submitted by Lennard Gandalac -163 Hillside Avenue Arlington, Mass .

BISHY' S CORNER

By Lennard Gandala c

l goo ~10RD

lY hobby is collecting psychiatrists . There are two

private roontal h ospitals with i n a mile of my house , and by

keep i ng my garden full of Vtigue.ly obscene flowers , and my ice-

box Iull ox s~imula~ing beverages , I have nad no difficulty in

ma.Ir ing libido Lodge into b sor"t 01 i1 or~!JPl Freudian Gesellschaft.

Psychiatrists must be so normal while they are at work, that

they are only too glad of a place to go after hours where they

cnn act a little que er like the rest of us.

The craziest psychiatrist I have ever knorvn was P . Goldberg .

The p . stood for Patrick , and he caroo fror:i Dublin . He used to

drop in for sup:.i:ier once a week on his day off , and r elieve himself

by telling weird stories to Ginnie and me . One day I had ~inished

some book cases down in the cellar, and I was talking over with

Virginia what- colorw we were going to stain them .

nyou got to shellac 'em first , n said Pat . "Two coats o:f shellac

u ·hat for?"' asked Ginnie .

"You got to fill up the ores , n said nat . uotherwise they'll ' take four coats of stain, and they ' ll stiJl look rouf'.,h ."

" hat ' s shellac?" ask.ed Gi nnie .

"It • s a resin," I said . "It oome s from a tree ."

"It comes cfrom a bug , " said1 Pat . nit comes f rom an Ee.s t

Indian coccus bug . After the female is impm:egBBted, she attaches

herself to the bark o~ a tree . Then her inwards disintegrate and

sha swells up full of gr11bs, and stuff she makes for hem to eat .

ThiB stuff she make.-s is shellac. I ues 0 it comes from the tree

in the last analysis. The sgeliac cron, though, is actually

harvested by breaking t igs off the trees. The twigs are covered

with the bodies of the bugs. The bugs are scraped off and sent to

market. When you buy a case of raw shellac, what you get is a case

full of bugs. It's the same as cochineal, Which comes from a co cc us

too. tkQX0B0BllK In the old days, before aniline dyes, cochineal was

so valuabla, that the Kexican Indians used blocks of cochineal ~

pigme·nt for money. That rs all gone now . ·when the Mexican Indians

talk of the good old days, they mean the days when cochineal was

good for money, befora the Interessen Gemeinschaft Farbem:hndustrie

started to In9.ke money out of ~ carlet Red and Scharlach R , to build

poison gas factories with . For that matter , even aspirin is made

by I . G. F., and every time you have a headache you are helping

along the phosgene industry. "

"How do you know all this?" asked Ginnie .

"Hush! n I said'. . "He ' s a psychiatrist . Bes ic[e s being crazy,

they· kno ever:rthing . n I could see that at was get ting into his

hypomanic state, and was warming JIP for something good.

nDid you know that shellac once made the pound sterling go

haywir,e? Yes , sir , it wa.s in 1935 , and when the shellac market

went on the bum it bust sterling wide open, and naturally Wall

Street shook a little too . It really started with pepper , but if

Sarabed Bishirgian hadn't had to cover his shellac margins , he

might have r.rade thegrade on pepper, and then everything would have

been different .

nA t the ~e ginning of 1935 , a firm naTred Strauss and Company

went under because of ovar- specW.ation in peanuts, and the gene.ral

manager killed himself by jumping cf'rom a window of the Taj ~abal

Hotel in Bombay. Thi~ weakened a lot of other firms, particularly

James and Shakespeare, who were Garabed Bishirgian's ?Jankers .

Garabed Bisl'I irgian was trying to m~noeuvre a corner in white pepper.

He had bought up all the white, pepper he or anyone e3.se had ever

haard of, and was just ready to sit back and start taking his

profits , w.lhen a. whole s:ktt0:ml s.ibiploa.d of pepper suddenly arrived

in London . This, not only m:?Etifie,d Biro irgian, but scar·ed the wits

out of him. However, by manip ulating his shellac, he got hold of

enough credit to buy up thex new pepper. He put his g&BR agents

on the job immediately, all over the world , trying to find out the

sourve of the mar pepper, but they cnuldnft get anything on it for

him. The next thing he knew, there was another shipload in, and the

brokers squeezed him on this until hP. had his back to the wall. r'1

iffell , 1)epper kep t coming in, and eventually BHh irgian had to give

un. When he gaveE up, James and ha~espeare, who were an old reliable

banking house with innumerablo connections, had to give up too.

When James and Shakes eare gave un, about half of Mincing Lane went

into :im~ bankrp.ptcy.n

"Oh, you' re ~king this up, 11 said Ginnie. "Isn't he :funny?

