Stowley

Stowley
Stowley, as drawn by Matt Smith
Name	Mr. Stowley of Ankh Futures
Race	Human
Age
Occupation	Financial Advisor
Physical appearance
Residence	Ankh-Morpork
Death
Parents
Relatives
Children
Marital Status
Appearances
Books	Going Postal
Cameos

Stowley of Ankh Futures (Financial Advisors) was one of those duped by Reacher Gilt into giving up their legal ways, defrauding the rightful owners of the Grand Trunk and racing straight into deeply illicit acts in Going Postal. He was a member of the Trunk's Board of Directors.

At one of the Board's meetings, he expressed his fury at Moist von Lipwig over Lipwig's turning the Post Office into a show. Stowley pointed out that Lipwig would probably send a coach to Genua the next time the Trunk breaks down- and loudly say that it would be cheaper and actually get there. Stowley suggested that they spend some money and get proper maintenance done, but was then unwilling to shut down the Trunk for the nine months Mr. Pony insisted was necessary.

Stowley was worried over both Crispin Horsefry's murder and the fire at the Post Office. He became even more worried when Gilt mentioned that he knew where the Board got it's money from (i.e. that they stole it from their clients), and strongly suggested that they should get some more from the same place to finance repairs.

Justice caught up with him in the end, albeit in an unorthodox fashion, thanks to Moist von Lipwig, who set it up so that a clacks message detailing his crimes, ostensibly from the dead Clacksmen he and his fellows had defrauded, is read to quite a large group of people in Ankh-Morpork in the Great Hall of Unseen University.

At first Stowley suggested the message being read by Devious Collabone was a trick and mere slander, which prompted outrage in Ridcully (and also caused Ridcully to practice retaliation by promotion and give Collabone a Doctorate on the spot). He continued futile protests to stop the message from being read, but once it was over and Vetinari ordered men to the offices of a number of banks, including Ankh Futures, he collapsed on the spot. After recovering from this "faint", Stowley faked amnesia in order to attempt to avoid facing challenges. His claims of not being fit to testify were discarded by Vetinari, who ordered Commander Vimes to throw him in the cells.

Annotation

Right at the end of Going Postal when the game is up and the financial corruption of the Trunk board is revealed, Stowley fakes amnesia and loss of his short-term memory as a desperate ploy to avoid prosecution. This hopefully didn't fool Vetinari for one moment, but the Roundworld referent is more depressing.

Charged with a range of financial misdemeanours in the late 1980's, including false accounting, fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion, Ernest Saunders, a senior member of the Guinness brewing and finance family, provided medical testimonials that he was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease and had no recollection of the sequence of events that had led him to court. As genuine sufferers of Alzheimers know, one of the first symptoms of the disease is the loss of short-term memory. The judge took his plea of being unable to face charges on medical grounds seriously, and released him with a short suspended sentence where otherwise he might have been looking at several years inside. Refer to Guiness share-trading fraud for the full story, including Saunders' miracle recovery from Alzheimers.

Incredibly, he made a full and complete recovery from Alzheimers shortly after his court appearance, perhaps the only man in medical history to ever have reversed the progress of this disease.