Viotti’s division of violin-playing into two great classes—good playing
and bad playing—is applicable to Bank note making. The processes
employed in manufacturing good Bank notes we have already described: we
shall now cover a few pages with a faint outline of the various arts,
stratagems, and contrivances employed in concocting bad Bank notes. The
picture cannot be drawn with very distinct or strong markings. The
tableaux from which it is copied are so intertwisted and complicated
with clever, slippery, ingenious scoundrelism, that a finished chart of
it would be worse than morally displeasing:—it would be tedious.
All arts require time and experience for their development. When
anything great is to be done, first attempts are nearly always failures.
The first Bank note forgery was no exception to this rule, and its story
has a spice of romance in it. The affair has never been circumstantially
told; but some research enables us to detail it:—
In the month of August, 1757, a gentleman living in the neighbourhood of
Lincoln’s Inn Fields named Bliss, advertised for a clerk. There were, as
was usual even at that time, many applicants; but the successful one was
a young man of twenty-six, named Richard William Vaughan. His manners
were so winning and his demeanour so much that of a gentleman (he
belonged indeed to a good county family in Staffordshire, and had been a
student at Pembroke Hall, Oxford), that Mr. Bliss at once engaged him.
Nor had he occasion, during the time the new clerk served him, to repent
the step. Vaughan was so diligent, intelligent, and steady, that not
even when it transpired that he was, commercially speaking, “under a
cloud,” did his master lessen confidence in him. Some enquiry into his
antecedents showed that he had, while at College, been extravagant; that
his friends had removed him thence; set him up in Stafford as a
wholesale linen draper, with a branch establishment in Aldersgate
Street, London; that he had failed, and that there was some difficulty
about his certificate. But so well did he excuse his early failings and
account for his misfortunes, that his employer did not check the regard
he felt growing towards him. Their intercourse was not merely that of
master 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 of
which was a handsome fortune. Young Vaughan made the most of his
opportunities. He was well-looking, well-informed, dressed well, and
evidently made love well, for he won the young lady’s heart. The
guardian was not flinty hearted, and acted like a sensible man of the
world. “It was not,” he said on a subsequent and painful occasion, “till
I learned from the servants and observed by the girl’s behaviour that
she greatly approved Richard Vaughan, that I consented; but on condition
that he should make it appear that he could maintain her. I had no doubt
of his character as a servant, and I knew his family were respectable.
His brother is an eminent attorney.” Vaughan boasted that his mother
(his father was dead), was willing to re-instate him in business with a
thousand pounds; five hundred of which was to be settled upon Miss Bliss
for her separate use.
So far all went on prosperously. Providing Richard Vaughan could attain
a position satisfactory to the Blisses, the marriage was to take place
on the Easter Monday following, which the Calendar tells us happened
early in April, 1758. With this understanding, he left Mr. Bliss’s
service, 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 his
affianced were frequent, and his protestations passionate; but he had
effected nothing substantial towards a happy union. Miss Bliss’s
guardian grew impatient; and, although there is no evidence to prove
that the young lady’s affection for Vaughan was otherwise than deep and
sincere, yet even she began to lose confidence in him. His excuses were
evidently evasive, and not always true. The time fixed for the wedding
was fast approaching; and Vaughan saw that something must be done to
restore the young lady’s confidence.
About three weeks before the appointed Easter Tuesday, Vaughan went to
his mistress in high spirits. All was right: his certificate was to be
granted in a day or two; his family had come forward with the money, and
he was to continue the Aldersgate business he had previously carried on
as a branch of the Stafford trade. The capital he had waited so long
for, was at length forthcoming. In fact, here were two hundred and forty
pounds of the five hundred he was to settle on his beloved. Vaughan then
produced twelve twenty-pound notes; Miss Bliss could scarcely believe
her eyes. She examined them. The paper she remarked seemed rather
thicker than usual. “Oh,” said Bliss, “all Bank bills are not alike.”
