Hi,
You wondered whether it would be worth sending for the documents.
I sent for my gt. grandfather's 1874 bankruptcy hearing which took place in Glasgow and the outline of the result was in the Glasgow Herald Newspaper. (He blamed the American civil War as the start of his woes because his trade relied on merchants that traded with the USA, and when that export market was shut down the whole of the UK felt it.).
I received a thick bundle of papers, which included
*reports by each of the creditors who had been appointed by the Sheriff;
*a list of all the assets,
*plus the outcome of letters to debtors who owed money to my gg.
*Plus a list of who bought what & the price at the auctioning of his assets (it turned out his brother-in-law had bought back his personal belongings for him - including the 7 portraits of the family).
From the documents - It turned out that his creditors had decided that to get as much of their money back as possible & that as some of the creditors were also competitors in the same market (thus had the expertise) would take away some component parts and produce as many finished products as possible so that they could be sold to the public.
The nicest thing about the final page was that all his creditors and the Sheriff thought my gg was an honourable man thus no further action was taken.
The awful realisation was that I think the 7 family portraits must have been that pile of old oil paintings that my father burnt in the bonfire back in the 1950s
