Part XVIII.
BANK-NOTE FORGERIES.
CHAPTER I.
Viotti's division of violin-playing into two great classes--good playingand bad playing--is applicable to Bank-note making. We shall now cover afew pages with a faint outline of the various arts, stratagems, andcontrivances employed in concocting bad Bank-notes. The picture cannotbe drawn with very distinct or strong markings. The tableaux from whichit is copied, are so intertwisted and complicated with clever, slippery,ingenious scoundrelism, that a finished chart of it would be worse thanmorally displeasing--it would be tedious.
All arts require time and experience for their development. Whenanything great is to be done, first attempts are nearly always failures.The first Bank-note forgery was no exception to this rule, and its storyhas a spice of romance in it. The affair has never been circumstantiallytold; but some research enables us to detail it:--
In the month of August, 1757, a gentleman living in the neighborhood ofLincoln's Inn Fields, named Bliss, advertised for a clerk. There were,as was usual at that time, many applicants; but the successful one was ayoung man of twenty-six, named Richard William Vaughan. His manners wereso winning and his demeanor so much that of a gentleman, (he belongedindeed to a good county family in Staffordshire, and had been a studentat Pembroke Hall, Oxford,) that Mr. Bliss at once engaged him. Nor hadhe occasion, during the time the new clerk served him, to repent thestep. Vaughan was so diligent, intelligent, and steady, that not evenwhen it transpired that he was, commercially speaking, "under a cloud,"did his master lessen confidence in him. Some inquiry into hisantecedents showed that he had, while at College, been extravagant--thathis friends had removed him thence--set him up in Stafford as awholesale linen-draper, with a branch establishment in AldersgateStreet, London--that he had failed, and that there was some difficultyabout his certificate. But so well did he excuse his early failings andaccount for his misfortunes, that his employer did not check the regardhe felt growing towards him. Their intercourse was not merely that ofmaster and servant. Vaughan was a frequent guest at Bliss's table;by-and-by a daily visitor to his wife, and--to his ward.
Miss Bliss was a young lady of some attractions, not the smallest ofwhich was a hansome fortune. Young Vaughan made the most of hisopportunities. He was well-looking, well-informed, dressed well, andevidently made love well, for he won the young lady's heart. Theguardian was not flinty-hearted, and acted like a sensible man of theworld. "It was not," he said, on a subsequent and painful occasion,"till I learned from the servants and observed by the girl's behavior,that she greatly approved Richard Vaughan, that I consented; but oncondition that he should make it appear that he could maintain her. Ihad no doubt of his character as a servant, and I knew his family wererespectable. His brother is an eminent attorney." Vaughan boasted thathis mother (his father was dead) was willing to re-instate him inbusiness with a thousand pounds--five hundred of which was to be settledupon Miss Bliss for her separate use.
So far all went on prosperously. Providing Richard Vaughan could attaina position satisfactory to the Blisses, the marriage was to take placeon the Easter Monday following, which, the Calendar tells us, happenedearly in April, 1758. With this understanding, he left Mr. Bliss'sservice, to push his fortune.
Months passed on, and Vaughan appears to have made no way in the world.He had not even obtained his bankrupt's certificate. His visits to hisaffianced were frequent, and his protestations passionate; but he hadeffected nothing substantial towards a happy union. Miss Bliss'sguardian grew impatient; and, although there is no evidence to provethat the young lady's affection for Vaughan was otherwise than deep andsincere, yet even she began to lose confidence in him. His excuses wereevidently evasive, and not always true. The time fixed for the weddingwas fast approaching; and Vaughan saw that something must be done torestore the young lady's confidence.
About three weeks before the appointed Easter Tuesday, Vaughan went tohis mistress in high spirits. All was right--his certificate was to begranted in a day or two--his family had come forward with the money, andhe was to continue the Aldersgate business he had previously carried onas a branch of the Stafford trade. The capital he had waited so longfor, was at length forthcoming. In fact, here were two hundred and fortypounds of the five hundred he was to settle on his beloved. Vaughan thenproduced twelve twenty-pound notes; Miss Bliss could scarcely believeher eyes. She examined them. The paper, she remarked, seemed thickerthan usual. "Oh," said Bliss, "all Bank bills are not alike." The girlwas naturally much pleased. She would hasten to apprise Mistress Blissof the good news.
Not for the world! So far from letting any living soul know he hadplaced so much money in her hands, Vaughan exacted an oath of secresyfrom her, and sealed the notes up in a parcel with his own seal--makingher swear that she would on no account open it till after theirmarriage.
Some days after, that is, "on the twenty-second of March," (1758) we aredescribing the scene in Mr. Bliss's own words--"I was sitting with mywife by the fireside. The prisoner and the girl were sitting in the sameroom--which was a small one--and although they whispered, I coulddistinguish that Vaughan was very urgent to have something returnedwhich he had previously given to her. She refused, and Vaughan went awayin an angry mood. I then studied the girl's face, and saw that itexpressed much dissatisfaction. Presently a tear broke out. I thenspoke, and insisted on knowing the dispute. She refused to tell, and Itold her that until she did, I would not see her. The next day I askedthe same question of Vaughan--he hesitated. 'Oh' I said, 'I dare say itis some ten or twelve pound matter--something to buy a wedding baublewith.' He answered that it was much more than that--it was near threehundred pounds! 'But why all this secrecy?' I said; and he answered thatit was not proper for people to know that he had so much money till hiscertificate was signed. I then asked him to what intent he had left thenotes with the young lady? He said, as I had of late suspected him, hedesigned to give her a proof of his affection and truth. I said, 'Youhave demanded them in such a way that it must be construed as anabatement of your affection towards her.'" Vaughan was again exceedinglyurgent in asking back the packet; but Bliss remembering his manyevasions, and supposing that this was a trick, declined advising hisniece to restore the parcel without proper consideration. The very nextday it was discovered that the notes were counterfeits.
