion of some Indian politicians that the European-managed banks, by withholding assistance from these mushroom Indian concerns, had deliberately precipitated the crisis, the general conclusion was that the failures were primarily due to careless or fraudulent management. This view found confirmation in the verdicts delivered in the Courts.