Harry Bensley

Who was Harry Bensley?

Harry Bensley was an English rake and adventurer, best remembered as the subject of an extraordinary wager between John Pierpont Morgan and Hugh Cecil Lowther, 5th Earl of Lonsdale. How much of his story is based on fact is unclear.

Harry Bensley was from Thetford in Norfolk, England. By 1907 he was a businessman and investor, working particularly in Imperial Russia and reputedly received an income of £5000 a year.

According to the original tale, one evening in 1907 at the National Sporting Club in London, Morgan and Lonsdale were arguing whether a man could walk around the world without being identified. Bensley, a notorious "playboy" and womaniser with a substantial private income, overheard the conversation and offered to test the proposition on their behalf. The outcome of the exchange was that Lonsdale bet Morgan the then-extravagant sum of £21,000 that Bensley would complete a pedestrian circumnavigation incognito.

According to Ken McNaught, grandson of Bensley's son Jim Beasley, this is not entirely accurate. Bensley had gambled heavily with the two men, put up all his fortune in a game and lost. Now effectively destitute, he pleaded with the others to accept some way to forfeit. The two gentlemen came up with the unlikely wager.