This occasioned stricter inquiries into Vaughan's previous career. Itturned out that he bore the character in his native place of adissipated and not very scrupulous person. The intention of his motherto assist him was an entire fabrication, and he had given Miss Bliss theforged notes solely for the purpose of deceiving her on that matter.Meanwhile the forgeries became known to the authorities, and he wasarrested. By what means, does not clearly appear. The "Annual Register"says, that one of the engravers gave information; but we find nothing inthe newspapers of the time to support that statement; neither was itcorroborated at Vaughan's trial.
When Vaughan was arrested, he thrust a piece of paper into his mouth,and began to chew it violently. It was, however, rescued, and proved tobe one of the forged notes; fourteen of them were found on his person,and when his lodgings were searched twenty more were discovered.
Vaughan was tried at the Old Bailey on the seventh of April, before LordMansfield. The manner of the forgery was detailed minutely at thetrial:--On the first of March, (about a week before he gave the twelvenotes to the young lady,) Vaughan called on Mr. John Corbould, anengraver, and gave an order for a promissory note to be engraved withthese words:--
"No. ----.
"I promise to pay to --------, or Bearer, ---- London ----."
There was to be a Britannia in the corner. When it was done, Mr. Sneed(for that was the _alias_ Vaughan adopted) came again, but objected tothe execution of the work. The Britannia was not good, and the words "Ipromise" were too near the edge of the plate. Another was in consequenceengraved, and on the fourth of March, Vaughan took it away. Heimmediately repaired to a printer, and had forty-eight impressions
takenon thin paper, provided by himself. Meanwhile, he had ordered, on thesame morning, of Mr. Charles Fourdrinier, another engraver, a secondplate, with what he called "a direction," in the words, "For theGovernor and Company of the Bank of England." This was done, and about aweek later he brought some paper, each sheet "folded up," said thewitness, "very curiously, so that I could not see what was in them. Iwas going to take the papers from him, but he said he must go upstairswith me, and see them worked off himself. I took him up-stairs; he wouldnot let me have them out of his hands. I took a sponge and wetted them,and put them one by one on the plate in order for printing them. Aftermy boy had done two or three of them, I went down-stairs, and my boyworked the rest off, and the prisoner came down and paid me."
Here the Court pertinently asked, "What imagination had you when a manthus came to you to print on secret paper, 'the Governor and Company ofthe Bank of England?'"
The engraver's reply was:--"I then did not suspect anything; but I shalltake care for the future." As this was the first Bank-of-England-noteforgery that was ever perpetrated, the engraver was held excused.
It may be mentioned, as an evidence of the delicacy of the reporters,that in their account of the trial, Miss Bliss's name is not mentioned.Her designation is "a young lady." We subjoin the notes of herevidence:--
"A young lady (sworn). The prisoner delivered me some bills; these arethe same (producing twelve counterfeit Bank notes sealed up in a cover,for twenty pounds each;) said they were Bank bills. I said they werethicker paper--he said all bills are not alike. I was to keep them tillafter we were married. He put them into my hands to show he putconfidence in me, and desired me not to show them to anybody; sealedthem up with his own seal, and obliged me by an oath not to discoverthem to anybody, and I did not till he discovered them himself; he wasto settle so much in Stock on me."
Vaughan urged in his defence that his sole object was to deceive hisaffianced, and that he intended to destroy all the notes after hismarriage. But it had been proved that the prisoner had asked one JohnBallingar to change first one, and then twenty of the notes; but whichthat person was unable to do. Besides, had his sole object been todazzle Miss Bliss with his fictitious wealth, he would most probablyhave intrusted more, if not all the notes, to her keeping.
He was found guilty, and passed the day that had been fixed for hiswedding, as a condemned criminal.
On the 11th May, 1758, Richard William Vaughan was executed at Tyburn.By his side, on the same gallows, there was another forger--WilliamBoodgere, a military officer, who had forged a draught on an army-agentnamed Calcroft, and expiated the offence with the first forger ofBank-of-England notes.
The gallows may seem hard measure to have meted out to Vaughan, when itis considered that none of his notes were negotiated and no personsuffered by his fraud. Not one of the forty-eight notes, except thetwelve delivered to Miss Bliss, had been out of his possession; indeedthe imitation must have been very clumsily executed, and detection wouldhave instantly followed any attempt to pass the counterfeits. There wasno endeavor to copy the style of engraving on a real Bank note. That wasleft to the engraver; and as each sheet passed through the press twice,the words added at the second printing, "For the Governor and Company ofthe Bank of England," could have fallen into their proper place on anyone of the sheets, only by a miracle. But what would have made theforgery clear to even a superficial observer, was the singular omissionof the second "n" in the word England.[D]
[D] Bad orthography was by no means uncommon in the most important documents at that period; the days of the week, in the day-books of the Bank of England itself, are spelt in a variety of ways.
The criticism on Vaughan's note of a Bank clerk examined on the trialwas--"There is some resemblance to be sure; but this note" (that uponwhich the prisoner was tried) "is numbered thirteen thousand eighthundred and forty, and we never reach so high a number." Besides, therewas no water-mark in the paper. The note, of which a fac-simile appearedin our eighteenth number, and dated so early as 1699, has a regulardesign in the texture of the paper, showing that the water-mark is asold as the Bank notes themselves.
Vaughan was greatly commiserated. But despite the unskillfulness of theforgery, and the insignificant consequences which followed it, the crimewas considered of too dangerous a character not to be marked, from itsvery novelty, with exemplary punishment. Hanging created at that time noremorse in the public mind, and it was thought necessary to set upVaughan as a warning to all future Bank-note forgers. The crime was toodangerous not to be marked with the severest penalties. Forgery differsfrom other crimes not less in the magnitude of the spoil it may obtainand of the injury it inflicts, than in the facilities attending itsaccomplishment. The common thief finds a limit to his depredations inthe bulkiness of his booty, which is generally confined to such propertyas he can carry about his person; the swindler raises insuperable anddefeating obstacles to his frauds if the amount he seeks to obtain is soconsiderable as to awaken close vigilance or inquiry. To carry theirprojects to any very profitable extent, these criminals are reduced tothe hazardous necessity of acting in concert, and thus infinitelyincreasing the risks of detection. But the forger need have noaccomplice--he is burdened with no bulky and suspicious property--heneeds no receiver to assist his contrivances. The skill of his ownindividual right-hand can command thousands--often with the certainty ofnot being detected, and oftener with such rapidity as to enable him tobaffle the pursuit of justice.
