Cabinet 1: Introduction: Ernie Webber
Scrapbook containing portrait photograph of F. A. Sutton, and Ernie Webber’s business card, c.1940. MS-3333/042;
Life Membership card, Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, Boston, c.1970. MS-3333.
In March 1940, in Hong Kong, Ernie Webber entered into a financial partnership with English-born Etonian Major General Francis Arthur Sutton (1884-1944), more commonly known as ‘One-Arm’ Sutton, who lost an arm rescuing a British soldier at Gallipoli. Sutton built railways in Mexico, Argentina, and Canada, and mined in Siberia and Korea. As an engineer and ballistic expert, he not only developed guns, fuses and heavy mortars, but also traded in them. He was paid handsomely. This larger-than-life adventurer died of dysentery in a Japanese camp. To the left of Sutton’s photograph is Webber’s business card, with the English translation pasted in. The English version is below, as is his Life membership to the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society.