Attempts to defraud railway companies by means of forged tickets are
seldom made, and still more seldom successful. In 1870, a man who lived
in a toll-house near Dudley, and who rented a large number of tolls on
the different turnpikes, in almost every part of the country, devised a
plan for travelling cheaply. He set up a complete fount of type,
composing stick, and every requisite for printing tickets, and provided
himself with coloured papers, colours, and paints to paint them, and
plain cards on which to paste them; and he prepared tickets for journeys
of great length, and available to and from different stations on the
London and North-Western, Great Western, and Midland lines. On arriving
one day at the ticket platform at Derby, he presented a ticket from
Masbro’ to Smethwick. The collector, who had been many years in the
service of the company, thought there was something unusual in the
ticket. On examination he found it to be a forgery, and when the train
arrived at the platform gave the passenger into custody. On searching
his house, upwards of a thousand railway tickets were discovered in a
drawer in his bedroom, and the apparatus with which the forgeries were
accomplished was also secured. On the prisoner himself was the sum of
£199 10s., and it appeared that he came to be present at the annual
letting of the tolls on the different roads leading out of Derby. The
punishment he received was sufficiently condign to serve as a warning to
all who might be inclined to emulate such attempts after cheap
locomotion.
—Williams’s _Midland Railway_.