It was a long time before Vaughan's rude attempt was improved upon; butin the same year, (1758,) another department of the crime was commencedwith perfect success, namely, an ingenious alteration, for fraudulentpurposes, of real Bank notes. A few months after Vaughan's execution,one of the northern mails was stopped and robbed by a highwayman;several Bank notes were comprised in the spoil, and the robber, settingup with these as a gentleman, went boldly to the Hatfield Post-office,ordered a chaise-and-four, rattled away down the road, and changed anote at every change of horses. The robbery was of course soon madeknown, and the numbers and dates of the stolen notes were advertised ashaving been stopped at the Bank. To the genius of a highwayman thisoffered but a small obstacle, and the gentleman-thief changed all thefigures "1" he could find, into "4's." These notes passed currentlyenough; but on reaching the Bank, the alteration was detected, and thelast holder was refused payment. As that person had given a valuableconsideration for the note, he brought an action for the recovery of theamount; and at the trial it was ruled by the Lord Chief Justice, that"any person paying a valuable consideration for a Bank note, payable tobearer, in a fair course of business, has an understood-right to receivethe money of the Bank."
It took a quarter of a century to bring the art of forging Bank notes toperfection. In 1779, this was nearly attained by an ingenious gentlemannamed Mathison, a watch-maker, from the matrimonial village of GretnaGreen. Having learnt the arts of engraving and of simulating signatures,he tried his hand at the notes of the Darlington Bank; but, with theconfidence of skill, was not cautious in passing them, was suspected andabsconded to Edinburgh. Scorning to let his talent be wasted, he favoredthe Scottish public with many spurious Royal Bank-of-Scotland notes, andregularly forged his way by their aid to London. At the end of Februaryhe took handsome lodgings in the Strand, opposite Arundel Street. Hisindustry was remarkable; for, by the 12th of March, he had planned andpolished rough pieces of copper, engraved them, forged the water-mark,printed, and negotiated several impressions. His plan was to travel andto purchase articles in shops. He bought a pair of shoe-buckles atCoventry with a forged note, which was eventually detected at the Bankof England. He had got so bold that he paid such frequent visits inThreadneedle Street that the Bank clerks became familiar with hisperson. He was continually changing notes of one for anotherdenomination. These were his originals, which he procured to makespurious copies of. One day seven thousand pounds came in from theStamp Office. There was a dispute about one of the notes. Mathison, whowas present, though at som
e distance, declared, oracularly, that thenote was a good one. How could he know so well? A dawn of suspicionarose in the minds of the clerks; one trail led into another, andMathison was finally apprehended. So well were his notes forged, that,on the trial, an experienced Bank clerk declared he could not tellwhether the note handed him to examine, was forged or not. Mathisonoffered to reveal his secret of forging the water-mark, if mercy wereshown to him; this was refused, and he suffered the penalty of hiscrime.
Mathison was a genius in his criminal way, but a greater than heappeared in 1786. In that year perfection seemed to have been reached.So considerable was the circulation of spurious paper-money that itappeared as if some unknown power had set up a bank of its own. Noteswere issued from it, and readily passed current, in hundreds andthousands. They were not to be distinguished from the genuine paper ofThreadneedle Street. Indeed, when one was presented there, in duecourse, so complete were all its parts, so masterly the engraving, socorrect the signatures, so skillful the water-mark, that it was promptlypaid, and only discovered to be a forgery when it reached a particulardepartment. From that period forged paper continued to be presented,especially at the time of lottery-drawing. Consultations were held withthe police. Plans were laid to help detection. Every effort was made totrace the forger. Clarke, the best detective of his day, went like asluth-hound, on the track; for in those days the expressive word"blood-money" was known. Up to a certain point there was littledifficulty; but beyond that, consummate art defied the ingenuity of theofficer. In whatever way the notes came, the train of discovery alwayspaused at the lottery-offices. Advertisements offering large rewardswere circulated; but the unknown forger baffled detection.
While this base paper was in full currency, there appeared anadvertisement in the Daily Advertiser for a servant. The successfulapplicant was a young man, in the employment of a musical-instrumentmaker, who, some time after, was called upon by a coachman, and informedthat the advertiser was waiting in a coach to see him. The young man wasdesired to enter the conveyance, where he beheld a person with somethingof the appearance of a foreigner, sixty or seventy years old, apparentlytroubled with the gout. A camlet surtout was buttoned round his mouth, alarge patch was placed over his left eye, and nearly every part of hisface was concealed. He affected much infirmity. He had a faint hecticcough; and invariably presented the patched side to the view of theservant. After some conversation--in the course of which he representedhimself as guardian to a young nobleman of great fortune--the interviewconcluded with the engagement of the applicant, and the new servant wasdirected to call on Mr. Brank, at 29 Titchfield Street, Oxford Street.At this interview Brank inveighed against his whimsical ward for hislove of speculating in lottery tickets, and told the servant that hisprincipal duty would be to purchase them. After one or two meetings, ateach of which Brank kept his face muffled, he handed a forty and twentypound Bank note; told the servant to be very careful not to lose them,and directed him to buy lottery-tickets at separate offices. The youngman fulfilled his instructions, and at the moment he was returning, wassuddenly called by his employer from the other side of the street,congratulated on his rapidity, and then told to go to various otheroffices in the neighborhood of the Royal Exchange, and to purchase moreshares. Four hundred pounds in Bank-of-England notes were handed him,and the wishes of the mysterious Mr. Brank were satisfactorily effected.These scenes were continually enacted. Notes to a large amount were thuscirculated, lottery tickets purchased, and Mr. Brank--always in a coach,with his face studiously concealed--was ever ready on the spot toreceive them. The surprise of the servant was somewhat excited; but hadhe known that from the period he left his master to purchase thetickets, one female figure accompanied all his movements, that, when heentered the offices, it waited at the door, peered cautiously in at thewindow, hovered round him like a second shadow, watched him carefully,and never left him until once more he was in the company of hisemployer--that surprise would have been greatly increased.[E] Again andagain were these extraordinary scenes rehearsed. At last the Bankobtained a clue, and the servant was taken into custody. The directorsimagined that they had secured the actor of so many parts, that theflood of forged notes which had inundated that establishment would atlength be dammed up at his source. Their hopes proved fallacious, and itwas found that "Old Patch" (as the mysterious forger was, from theservant's description, nick-named,) had been sufficiently clever tobaffle the Bank directors. The house in Titchfield street was searched;but Mr. Brank had deserted it, and not a trace of a single implement offorgery was to be seen.
