Double Your Money – Part Forty Two
Henri Lemoine and the synthetic diamond scam of 1905
“Diamonds are a girl’s best friend”, goes the song from the Broadway show, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, from 1949, although the version best known is Marilyn Monroe’s performed in 1953. Whether that is true or not, they are pricey, not because they are a rare gem, but because suppliers manipulate the market, and thereby keep the price up, by drip-feeding diamonds on to the market. There are warehouses around the world filled to the gunwales with the things.
But wouldn’t it be great if you could create your own diamonds?
This was Henri Lemoine’s idea and he set out to exploit his idea for all it was worth. In 1905, he contacted the firm, De Beers Diamond Mines, who were, and still are, the largest diamond merchants in the world. In particular, Henri targeted Sir Julius Wernher who, as well as being a director of De Beers, was a well-known and respected British banker. Lemoine’s story was simple. He had found a way to produce gem-sized diamonds out of coal. Would Wernher be interested?
Wernher was. Lemoine, though, needed some money to refine his manufacturing process and if Wernher was prepared to stump up, De Beers would have exclusivity on the process. This was too appealing to pass up, allowing De Beers to further tighten their hold on the diamond market and eliminate what might have been a threat to their position. However, Wernher wanted to see the process for himself, before committing.
Lemoine was happy to oblige, inviting Wernher to a demonstration in his Parisian laboratory. Wernher did not go on his own, taking another De Beers executive, Francis Oats, and a couple of associates with him.
The demonstration was an astonishing spectacle. Lemoine invited them into the lab and then disappeared, returning, doubtless to the consternation of his esteemed guests, without a stitch on. The reason for this eccentric behaviour was to demonstrate that he did not have any diamonds secreted on his person. He then proceeded, I cannot ascertain whether he was still in the nude, to mix a concoction of substances, including coal and iron filings, into a crucible, which he then set alight.
After about a quarter of an hour, Lemoine opened the tray at the bottom of the crucible and after it had cooled down, lo and behold, there were a few small diamonds at the bottom of the tray. The audience were amazed and the deal was struck. De Beers were to have exclusive access to the formula, which Lemoine agreed to deposit in a London bank, and they would fund the development of a factory in the Pyrenees. In all, Lemoine got £64,000 out of them, about £7.5m in today’s terms.
It took three years for De Beers to smell a rat. There seemed to be little progress on building the factory and Lemoine was evasive as to what was really happening. In order to force his hand, De Beers pressed charges for fraud on Lemoine. He was promptly arrested in Paris and put on trial.
For several weeks the trial was the talk of the town. Was Lemoine a clever imposter or a misunderstood genius of a scientist? In the courtroom Lemoine was unable to recreate the results of his experiment and there was worse news still for him. A Parisian jeweller testified that he had sold some diamonds to Lemoine just ahead of the demonstration, they were sourced from De Beers, a delicious irony, and upon examination, this proved to be the case. They had been secreted in a false chamber in the crucible.
The secret formula was taken out of the deposit box of a London bank and proved to be a mix of powdered carbon and sugar. However, before the jury could pass judgment, Lemoine did what all self-respecting fraudsters do, he scarpered, never to be heard of again.
Marcel Proust was fascinated by the case, he is thought to have had a financial involvement, losing his chemise into the bargain, and wrote a series of accounts of the affair in pastiches of the style of a number of French literary luminaries, published as The Lemoine Affair in 1919.
If you enjoyed this, check out Fifty Scams and Hoaxes by Martin Fone
https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes/
