{"id":31753,"date":"2023-12-20T09:48:45","date_gmt":"2023-12-20T08:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=254625"},"modified":"2023-12-20T20:11:40","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T19:11:40","slug":"life-hacks-from-history-how-to-get-rich","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/life-hacks-from-history-how-to-get-rich\/","title":{"rendered":"Life hacks from history: how to get rich"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pssst! Fancy making some cash? Justin Pollard tells us what we can learn from the lives of history\u2019s wealthiest individuals, and why it takes much more than brains and brawn to make lots of money <\/p>

By Justin Pollard\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 20 December 2023 at 08:48 AM<\/p>

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If history could really teach us how to get rich, you\u2019d likely be reading Tatler rather than this. But history can certainly give us some tips on what not to do. In the British Isles, the first people to amass great personal wealth lived during the Bronze Age. Unlike the Neolithic period, when most people were laid to rest in communal tombs, wealthy individuals were interred in individual burial mounds, each filled with precious objects they chose to take with them to the next life. Since that time, it seems that everyone has been competing with each other to get their hands on the most \u2018stuff\u2019.<\/p>\n

The easiest method is to steal from someone else. Few have been better at this than Adam Worth, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle<\/a>\u2019s model for Moriarty (the enemy of Sherlock Holmes), who had a knack of walking into people\u2019s houses and taking what he fancied. But be careful \u2013 when Worth stole Gainsborough\u2019s famous portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, he fell in love with it and refused to sell it on \u2013 much to the annoyance of his gang.<\/p>\n

Risky business<\/h3>\n
Fraud is perhaps subtler than burglary, the South Sea Bubble of 1720 being a stock fraud that even took in Isaac Newton<\/a>, who lost nearly \u00a33.5m in modern terms on the scam. And that\u2019s nothing compared to the $15m that was stolen in the original \u2018Ponzi\u2019 scheme orchestrated by con artist Charles Ponzi, or the whopping $64bn stolen by disgraced financier Bernie Madoff. But again, be careful. After the collapse of the South Sea Bubble, Britain\u2019s chancellor of the Exchequer was sent to the Tower of London, while Ponzi and Madoff were also incarcerated for\ntheir scams.<\/p>\n
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Read more | The history rich list: the 10 wealthiest people ever<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
If crime isn\u2019t your thing, perhaps you could try inheriting the cash instead. In 1677, Sir Thomas Grosvenor married Mary Davies. He was 21, she was, erm, 12 (although that wasn\u2019t unusual for the time). However, what motivated Sir Thomas was not Mary herself, but the 500 acres of land she had inherited to the west of London. Centuries later, the land became Mayfair, Park Lane and Belgravia, and the Grosvenor heirs \u2013 as dukes of Westminster \u2013 were set for life.<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t have rich relatives, you could always try hunting for money. In 2021, an auctioneer found a copy of the US Declaration of Independence in an attic, which later sold for $4.5m. And if that\u2019s not enough, you could try searching at sea: the treasure haul from the shipwreck code-named \u2018Black Swan\u2019, found in 2007, contained 17 tonnes of coins valued at $500m.<\/p>\n
The cost of greed<\/h3>\n
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