[E] Francis's History of the Bank of England.
All that could be obtained was some little knowledge of "Old Patch's"proceedings. It appeared that he carried on his paper-coining entirelyby himself. His only confidant was his mistress. He was his ownengraver. He even made his own ink. He manufactured his own paper. Witha private press he worked his own notes, and counterfeited thesignatures of the cashiers, completely. But these discoveries had noeffect, for it became evident that Mr. Patch had set up a presselsewhere. Although his secret continued as impenetrable, his notesbecame as plentiful as ever. Five years of unbounded prosperity ought tohave satisfied him--but it did not. Success seemed to pall him. Hisgenius was of that insatiable order which demands new excitements, and aconstant succession of new flights. The following paragraph from anewspaper of 1786, relates to the same individual:--
"On the 17th of December, ten pounds was paid into the Bank, for whichthe clerk, as usual, gave a ticket to receive a Bank note of equalvalue. This ticket ought to have been carried immediately to thecashier, instead of which the bearer took it home, and curiously addedan 0 to the original sum, and returning, presented it so altered to thecashier, for which he received a note of one hundred pounds. In theevening, the clerks found a deficiency in the accounts, and on examiningthe tickets of the day, not only that but two others were discovered tohave been obtained in the same manner. In one, the figure 1 was alteredto 4, and in another to 5, by which the artist received, upon the whole,nearly one thousand pounds."
To that princely felony, Old Patch, as will be seen in the sequel, addedsmaller misdemeanors which one would think were far beneath his notice,except to convince himself and his mistress of the unbounded facility ofhis genius for fraud.
At that period the affluent public were saddled with a tax on plate, andmany experiments were made to evade it. Among others one was invented bya Mr. Charles Price, a stock-jobber and lottery-office keeper, which,for a time, puzzled the tax-gatherer. Mr. Charles Price lived in greatstyle, gave splendid dinners, and did everything on the grandest scale.Yet Mr. Charles Price had no plate! The authorities could not find somuch as a silver tooth-pick on his magnificent premises. In truth, whathe was too cunning to possess, he borrowed. For one of his sumptuousentertainments, he hired the plate of a silversmith in Cornhill, andleft the value in bank notes as security for its safe return. One ofthese notes having proved a forgery, was traced to Mr. Charles Price;and Mr. Charles Price was not to be found at that particular juncture.Although this excited no surprise--for he was often an absentee from hisoffice for short periods--yet, in due course and as a formal matter ofbusiness, an officer was sent to find him, and to ask his explanationregarding the false notes. After tracing a man whom he had a strongnotion was Mr. Charles Price, through countless lodgings and innumerabledisguises, the officer (to use his own expression) "nabbed" Mr. CharlesPrice. But, as Mr. Clark observed, his prisoner and his prisoner's ladywere even then "too many" for him; for although he lost not a moment intrying to secure the forging implements, after he had discovered thatMr. Charles Price, and Mr. Brank, and Old Patch, were all concentratedin the person of his prisoner, he found the lady had destroyed everytrace of evidence. Not a vestige of the forging factory was left; notthe point of a graver, nor a single spot of ink, nor a shred of silverpaper, nor a scrap of anybody's handwriting, was to be met with.Despite, however, this paucity of evidence to convict him, Mr. CharlesPrice had not the courage to face
a jury, and eventually he saved thejudicature and the Tyburn executive much trouble and expense, by hanginghimself in Bridewell.
The success of Mr. Charles Price has never been surpassed, and evenafter the darkest era in the history of Bank forgeries--which dates fromthe suspension of cash payments, in February, 1797, and which will betreated of in the succeeding chapter--"Old Patch" was still rememberedas the Caesar of Forgers.
CHAPTER II.
In the history of crime, as in all other histories, there is one greatepoch by which minor dates are arranged and defined. In a list ofremarkable events, one remarkable event more remarkable than the last,is the standard around which all smaller circumstances are grouped.Whatever happens in Mohammedan annals, is set down as having occurred somany years after the flight of the Prophet; in the records of Londoncommerce a great fraud or a great failure is mentioned as having come tolight so many months after the flight of Rowland Stephenson. Sportingmen date from remarkable struggles for the Derby prize, and refer to1840, as "Bloomsbury's year." The highwayman of old dated from DickTurpin's last appearance on the fatal stage at Tyburn turnpike. In likemanner, the standard epoch in the annals of Bank-Note Forgery, is theyear 1797, when (on the 25th of February) one-pound notes were put intocirculation instead of golden guineas; or, to use the City idiom, 'cashpayments were suspended.'
At that time the Bank-of-England note was no better in appearance--hadnot improved as a work of art--since the days of Vaughan, Mathison, andOld Patch; it was just as easily imitated, and the chances of thesuccessful circulation of counterfeits were increased a thousand-fold.
Up to 1793 no notes had been issued even for sums so small as fivepounds. Consequently all the Bank paper then in use, passed through thehands and under the eyes of the affluent and educated, who could morereadily distinguish the false from the true. Hence, during the fourteenyears which preceded the non-golden and small-note era, there were onlythree capital convictions for the crime. When, however, theBank-of-England notes became "common and popular," a prodigiousquantity--to complete the quotation--was also made "base," and manypersons were hanged for concocting them.