The girl was naturally much pleased. She would hasten to apprise
Mistress Bliss of the good news.
Not for the world! So far from letting any living soul know he had
placed so much money in her hands, Vaughan exacted an oath of secresy
from her, and sealed the notes up in a parcel with his own seal; making
her swear that she would on no account open it till after their
marriage.
Some days after, that is, “on the twenty-second of March,” (1758) we are
describing the scene in Mr. Bliss’s own words—“I was sitting with my
wife by the fireside. The prisoner and the girl were sitting in the same
room—which was a small one—and although they whispered, I could
distinguish that Vaughan was very urgent to have something returned
which he had previously given to her. She refused, and Vaughan went away
in an angry mood. I then studied the girl’s face, and saw that it
expressed much dissatisfaction. Presently a tear broke out. I then
spoke, and insisted on knowing the dispute. She refused to tell, and I
told her that until she did, I would not see her. The next day I asked
the same question of Vaughan; he hesitated. ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘I dare say it
is some ten or twelve pound matter—something to buy a wedding bauble
with.’ He answered that it was much more than that, it was near three
hundred pounds! ‘But why all this secresy,’ I said; and he answered it
was not proper for people to know he had so much money till his
certificate was signed. I then asked him to what intent he had left the
notes with the young lady? He said, as I had of late suspected him, he
designed to give her a proof of his affection and truth. I said, ‘You
have demanded them in such a way that it must be construed as an
abatement of your affection towards her.’” Vaughan was again exceedingly
urgent in asking back the packet; but Bliss remembering his many
evasions, and supposing that this was a trick, declined advising his
niece to restore the parcel without proper consideration. The very next
day it was discovered that the notes were counterfeits.
This occasioned stricter enquiries into Vaughan’s previous career. It
turned out that he bore the character in his native place of a
dissipated and not very scrupulous person. The intention of his mother
to assist him was an entire fabrication, and he had given Miss Bliss the
forged notes solely for the purpose of deceiving her on that matter.
Meanwhile the forgeries became known to the authorities, and he was
arrested. By what means, does not clearly appear. The “Annual Register”
says that one of the engravers gave information; but we find nothing in
the newspapers of the time to support that statement; neither was it
corroborated 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 to be
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 Lord
Mansfield. The manner of the forgery was detailed minutely at the
trial:—On the first of March (about a week before he gave the twelve
notes to the young lady) Vaughan called on Mr. John Corbould, an
engraver, and gave an order for a promissory note to be engraved with
these 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 to
the execution of the work. The Britannia was not good, and the words “I
promise” were too near the edge of the plate. Another was in consequence
engraved, and on the fourth of March Vaughan took it away. He
immediately repaired to a printer, and had forty-eight impressions taken
on thin paper, provided by himself. Meanwhile, he had ordered, on the
same morning, of Mr. Charles Fourdrinier, another engraver, a second
plate, with what he called “a direction,” in the words, “For the
Governor and Company of the Bank of England.” This was done, and about a
week later he brought some paper, each sheet “folded up,” said the
witness, “very curiously, so that I could not see what was in them. I
was going to take the papers from him, but he said he must go upstairs
with me, and see them worked off himself. I took him upstairs; he would
not 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. After
my boy had done two or three of them, I went downstairs, and my boy
worked the rest off, and the prisoner came down and paid me.”
Here the Court pertinently asked, “What imagination had you when a man
thus came to you to print on secret paper, ‘the Governor and Company of
the Bank of England?’”
The engraver’s reply was:—“I then did not suspect anything. But I shall
take care for the future.” As this was the first Bank of England note
forgery 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 her
evidence:—
“A young lady (sworn). The prisoner delivered me some bills; these are
the same (producing twelve counterfeit Bank notes sealed up in a cover,
for twenty pounds each), said they were Bank bills. I said they were
thicker paper—he said all bills are not alike. I was to keep them till
after we were married. He put them into my hands to show he put
confidence in me, and desired me not to show them to any body; sealed
them up with his own seal, and obliged me by an oath not to discover
them to any body. And I did not till he had discovered them himself. He
was to settle so much in Stock on me.”
