THE GREAT CITY FRAUDS OF COLE, DAVIDSON, & GORDON, FULLY EXPOSED. By Seton Laing, Assignee to Cole's Estate. Dedicated by Permission to the Right Hon. The Earl of Clarendon, K.G.

London: Published by the Author, Sold by Mann Nephews, 39 Cornhill, [1856]., [1856].. Fair. - Octavo, 8-1/2 inches high by 5-5/8 inches wide. Three-quarter brown calf and cloth titled and ruled in gilt on the spine with a gilt-lettered leather title label mounted on the front cover. The covers are rubbed and stained with wear to the leather corners. The head and tail of the spine are chipped and the calf has split along a portion of the front joint. [xiv] & 263 pages, with a frontispiece illustration portraying the "Grand Plan of Hagen's Wharf". The front hinge is cracked and the front endpaper is lacking. The pages are slightly toned with occasional stains. Several page corners are creased. Pencil marks in the margins of several pages serving to highlight paragraphs were possibly made by the author himself or his business partner.

Fourth edition.

An important association copy from the library of Laing & Campbell, inscribed in ink "Laing & Campbell / Mincing Lane / July 1856" on the front blank, with the firm's blind-stamp reading "Laing & Campbell / 39 Mincing Lane, London" stamped on the rear endpaper, the front blank, and at the top of the frontispiece as well as in the margins of a few other pages.

Although the preface to this fourth edition is dated August 7, 1856, the inscription would imply that Laing and Campbell received a pre-publication copy in July of that year.

Laing & Campbell were in possession of financial warrants which had been given to them by Cole as tangible securities valued at 18,000 pounds. As it turned out, many of these warrants were spurious and worthless. Cole, together with Davidson & Gordon, had so substantially falsified the value of his company that, when the business went bankrupt, many of the warrants issued to secure the value of the business were seen to be fraudulent and those that were legitimate covered but a minute fraction of the firm's debt. Laing and Campbell were colonial brokers who were in possession of several of these warrants for spelter & Swedish steel which Cole, Davidson, & Gordon had offered as securities.

In a book review published in the June 7, 1856 issue of the Economist, the writer states: "The Great City Frauds of Cole, Davidson, and Gordon have been very fully and ably exposed by Seton Laing... in a book just published by him.... In order to make the designs of Mr Cole and his coadjusters clear, a plan is given of the small wharf occupied by him, called Hagen's wharf, interposed between two bonded warehouses, which Mr Cole seems to have designedly acquired for his long-concocted frauds...." The reviewer for the Standard expresses a much different opinion in his article published on June 12, 1856: "...had the object of the writer been one to expose fraudulent practices, he would have carried us entirely with him; but, inasmuch as he allowed himself to be actuated by strong and vindictive feelings, we have no hesitation in stating that he has completely failed in producing the effect which he is so anxious to make the public believe he had in view when he commenced the task which he has now brought to a conclusion...."