To a vast number of the humbler orders, Bank Notes were a rarity and a"sight." Many had never seen such a thing before they were called uponto take one or two-pound notes in exchange for small merchandise, ortheir own labor. How were they to judge? How were they to tell a goodfrom a spurious note?--especially when it happened that the officers ofthe Bank themselves, were occasionally mistaken, so complete and perfectwere the imitations then afloat. There cannot be much doubt that whereone graphic rascal was found out, ten escaped. They snapped theirfingers at the executioner, and went on enjoying their beef-steaks andporter--their winter treats to the play--their summer excursions to thesuburban tea-gardens--their fashionable lounges at Tunbridge Wells,Bath, Margate, and Ramsgate--doing business with wonderful unconcern,and "face" all along their journeys. These usually expensive, but tothem profitable enjoyments, were continually coming to light at thetrials of the lesser rogues who undertook the issue department; for,from the ease with which close imitation was effected, the manufacturewas more readily completed than the uttering. The fraternity andsisterhood of utterers played many parts, and were banded in strictcompact with the forgers. Some were turned loose into fairs andmarkets, in all sorts of appropriate disguises. Farmers, who couldhardly distinguish a field of standing wheat from a field ofbarley--butchers, who never wielded more deadly weapons than two-prongforks--country boys, with cockney accents, bought gingerbread, andtreated their so-called sweethearts with ribbons and muslins, all by theinterchange of false "flimseys." The better-mannered disguisedthemselves as ladies and gentlemen, paid their losings at cards orhazard, or their tavern bills, their milliners, and coachmakers, inmotley money, composed of part real and part base bank paper. Some wentabout in the cloak of the Samaritan, and generously subscribed tocharities wherever they saw a chance of changing a bad "five" for threeor four good "ones." Ladies of sweet disposition went about doing goodamong the poor--personally inquired into distress, relieved it bysending out a daughter or a son to a neighboring shop for change, andleft five shillings for present necessities, walking off with fifteen.So openly--in spite of the gallows--was forgery carried on, that whoeverchose to turn utterer found no difficulty in getting a stock-in-trade tocommence with. Indeed, in the days of highwaymen, no traveling-gentleman'spocket or valise was considered properly furnished without a few forgednotes wherewith to satisfy the demands of the members of the "HighToby." This offence against the laws of the road, however, soon becametoo common, and wayfarers who were stopped and rifled, had to pledgetheir sacred words of honor that their notes were the genuine promisesof Abraham Newland, and that their watches were not of the factory ofMr. Pinchbeck.
With temptations so strong, it is no wonder that the forgers' tradeflourished, with only an occasional check from the strong arm of thelaw. It followed, therefore, that from the issue of small notes inFebruary, 1797, to the end of 1817--twenty years--there were no fewerthan eight hundred and seventy prosecutions connected with Bank-NoteForgery, in which there were only one hundred and sixty acquittals, andupwards of three hundred executions! 1818 was the culminating point ofthe crime. In the first three months there were no fewer than onehundred and twenty-eight prosecutions by the Bank; and by the end ofthat year, two-and-thirty individuals had been hanged for Note Forgery.So far from this appalling series of examples having any effect inchecking the progress of the crime, it is proved that at, and after thatvery time, base notes were poured into the Bank at the rate of _ahundred a day_!
The enormous number of undetected forgeries afloat, may be estimated bythe fact, that from the 1st of January, 1812, to the 10th April, 1818,one hundred and thirty-one thousand three hundred and thirty-one piecesof paper were ornamented by the Bank officers with the word"Forged"--upwards of one hundred and seven thousand of them wereone-pound counterfeits.
Intrinsically, it would appear from an Hibernian view of the case, then,that bad notes were nearly as good, (except not merely having beenmanufactured at the Bank,) as good ones. So thoroughly and completelydid some of them resemble the authorized engraving of the Bank, that itwas next to impossible to distinguish the false from the true. Countlessinstances, showing rather the skill of the forger than the want ofvigilance in Bank officials, could be brought forward. Respectablepersons were constantly taken into custody on a charge of utteringforgeries, imprisoned for days and then liberated. A close scrutinyproving that the accusations were made upon genuine paper. In September,1818 Mr A. Burnett, of Portsmouth, had the satisfaction of having anote which had passed through his hands, returned to him from the Bankof England, with the base mark upon it. Satisfied of its genuineness, here-inclosed it to the cashier, and demanded its payment. By return ofpost he received the following letter:--
"_Bank of England, 16 Sept., 1818._
"SIR,--I have to acknowledge your letter to Mr. Hase, of the 13th inst., inclosing a one-pound note, and, in answer thereto, I beg leave to acquaint you, that on inspection it appears to be a genuine Note of the Bank of England; I therefore, agreeably to your request, inclose you one of the like value, No. 26, 276, dated 22nd August, 1818.
"I am exceedingly sorry, sir, that such an unusual oversight should have occurred to give you so much trouble, which I trust your candor will induce you to excuse when I assure you that the unfortunate mistake has arisen entirely out of the hurry and multiplicity of business.
"I am, sir, "Your most obedient servant, "J. RIPPON.
"A. BURNETT, ESQ.
"7 Belle Vue Terrace."Southsea, near Portsmouth."
A more extraordinary case is on record:--A note was traced to thepossession of a tradesman, which had been pronounced by the BankInspectors to have been forged. The man would not give it up, and wastaken before a magistrate, charged with "having a note in hispossession, well knowing it to be forged." He was comm
itted to prison onevidence of the Bank Inspector, but was afterwards released on bail toappear when called on. He was _not_ called on; and, at the expiration oftwelve months, (having kept the note all that time,) he brought anaction against the Bank for false imprisonment. On the trial the notewas proved to be genuine! and the plaintiff was awarded damages of onehundred pounds.
