Daniel Alden Loring (1836-1922) was a Life Member of The Lambs, elected in 1889 as a Non-Professional Member. He was caught up in numerous Gilded Age financial scandals of the 1890s, making headlines for operating bucket shops.
Loring was born Daniel Alden Libby on August 22, 1836, in Bangor, Maine, to De Law Libby and Mary Hall. He came from a long line of settlers and pioneers. He started in business using real estate inherited from his parents. During the Civil War he resided in Detroit, where he was a dealer in boots and shoes. He married a local girl, Mary Lemcke, in 1865.
Loring’s past during the 1870s is unclear, but immediately afterwards he and his family were involved in a series of financial scandals.
In the early 1880s Loring was involved in a chain of bucket shops, covering a large portion of the United States with more than 150 locations. The scheme connected telegraph lines from the Chicago Board of Trade to a network of shady investors. Loring and his brother, Frank, operated as the “Stock, Grain, and Provision Company of New York.” The backer of the conspiracy of thievery in Connecticut was Frank Loring, called “a notorious get-rich quick expert.”
The brothers managed a pool swindle called “Fund W” which collapsed in Chicago in 1882, leaving its dupes to hold the bag for $2 million. It was called America’s first great get-rich scheme, a precursor to later Ponzi schemes. For several months after that crash, Frank Loring was in prison in Chicago. Meanwhile, Dan Loring ran the operation out of New York. At the time, he was estimated to be worth $15 million. When “Fund W” collapsed, Dan Loring then fled to Texas. Subsequently he returned to Chicago, procured his brother’s release from prison, and the Loring Brothers moved to Wall Street and set up another business.
In 1896, when brothers William E. Lehman and Jack H. Lehman formed Aetna Realty Company for real estate investors to pool their holdings, it was Dan Loring that was later chosen president. His brother Frank was later a director.
Dan backed the bucket-shop firm of Greulich, Martin, and Co. on Broad Street. It was raided by the police in 1899. In 1904 his company went out of business and he invested in an Oklahoma oil company in Osage Indian territory, during the early era notoriously portrayed in the book and film “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.” Authorities believe Loring used ill-gotten money to purchase a seat on the New York Stock Exchange for his son, Daniel A. Loring, Jr.
It wasn’t called money laundering in the Gilded Age, but he took and dispersed vast sums on everything from horses to philanthropy. Loring became a Life Member of the New-York Historical Society in 1887 and was a major donor there and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He also had a passion for racehorses and owned trotters.
Despite his shady business practices, Loring was consistently listed on New York’s Social Register. In addition to The Lambs, Loring was also a member of the New York Athletic Club, the Knickerbocker Athletic Club, the Coney Island Jockey Club, the Brooklyn Jockey club, the New York Yacht Club, the Saint Augustine Yacht Club, the New York Produce Exchange, and scores more.
The end of his business career occurred in 1911. Loring, suffering from rheumatism, slipped away from his family in Manhattan and booked passage under “Daniel Alden” for a first-class cabin on a French liner. After the ship departed, his family searched frantically for him. Loring attempted to jump off a steamship bound for France. He tried to kill himself but was stopped by crew aboard the liner La Loraine. After Loring was taken to a sanatorium in Havre, his son brought him home to New York.
Daniel A. Loring died on October 4, 1922, at his home on West 72nd Street. He was 86 years old.
Researched and written by Shepherd Kevin C. Fitzpatrick (2026).