Vaughan urged in his defence that his sole object was to deceive his
affianced, and that he intended to destroy all the notes after his
marriage. But it had been proved that the prisoner had asked one John
Ballingar to change first one, and then twenty of the notes; but which
that person was unable to do. Besides, had his sole object been to
dazzle Miss Bliss with his fictitious wealth, he would most probably
have entrusted more, if not all the notes, to her keeping.
He was found guilty, and passed the day that had been fixed for his
wedding, 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: William
Boodgere, a military officer, who had forged a draught on an army agent
named Calcroft, and expiated the offence with the first forger of Bank
of England notes.
The gallows may seem hard measure to have meted out to Vaughan, when it
is considered that none of his notes were negotiated and no person
suffered by his fraud. Not one of the forty-eight notes, except the
twelve delivered to Miss Bliss, had been out of his possession; indeed
the imitation must have been very clumsily executed, and detection would
have instantly followed any attempt to pass the counterfeits. There was
no endeavour to copy the style of engraving on a real Bank note. That
was left to the engraver; and as each sheet passed through the press
twice, the words added at the second printing, “For the Governor and
Company of the Bank of England,” could have fallen into their proper
place on any one of the sheets, only by a miracle. But what would have
made the forgery clear to even a superficial observer was the singular
omission of the second “n” in the word England.[1]
Footnote 1:
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 trial
was:—“There is some resemblance, to be sure; but this mote” (that upon
which the prisoner was tried) “is numbered thirteen thousand eight
hundred and forty, and we never reach so high a number.” Besides there
was no water-mark in the paper. The note of which a fac-simile appeared
in our eighteenth number, and dated so early as 1699, has a regular
design in the texture of the paper; showing that the water-mark is as
old as the Bank notes themselves.
Vaughan was greatly commiserated. But despite the unskilfulness of the
forgery, and the insignificant consequences which followed it, the crime
was considered of too dangerous a character not to be marked, from its
very novelty, with exemplary punishment. Hanging created at that time no
remorse in the public mind, and it was thought necessary to set up
Vaughan as a warning to all future Bank note forgers. The crime was too
dangerous not to be marked with the severest penalties. Forgery differs
from other crimes not less in the magnitude of the spoil it may obtain,
and of the injury it inflicts, than in the facilities attending its
accomplishment. The common thief finds a limit to his depredations in
the bulkiness of his booty, which is generally confined to such property
as he can carry about his person; the swindler raises insuperable and
defeating obstacles to his frauds if the amount he seeks to obtain is so
considerable as to awaken close vigilance or enquiry. To carry their
projects to any very profitable extent, these criminals are reduced to
the hazardous necessity of acting in concert, and thus infinitely
increasing the risks of detection. But the forger need have no
accomplice; he is burdened with no bulky and suspicious property; he
needs no receiver to assist his contrivances. The skill of his own
individual right hand can command thousands; often with the certainty of
not being detected, and oftener with such rapidity as to enable him to
baffle the pursuit of justice.
It was a long time before Vaughan’s rude attempt was improved upon: but
in the same year, (1758), another department of the crime was commenced
with perfect success;—namely, an ingenious alteration, for fraudulent
purposes, 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, setting
up with these as a gentleman, went boldly to the Hatfield Post office,
ordered a chaise and four, rattled away down the road, and changed a
note at every change of horses. The robbery was, of course, soon made
known, and the numbers and dates of the stolen notes were advertised as
having been stopped at the Bank. To the genius of a highwayman this
offered but a small obstacle, and the gentleman-thief changed all the
figures “1” he could find into “4’s.” These notes passed currently
enough; but, on reaching the Bank, the alteration was detected, and the
last holder was refused payment. As that person had given a valuable
consideration for the note, he brought an action for the recovery of the
amount; and at the trial it was ruled by the Lord Chief Justice, that
“any person paying a valuable consideration for a Bank note, payable to
bearer, in a fair course of business, has an understood right to receive
the money of the Bank.”