It is a fact sufficiently dreadful that three hundred and thirty humanlives should have been sacrificed in twenty-one years; but when werelate a circumstance which admits the merest probability thatsome--even one--of those lives may have been sacrificed in innocence ofthe offence for which they suffered, the consideration becomesappalling.
Some time after the frequency of the crime had in other respectssubsided, there was a sort of bloody assize at Haverfordwest, in Wales;several prisoners were tried for forging and uttering, and thirteen wereconvicted--chiefly on the evidence of Mr. Christmas, a Bank Inspector,who swore positively, in one case, that the document named in theindictment, "was not an impression from a Bank-of-England plate--was notprinted on the paper with the ink or water-mark of the Bank--neither wasit in the handwriting of the signing clerk." Upon this testimony theprisoner, together with twelve participators in similar crimes, werecondemned to be hanged!
The morning after the trial, Mr. Christmas was leaving his lodging, whenan acquaintance stepped up and asked him, as a friend, to give hisopinion on a note he had that morning received. It was a bright day; Mr.Christmas put on his spectacles, and carefully scrutinized the documentin a business-like and leisurely manner. He pronounced it to be forged.The gentleman, a little chagrined, brought it away with him to town. Itis not a little singular that he happened to know Mr. Burnett, ofPortsmouth, whom he accidentally met, and to whom he showed the note.Mr. Burnett was evidently a capital judge of bank paper. He saidnothing, but slipping his hand into one pocket, handed to theastonished gentleman full change, and put the note into another. "Itcannot be a good note," exclaimed the latter, "for my friend Christmastold me at Haverfordwest that it is a forgery!" But as Mr. Burnett hadbacked his opinion to the amount of twenty shillings, he declined toretract it; and lost no time in writing to Mr. Henry Hase (AbrahamNewland's successor) to test its accuracy.
It was lucky that he did so; for this little circumstance saved thirteenlives!
Mr. Christmas's co-inspectors at the Bank of England actually reversedhis non-official judgment that the note was a forgery. It was officiallypronounced to be a good note; yet upon the evidence of Mr. Christmas asregards other notes, the thirteen human beings at Haverfordwest weretrembling at the foot of the gallows. It was promptly and cogentlyargued that as Mr. Christmas's judgment had failed him in the deliberateexamination of one note, it might also err as to others, and theconvicts were respited.
The converse of this sort of mistake often happened. Bad notes werepronounced to be genuine by the Bank. Early in January, 1818, awell-dressed woman entered the shop of Mr. James Hammond, of 40Bishopsgate Street Without, and having purchased three pounds worth ofgoods, tendered in payment a ten-pound note. There was somethinghesitating and odd in her manner; and, although Mr. Hammond could seenothing the matter with the note, yet he was ungallant enough tosuspect--from the uncomfortable demeanor of his customer--that all wasnot right. He hoped she was not in a hurry, for he had no change; hemust send to a neighbor for it. He immediately dispatched his shopman tothe most affluent of all his neighbors--to her of Threadneedle Street.The delay occasioned the lady to remark, "I suppose he is gone to theBank!" Mr. Hammond having answered in the affirmative, engaged hiscustomer in conversation, and they freely discussed the current topicsof the day; till the young man returned with ten one poundBank-of-England Notes. Mr. Hammond felt a little remorse at havingsuspected his patroness, who departed with the purchases with the utmostdispatch. She had not been gone half an hour before two gentlemen rushedinto the shop in a state of grievous chagrin; one was the Bank clerk whohad changed the note. He begged Mr. Hammond would be good enough to givehim another for it. "Why?" asked the puzzled shopkeeper. "Why, sir,"replied the distressed clerk, "it is forged!" Of course his request wasnot complied with. The clerk declared that his dismissal was highlyprobable; but Mr. Hammond was inexorable.
The arguments in favor of death-punishments never fail so signally aswhen brought to the test of the scaffold and its effect on Bankforgeries. When these were most numerous, although from twenty to thirtypersons were put to death in one year, the gallows was never deprived ofan equal share of prey during the next. As long as simulated notes couldbe passed with ease, and detected with difficulty, the Old Bailey had noterrors for clever engravers and dexterous imitators of the hieroglyphicautographs of the Bank-of-England signers.
At length public alarm at the prevalence of forgeries, and thedifficulty of knowing them as such, arose to the height of demandingsome sort of relief. In 1819 a committee was appointed by the Governmentto inquire into the best means of prevention. One hundred and eightyprojects were submitted. They mostly consisted of intricate designs suchas rendered great expense necessary to imitate. But none were adoptedfor the obvious reason that ever so indifferent and easily executedimitation of an elaborate note is quite sufficient to deceive anuneducated eye, as had been abundantly proved in the instance of theIrish "black note." The Bank had not been indifferent or idle on thesubject, for it had spent some hundred thousand pounds in projects forinimitable notes. At last--not long before the Commission wasappointed--they were on the eve of adopting an ingenious and costlymechanism for printing a note so precisely alike on both sides as toappear as one impression, when one of the Bank printers imitated itexactly by the simple contrivance of two plates and a hinge. This mayserve as a sample of the other one hundred and seventy-nine projects.
Neither the gallows nor expensive and elaborate works of art having beenfound effectual in preventing forgery, the true expedient for at leastlessening the crime was adopted in 1821:--the issue of small notes waswholly discontinued, and sovereigns were brought into circulation. Theforger's trade was nearly annihilated. Criminal returns inform us thatduring the nine years after the resumption of gold currency the numberof convictions for offences having reference to the Bank-of-Englandnotes were less than one hundred, and the executions only eight. Thisclinches the argument against the efficacy of the gallows. In 1830death-punishments were repealed for all minor offences, and, althoughthe cases of Bank-Note Forgeries slightly increased for a time, yetthere is no reason to suppose that they are greater now than they werebetween 1821 and 1830.
At present, Bank-paper forgeries are not numerous. One of the latest wasthat of the twenty-pound note, of which about sixty specimens foundtheir way into the Bank. It was well executed in Belgium by foreigners,and the impressions were passed among the Change-agents in varioustowns in France and the Netherlands. The speculation did not succeed;for the notes got into, and were detected at the Bank, a little too soonto profit the schemers much.
