Family of Albert Samuel PAM and Maude LeClerc FAUGHT

Husband:	Albert Samuel PAM (1875-1955)
Wife:	Maude LeClerc FAUGHT (1872-1960)
Children:	Susan Phillipine PAM (1912-aft1986)
Marriage	13 Jun 1907	Kensington, London

Husband: Albert Samuel PAM

Wife: Maude LeClerc FAUGHT

Name:	Maude LeClerc FAUGHT
Sex:	Female
Nickname:	Sis
Father:	John George FAUGHT ( -bef1900)
Mother:	-
Birth	1872
Passenger	1932 (age 59-60)	Rio de Janairo to Southampton on ship Breman
Death	1960 (age 87-88)

Child 1: Susan Phillipine PAM

Note on Husband: Albert Samuel PAM (1)

THE FOLLOWING IS TAKEN VERBATIM FROM: OXFORD DIRECTORY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY

 

Pam, Albert Samuel (1875–1955), natural historian and financier, was born on 26 June 1875 at Clapham, London, eldest of three sons of Leopold Pam (1838–1909), merchant and rentier, and his wife, Philippine (1851–1938), who had Anglicized her Austrian maiden name of Fürth (or Fuerth) to Firth. He was educated at the City of London School (1889–92) and then spent two years at a Gymnasium at Frankfurt am Main and a year at Ouchy near Lausanne perfecting his languages. He began his career working for a sugar merchant in Mincing Lane, London; shortly afterwards he joined a voluntary brigade of the Royal Fusiliers, which he commanded both at the diamond jubilee and at the funeral of Queen Victoria. In 1907 he married Maude le Clerc (1872–1960), divorced wife of Walter Fowle and daughter of Surgeon Major-General John George Faught. They had one daughter.

 

From an early age Pam was interested in ornithology, zoology, and horticulture. He first visited South America in 1900 with his maternal uncle, who had business interests in the Amazon basin. Thereafter he returned frequently on visits which combined capitalism with natural history, and he became possibly the leading English authority on the plants, birds, and animals of South America. He was a member of the council of the Zoological Society of London from 1907; he received its silver medal in 1914 and served as treasurer from 1932 to 1945. In 1912 he bought the Wormley Bury estate at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, including its derelict gardens, which contained rare specimens planted by Sir Abraham Hume. Pam cultivated a large collection of South American flora and fauna, especially bulbous plants, in the grounds and glasshouses at Wormley Bury; he also had a menagerie and an aviary there. An unknown genus of Amaryllidaceae discovered by him in Peru in 1926 was named Pamianthe Peruviana, or the flower of Pam. He was a fellow of the Linnean Society from 1939 and was awarded a medal of honour by the Royal Horticultural Society in 1944. He often contributed to the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society, and he wrote on aviculture, botany, and zoology in scientific periodicals. His achievements as a natural historian were recognized in 1944 by an honorary MA from Oxford University, with special rights at Wadham College.

 

Pam became a stockbroker with Vivian Gray and specialized in South American securities. During the Edwardian period he was the most active member of the Ethelburga syndicate, a group of rich men including Arthur Stanley, which speculated in risky overseas ventures carrying the possibility of large profits. After visiting Venezuela in 1905, Pam was granted a monopoly on salt in that country, and he transferred his rights to the Ethelburga syndicate. Through Pam's contacts, the syndicate also obtained match monopolies in Venezuela (1905) and Bolivia (1907) which it sold in 1927 to the Swedish Match Company. Pam also represented a syndicate led by Lord Howard de Walden, which in 1910 secured a contract to build the Chilean Longitudinal Railway.

 

Few men in the City of London knew South America more intimately than Pam. Sir Vincent Corbett described him as ‘a keen businessman, used to fishing in troubled waters’, who ‘does not hesitate to push his own interests by any means that may come to hand’ but who ‘acted quite frankly in his dealings’ (Corbett to Hardinge, 2 May 1908, TNA: PRO, FO 368/241). In December 1914 Pam was sent to Chile by the director of naval intelligence, and later he undertook espionage on the German community in Bolivia. He served at army headquarters in France in 1916–18, reaching the rank of major, which title he thereafter bore in business life. He became an OBE, was decorated with the Belgian Croix de Guerre, and was made a member of the French Légion d'honneur. From November 1918 until April 1919 he was a British member of the International Armistice Commission at Spa, negotiating Germany's surrender.

 

In 1919 Pam was recruited as an associate partner in the merchant banking firm of J. Henry Schroder and was thereafter instrumental in several advances in British institutional finance. Schroders was the first major London issuing house to handle domestic industrial issues, and Pam was critical in this innovation. From its inception in 1926 he had charge of Schroders' investment department, which by the 1930s was providing one-fifth of the firm's revenues. His expertise in industrial finance was recognized by the Bank of England, which consulted him on the rationalization of declining staple industries. Most notably the Lancashire Steel Corporation was formed in 1930 with a substantial Bank of England holding as a result of his plans and negotiations. The co-operation among financial institutions obtained by Pam on this occasion was perpetuated, at his suggestion, by the formation of the Bankers' Industrial Development Corporation to support industrial rationalization. Pam also supervised the work of Leadenhall Securities Corporation, formed by Schroders in 1935, to finance medium and small industrial companies. Leadenhall's usual method was to invest in redeemable preference shares and to take some ordinary shares for a fixed term.

 

As a result of his position at Schroders, Pam was instrumental, with William Morris (Viscount Nuffield), in forming the Pressed Steel Company of Great Britain, whose products were chiefly used in the motor-car industry. He was a director of this company from 1926, and chairman from 1930 until his death in 1955. Pam was also active in Schroders' eastern European interests. He was managing director (1924–40) and then chairman of the Continental and Industrial Trust, which was formed to specialize in advances to German companies and in underwriting their securities. This trust also held extensive investments in Europe and the Americas. As members of the Schröder family became ill or died in the 1930s, Pam's importance in their merchant bank increased. It reached its apogee during the Second World War.

 

Pam had interests outside Schroders. As a young man he joined the board of the Marmite Food Extract Company, and he served briefly as managing director and became chairman after the armistice. He also had a long connection with Sena Sugar estates, which controlled extensive properties in Portuguese East Africa.

 

Pam was energetic, crisp, and observant, with fierce, sharp features and a small, dark moustache. Piercing eyes indicated his acuity both as a natural historian and as a financier. He combined physical fortitude with analytical intelligence. His nickname Pamski was an allusion to his foreign antecedents, and the prejudice which he encountered may have aggravated his well-attested prickliness. He was an inveterate traveller for pleasure and a gastronome, whose personal motto was Labor ipse voluptas. His memoirs, entitled Adventures and Recollections, which were privately printed by Oxford University Press in 1945, mainly describe his South American travels.

 

Pam died on 2 September 1955 at Wormley Bury. He left bequests to Wadham College and to the Oxford Botanic Garden.

 

Richard Davenport-Hines

Note on Husband: Albert Samuel PAM (2)

 

Note on Husband: Albert Samuel PAM (3)

 

Note on Husband: Albert Samuel PAM (4)