That edition of Who’s Who must just have copied previous editions since he had long been dead by the time it was published.

Here’s a picture of Mabel’s husband:

Col Hotchkin and his 22nd Regiment, Corps of Engineers, N.G.N.Y., held a Church parade on Memorial Sunday on Governor’s Island in 1913, as they had been doing annually for several years.

Walter B. Hotchkin was a “successful American.”

I know that because he was featured in the magazine, The Successful American. A Monthly Illustrated Magazine for the Home Circle and the Business Office, Vol. VIII., No. 6, December 1903. $3 per year; single copies, 25 cents.

The article included a photo. He’s lost quite a bit of hair since his military days, but he still handsomer than most of the men pictured in The Successful American.

He’s in the same issue as Harlan Woodbury Whipple. Too bad Mr. Whipple doesn’t have a Brookhaven connection. He has such an interesting name.

Mabel’s mother, Emma I. Lord, wife of Henry B. Hall, died 06 Jan 1910 at her residence on 120 W 183d St., according to the NY Times.

The Hotckins didn’t really live in Brookhaven, they lived in South Haven, where they must have subscribed to the Farm Journal, as I know from this rather odd letter Mabel sent to the Farm Journal which was published in November 1911 (on p. 577).

(They may, of course, have lived in both Brookhaven and South Haven at one time or another.)

Walter may not have been so much a “successful American” as the editors of the magazine had thought.

Stoppani & Hotchkin, as a brokerage firm, had customers who purchased stocks on margin and pledged other stocks as collateral. At the same time Stoppani & Hotchkin had an agreement with the Mechanics and Metals National Bank that the bank would give them loans and all the stocks they had from customers could be used to repay those loans if they were not repaid in a timely matter. On 18 May 1914, the firm was indebted to the bank in the sum of $49,000, and weren’t able to repay it.

The New York Times article on their declaration of bankruptcy is attached.

It turned out that the Stoppani & Hotchkin firm had three private accounts, Nos. 10, 20, and 30, in which they did their own speculative stock purchases on margin. They seem to have been less strict with themselves in requiring collateral for these margin purchases than they were with their customers. So when they had to make good on some bad calls, they used the collateral deposited with them by their customers.

On 09 Jun 1914, it was discovered that $300,000 was missing.

(Reminds me of a certain hedge fund named MF Global run by a former governor and senator of New Jersey, Jon Corzine, who had no idea where $1.2 billion dollars of customers’ money could possibly have gone. How much is 300,000 1914 dollars worth in 2011 dollars?
I just looked it up at http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/relativevalue.php, and its less than $119 million, less than a tenth of the results of Mr. Corzine’s financial wizardry.)

Walter B. Hotchkin was arrested on a charge of grand larceny. See attached.

The chief clerk, who had been keeping the firm’s books for 13 years, testified that he never “struck a balance” so he had no idea whether the firm was making or losing money. I guess that’s one way of avoiding bad news.

But there was also testimony that it was Stoppani rather than Hotchkin who was doing all the speculating with customer’s money:

“The speculation . . ., he asserted, was done on the order of either Stoppani or Hotchkin. . . . Asked which of the two members did most of the ordering for the speculative accounts, he said that Stoppani generally gave the orders, and that Hotchkin did not seem to do much in the office. Hotchkin went on the floor of the Exchange in the morning and returned later for only a short time.”

In October 1914, his firm was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury in Brooklyn. From The Financial World, p. 15, 03 Oct 1914.

HOTCHKIN.—At Presbyterian Hospital, Tuesday, June 6, of cancer of the liver. Walter Bryant, son of Julia Pratt Cook and the late William H. Hotchkin and beloved husband of Mabel Lord Hall. In his 51st year. Funeral service at 22d Regiment Armory, 168th St. and Fort Washington Av., on Sunday, at 2 o’clock.

Mabel died at age 57.