The most considerable frauds now perpetrated are not forgeries; but aredone upon the plan of the highwayman mentioned in our first chapter. Inorder to give currency to stolen or lost notes which have been stoppedat the Bank, (lists of which are supplied to every banker in thecountry,) the numbers and dates are fraudulently altered. Some yearssince, a gentleman, who had been receiving a large sum of money at theBank, was robbed of it in an omnibus. The notes gradually came in, butall were altered. The last was one for five hundred pounds, dated the12th March, 1846, and numbered 32109. On the Monday (3rd June) after thelast "Derby Day," amid the _twenty-five thousand pieces_ of paper thatwere examined by the Bank Inspectors, there was one note for fivehundred pounds, dated 12th March, 1848, and numbered 32409. At that notean inspector suddenly arrested his rapid examination of the pile ofwhich it was one. He scrutinized it for a minute, and pronounced it"altered." On the next day, that same note, with a perfect one for fivehundred pounds, is shown to us with an intimation of the fact. We lookat every letter--we trace every line--follow every flourish; we holdboth
up to the light--we undulate our visuals with the waves of thewater-mark. We confess that we cannot pronounce decisively, but we havean opinion derived from a slight "goutiness" in the fine stroke of thefigure 4 that No. 32409 is the forgery! so indeed it was. Yet the BankInspector had picked it out from the hundred genuine notes asinstantaneously--pounced upon it as rapidly as if it had been printedwith green ink upon card-board.
This, then, O gentlemen forgers and sporting-note alterers, is the kindof odds which is against you. A minute investigation of the note assuredus of your exceeding skill and ingenuity; but it also convinced us ofthe superiority of the detective ordeal which you have to blind and topass. In this instance you had followed the highwayman's plan, and hadput with great cunning, the additional marks to the 1 in 32109 to makeit into a 4. To hide the scraping out of the top or serif of the figure1--to make the angle from which to draw the fine line of the 4--you hadartfully inserted with a pen the figures "L16 16," as if that sum hadbeen received from a person bearing a name that you had written above.You had with extraordinary neatness cut out the "6" from 1846, andfilled up the hole with an 8, abstracted from some note of lesser value.You had fitted it with remarkable precision--only you had not got the 8quite upright enough to pass the shrewd glance of the Bank Inspector.
We have seen a one-pound note made up of refuse pieces of a hundredother Bank notes, and pasted on a piece of paper, (like a note that hadbeen accidentally torn,) so as to present an entire and _passable_whole.
To alter with a pen a 1 into a 4 is an easy task--to cut out the numeralfrom the _date_ in one note and insert it into another needs only a tyroin paper-cutting; but to change the special _number_ by which each noteis distinguished, is a feat only second in impossibility to trumpingevery court-card of every suit six times running in a rubber of whist.Yet we have seen a note so cleverly altered by this expedient, that itwas actually paid by the Bank cashiers. If the reader will take a Banknote out of his purse, and examine its "number," he will at onceappreciate the combination of chances required to find, on any othernote, any other figure that shall displace any one of the numerals soas to avoid detections. The "number" of every Bank note is printed twiceon one line--first, on the words "I promise," secondly, on the words,"or bearer." Sometimes the figures cover the whole of thosewords--sometimes they only partly obscure them. No. 99066 now liesbefore us. Suppose we wished to substitute the "0" of another note forthe first "9" of the one now under our eye; we see that the "9" covers alittle bit of the "P," and intersects in three places the "r," in"Promise." Now, to give this alteration the smallest chance, we mustlook through hundreds of other notes till we find an "0" which not onlycovers a part of the "P" and intersects the "r" in three places, but inprecisely _the same_ places as the "9" on our note does; else thestrokes of those letters would not meet when the "0" was let in, andinstant detection would ensue. But even then the job would only be halfdone. The second initial "9" stands upon the "or" in "or bearer," and weshould have to investigate several hundred more notes, to find an "0"that intersected that little word exactly in the same manner, and thenlet it in with such mathematical nicety, that not the hundredth part ofa hair's breath of the transferred paper should fail to range with therest of the letters and figures on the altered note; to say nothing ofhiding the joins in the paper. This is the triumph of ambi-dexterity; itis a species of patch-work far beyond the most sublime achievements of"Old Patch" himself."
Time has proved that the steady perseverance of the Bank--despite themost furious clamor--in gradually improving their original note and thuspreserving those most essential qualities, simplicity anduniformity--has been a better preventive to forgery than any one of thehundreds of plans, pictures, complications, chemicals, and colors, whichhave been forced upon the Directors' notice. Whole-note forgery isnearly extinct. The lives of Eminent Forgers need only wait for a singleaddendum; for only one man is left who can claim superiority overMathison, and he was, unfortunately for the Bank of England, born alittle too late, to trip up his heels, or those of the late Mr. CharlesPrice. He can do everything with a note that the patchers, and alterers,and simulators can do, and a great deal more. Flimsy as a Bank note isto a proverb, he can split it into three perfect continuous, flat, andeven leaves. He has forged more than one design sent into the Bank as aninfallible preventive to forgery. You may, if you like, lend him ahundred-pound note; he will undertake to discharge every trace of inkfrom it, and return it to you perfectly uninjured and a perfect blank.We are not quite sure that if you were to burn a Bank note and hand himthe black cinders, that he would not bleach it, and join it, and conjureit back again into a very good-looking, payable piece of currency. Butwe _are_ sure of the truth of the following story, which we have fromour friend the transcendent forger referred to, and who is no other thanthe chief of the Engraving and Engineering department of the Bank ofEngland:--
Some years ago--in the days of the thirty-shilling notes--a certainIrishman saved up the sum of eighty-seven pounds ten, in notes of theBank of Ireland. As a sure means of securing this valuable property, heput it in the foot of an old stocking, and buried it in his garden,where Bank-note paper couldn't fail to keep dry, and to come out, whenwanted, in the best preservation.