Where did you get such names for your people?"

"No kidding," said Pat . "Say, t his Bishirgian was a. charaoter,

a womderful character. Re rmde his money first out of carpets, and

then gy cornering the x1aJd caviar market. When he got ou;t og

caviar, he was in the big time. Re was a little Ar.rm nian, and his

hobbies were playing poker and breeding pigs, and he was always

giving part ies to which only men were invited. nd his office was

on 2imxg Throgmorton Street . Isn't that lovely? WI:r . Shaltespeare

of lncing Lane going to breed pigs with MT. Bishirgian of

Throgmorton Street . 1011 . when one firm after another went

bankrupt, the pound began to fall. The value of British Government

securities fell $300 ,000,000 in three days. Naturally , on the

other side, romeone was cleaning up on the short side. But who?

Parliament got worried and an investigation was started. They

began to 1J]d:i: uncover sorr~ dynamite. High chairs began to sha.ke:

the Midland Bank, Britisn ~merican ~obacc o, the Cabinet, even I

the Prime Minister, began to feel warm.

nNow, my children, guess who said it was all okey dokey~

everything would come out alJ. right, it would blow over if HKetp~

nobody got excited and everybody just compromised? Why, little

Neville chamberlain. He was ChancAllor of the Exchequer at that

time. n

"Isn't he marvellous? Dear old :?at f" said Ginnie to me.

"Well, the pound kept falling; Neville kept juggling;

and eventaally he straightened everything out. The investigation

was hushed up, and from the time Chamberlain stepped in, the whole

aff air began to drop out of the pape rs and fiz~le out. o there

was no Cabinet shake-up, and no one ever did find out who was

behind Garabed Bishirgian and who cashed in on the pouhd sterling."

nwhat an imagination!" said Ginnie. "You. ougBnt to be a

wri tar, Pat . You' re wasting your talents."

TT Just a minute' n said Pat . 1f jisten to the blow-off. rt' s

wdmderful. Last year I was at 'the Psychiatric Convention in

Chicago, and I got talking to a young English medico from Yale.

He happened to mention that his pop in London was a commodity

broker, so I thought I would bring this treasure, wh ich I had

kept bidden as my o !!Jn del icious secret , out into the light, to

see if anyone else knew about it, with its halrns:p ea res and

Throgmortons . So I said casually~ though underneath I was seething

4

with excitement:

""Did you. ever hear of Garabed Bishirgan?"

11 He answered , really casually:

"'Oh, Bisby? 1vhy , my fa"ther knew him well • .ttn interest:ing chap;

quite interested in pigs, I believe%ot

1 'Eay!' I hollered. Then I thought to mys:elf, 'Pat, be :eaq:;

English , take it easyl' So I sat on my excitement. and. said casually:

"•Remember the pepper corner?' :U:Jli#

(

n1wty, yes. My father g:HX was quite badly dished. 1 35, wasn 1 t it?'

"'Yes. Tell me, what ,ctually happened to the pepper corner?

How came it to . break up? 1

"~he Englishman laughed. and said:

"'Very simnle. You. see, Bishy kept buying white pepper, and the

more he boug t , the more there was for salfl. Nobody knew where it

came from and nobody could find out. , ell , what ha-n-pened mm% was

this: when the~ price of wh ite pepper began to go up, some

Chinese growers got to _ether, backed no doubt by Blshy's enemies

in England . hey had no more white pepper: Bishy really had it all:

so they took their black pepper and spread it on the ·banks o:f the

Yang-Tze-Kiang to liei: in the smi and bleach. When it turned white

it was white pepper and they kept selling l t to Bisby till they

broke him. '"

'\_ ome fantastic story," I said. "Who are ~ u, E . Pa trick

n11arvellous, n said Ginnie. "What a mind."

"Now wait?" said e.t. "The funny part of it is that it's all

true. I can't voucID for the blea~hing part, because I got it from

a private informant, but all the rest le right there in the New

York Times for Fe bra.a ry l935, if you wanna look it up."

·The amazing part of it i s that it ~ there: right from

February 1st, page 38: n1ondon Worr ied by Pepper Crisis: Shellac

Overspeculation Also causes K Halt in Dea1ings While Stocks

Accwnula e; to :b,ebruary 17th, p age 1: "Note El Men Linked to crash

in London: Parliament is Aroused . And then the ani-climax of a

financial Munich on February 20th:

"Chamberlain under ~uestioning Denies Big Five Banks bad

Part in ~ Recent Gamble . r It is entirel y contra ry to Banking

Practice is this country for a joint-s ock bank to specula te in

commodities and I ha ve no reason to assume a ny banks did 4o on

thie· occasion. '"