An unscrupulous insurance adventurer

It's not often there's sharp practice by a Gidley to report on, but the heading for this post "An unscrupulous insurance adventurer" isn't mine, but contained in a newspaper report from a New York State newspaper.

"An unscrupulous insurance adventurer in London, general manager of "The Empire" was a Mr G W Gidley Lake, a "swell" of the first water, who managed in the short space of two years to be general manager of three successive companies, for life, his salary to increase to $10,000 when the income of the company reached a certain level. "

 According to the newspaper report this condition of his employment apparently led him to bribe other company managers and caused the collapse of "The Empire", which couldn't then pay its unfortunate clerks. The report then goes on with accusations of low chicanery or, at the very least  incompetency, and is incredulous that Gidley Lake has risen again, "wholly incorrigible", with the creation of  the Life Assurance Union, fronted by a J C Bromfield.
Four years later the Insurance Times reported during April and May 1872 that "Mr G Gidley Lake had floated and wound up several insurance companies, and got cheques of "The Empire" drawn for himself for thousands of £s in a false name. He also operated in Ireland where he was not so well known but that company was now wound up and Mr W [sic] Gidley Lake is the only man who knows where its funds are gone to. Mr W Gidley Lake sports a beautiful pair of horses and a handsome carriage and does Rotten Row in fine style. The law of England and Ireland is now that any company started to do life assurance must lodge £20,000 with the government. We hope that this ends Gidley Lake's career in the insurance world." 
So, where did the Gidley Lakes fit into the Gidley family tree? The Gidley Lake tree begins with Joan Gidley who gave birth to an illegitimate child, William Lake Gidley in 1779, who was christened in Gidleigh. I can find no Joan Gidley of the correct age on the Winkleigh tree (which was associated with Gidleigh), but there is a Jane Gidley from nearby Drewsteignton of approximately the right age, who may just possibly be the mother. William Lake Gidley also used the names William Gidley Lake or William Gidley during his lifetime. He was variously described as both a farmer and labourer, late of Throwleigh, when he was declared insolvent and possibly imprisoned for debt in 1836, but he was discharged the same year. By 1841 he had moved to Torquay and was an agricultural labourer in Coombe Pafford. He had a large family of ten children of whom several moved to London, including the next to youngest, George Walter Gidley Lake who was born in 1832. George was a carpenter's apprentice in Torquay in the 1851 census but by 1859  was living in Islington in London and had started on his insurance career. In 1861 he was the Secretary of the Confident Assurance Company. Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper commented on 19 February 1865 on the English Life Assurance Company that one of the directors was G W Gidley Lake, carpenter, and that the "bitterness of the struggle between Mr Gidley Lake and his fellow working men led to some of the parties being banned from their own premises and assaulted in an attempt to enter."
The Penny Illustrated Paper reported on 5 October 1878 that "another of the "enterprising" young joint stock banks is no more. The "Merchants" Joint-Stock Bank, having ... splendidly appointed offices at 92 and 93 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, has come to grief. The manager was a Mr James [sic] Walter Gidley Lake, a name somewhat well-known in connection with former joint-stock companies. Curiously enough, the death of the manager occurred just about the the same time as the demise of the bank, the operations of which seem to have included a good deal of bill-discounting "on the Continong". "

George Walter Gidley Lake died in 1878 at 92-3 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London, so either at his office, or perhaps he lived "over the shop". Hel left three surviving sons and a daughter. Two sons and the daughter emigrated in the 1880s to the United States, possibly to avoid all the bad press, and possibly taking their mother with them, as I haven't traced her death in the UK. There seem to be no descendants. The youngest son Ernest remained as a commercial traveller in "French fancy goods" in North London, but he too  eventually left the country after 1911 and his death has also not yet been traced. It was possibly in South Africa where his daughter travelled in 1927, although she later returned to the UK.