After leaving his treasure in this excellent place of deposit for somemonths, it occurred to the depositor to take a look at it, and see howit was getting on. He found the stocking-foot apparently full of thefragments of mildewed and broken mushrooms. No other shadow of a shadeof eighty-seven pounds ten.
In the midst of his despair, the man had the sense not to disturb theashes of his property. He took the stocking-foot in his hand, posted offto the Bank in Dublin, entered it one morning as soon as it was opened,and, staring at the clerk with a most extraordinary absence of allexpression in his face, said,
"Ah, look at that, sir! Can ye do anything for me?"
"What do you call this?" said the clerk.
"Eighty-siven pound ten, praise the Lord, as I'm a sinner! Ohone! Therewas a twenty as was paid to me by Mr. Phalim O'Dowd, sir, and a ten aswas changed by Pat Rielly, and a five as was owen by Tim; and, TedConnor, ses he to ould Phillips----"
"Well!--never mind old Phillips. You have done it, my friend!"
"Oh, Lord, sir, and it's done it I have, most com-plate! Oh, good luckto you, sir; can you do nothing for me?"
"I don't know what's to be done with such a mess as this. Tell me, firstof all, what you put in the stocking, you unfortunate blunderer?"
"Oh yes, sir, and tell you true as if it was the last word I had tospake entirely, and the Lord be good to you, and Ted Conner ses he toould Phillips, regarden the five as was owen by Tim, and not includen ofthe ten which was changed by Pat Rielly----"
"You didn't put Pat Rielly or ould Phillips into the stocking did you?"
"Is it Pat or ould Phillips as was ever the valy of eighty-sivin poundten, lost and gone, and includen the five as was owen by Tim, and TedConnor----"
"Then tell me what you _did_ put in the stocking, and let me take itdown. And then hold your tongue, if you can, and go your way, and comeback to-morrow."
The particulars of the notes were taken, without any reference to ouldPhillips, who could not, however, by any means be kept out of the story;and the man departed.
When he was gone, the stocking-foot was shown to the then Chief Engraverof the notes, who said, that if anybody could settle the business, hisson could. And he proposed that the particulars of the notes should notbe communicated to his son, who was then employed in his department ofthe Bank, but should be put away under lock and key; and that if hisson's ingenuity should enable him to discover from these ashes whatnotes had really been put in the stocking, and the two lists shouldtally, the man should be paid the lost amount. To this prudent proposalthe Bank of Ireland readily assented, being extremely anxious that theman should not be a loser, but, of course, deeming it essential to beprotected from imposition.
The son readily undertook the delicate commission proposed to h
im. Hedetached the fragments from the stocking with the utmost care, on thefine point of a pen-knife--laid the whole gently in a basin of warmwater, and presently saw them, to his delight, begin to unfold andexpand like flowers. By and by, he began to "teaze them" with very lighttouches of the ends of a camel's-hair pencil, and so, by little andlittle, and by the most delicate use of the warm water, the camel's-hairpencil, and the pen-knife, got the various morsels separate before him,and began to piece them together. The first piece laid down was faintlyrecognizable by a practiced eye as a bit of the left-hand bottom cornerof a twenty-pound note; then came a bit of a five--then of a ten--thenmore bits of a twenty--then more bits of a five and ten--then, anotherleft-hand bottom corner of a twenty--so there were two twenties!--and soon, until, to the admiration and astonishment of the whole Bank, henoted down the exact amount deposited in the stocking, and the exactnotes of which it had been composed. Upon this--as he wished to see anddivert himself with the man on his return--he provided himself with abundle of corresponding new, clean, rustling notes, and awaited hisarrival.
He came exactly as before, with the same blank staring face, and thesame inquiry, "Can you do anything for me, sir!"
"Well," said our friend, "I don't know. Maybe I _can_ do something. ButI have taken a great deal of pains, and lost a great deal of time, and Iwant to know what you mean to give me!"
"Is it give, sir? Thin, is there anything I wouldn't give for myeighty-sivin pound tin, sir; and it's murdered I am by ould Phillips."
"Never mind him; there were two twenties, were there not?"
"Oh, holy mother, sir, there was! Two most illigant twenties! and TedConner--and Phalim--which Rielly----"
He faltered, and stopped as our friend, with much ostentatious rustlingof the crisp paper, produced a new twenty, and then the other twenty,and then a ten, and then a five, and so forth. Meanwhile, the manoccasionally murmuring an exclamation of surprise or a protestation ofgratitude, but gradually becoming vague and remote in the latter as thenotes reappeared, looked on, staring, evidently inclined to believe thatthey were the real lost notes, reproduced in that state by some chemicalprocess. At last they were all told out, and in his pocket, and he stillstood staring and muttering, "Oh, holy mother, only to think of it!Sir, it's bound to you forever, that I am!"--but more vaguely andremotely now than ever.
"Well," said our friend, "what do you propose to give me for this?"
After staring and rubbing his chin for some time longer, he replied withthe unexpected question--
"Do you like bacon?"
"Very much," said our friend.
"Then it's a side as I'll bring your honor to-morrow morning, and abucket of new milk--and ould Phillips----"
"Come," said our friend, glancing at a notable shillelah the man hadunder his arm, "let me undeceive you. I don't want anything of you, andI am very glad you have got your money back. But I suppose you'd standby me, now, if I wanted a boy to help me in a little skirmish?"
They were standing by a window on the top storey of the Bank, commandinga court-yard, where a sentry was on duty. To our friend's amazement, theman dashed out of the room without speaking one word, suddenly appearedin the court-yard, performed a war-dance round this astonishedsoldier--who was a modest young recruit--made the shillelah flutter,like a wooden butterly, round his musket, round his bayonet, round hishead, round his body, round his arms, inside and outside his legs,advanced and retired, rattled it all around him like a firework, lookedup at the window, cried out with a high leap in the air, "Whooroo! Thryme!"--vanished--and never was beheld at the Bank again from that timeforth.
Recollections of a Policeman Page 18