It took a quarter of a century to bring the art of forging Bank notes to
perfection. In 1779, this was nearly attained by an ingenious gentleman
named Mathison, a watchmaker, from the matrimonial village of Gretna
Green. Having learnt the arts of engraving and of simulating signatures,
he tried his hand at the notes of the Darlington Bank; but, with the
confidence of skill, was not cautious in passing them, was suspected,
and absconded to Edinburgh. Scorning to let his talent be wasted, he
favoured the Scottish public with many spurious Royal Bank of Scotland
notes, and regularly forged his way by their aid to London. At the end
of February he took handsome lodgings in the Strand, opposite Arundel
Street. His industry was remarkable; for, by the 12th of March, he had
planed and polished rough pieces of copper, engraved them, forged the
water-mark, printed and negotiated several impressions. His plan was to
travel and to purchase articles in shops. He bought a pair of
shoe-buckles at Coventry with a forged note, which was eventually
detected at the Bank of England. He had got so bold that he paid such
frequent visits in Threadneedle Street that the Bank clerks became
familiar with his person. He was continually changing notes of one, for
another denomination. These were his originals, which he procured to
make spurious copies of. One day seven thousand pounds came in from the
Stamp Office. There was a dispute about one of the notes. Mathison, who
was present, though at some distance, declared, oracularly, that the
note was a good one. How could he know so well? A dawn of suspicion
arose in the minds of the clerks; one trail led into another, and
Mathison was finally apprehended. So well were his notes forged that, on
the trial, an experienced Bank clerk declared he could not tell whether
the note handed him to examine was forged or not. Mathison offered to
reveal his secret of forging the water-mark, if mercy were shown to him;
this was refused, and he suffered the penalty of his crime.
Mathison was a genius in his criminal way, but a greater than he
appeared in 1786. In that year perfection seemed to have been reached.
So considerable was the circulation of spurious paper-money that it
appeared as if some unknown power had set up a bank of its own. Notes
were issued from it, and readily passed current, in hundreds and
thousands. They were not to be distinguished from the genuine paper of
Threadneedle Street. Indeed, when one was presented there, in due
course, so complete were all its parts; so masterly the engraving; so
correct the signatures; so skilful the water-mark, that it was promptly
paid; and only discovered to be a forgery when it reached a particular
department. From that period forged paper continued to be presented,
especially at the time of lottery drawing. Consultations were held with
the police. Plans were laid to help detection. Every effort was made to
trace the forger. Clarke, the best detective of his day, went, like a
sluth-hound, on the track; for in those days the expressive word
“blood-money” was known. Up to a certain point there was little
difficulty; but beyond that, consummate art defied the ingenuity of the
officer. In whatever way the notes came, the train of discovery always
paused at the lottery-offices. Advertisements offering large rewards
were circulated; but the unknown forger baffled detection.
While this base paper was in full currency, there appeared an
advertisement in the Daily Advertiser for a servant. The successful
applicant was a young man, in the employment of a musical-instrument
maker; who, some time after, was called upon by a coachman, and informed
that the advertiser was waiting in a coach to see him. The young man was
desired to enter the conveyance, where he beheld a person with something
of the appearance of a foreigner, sixty or seventy years old, apparently
troubled with the gout. A camlet surtout was buttoned round his mouth; a
large patch was placed over his left eye; and nearly every part of his
face was concealed. He affected much infirmity. He had a faint hectic
cough; and invariably presented the patched side to the view of the
servant. After some conversation—in the course of which he represented
himself as guardian to a young nobleman of great fortune—the interview
concluded with the engagement of the applicant; and the new servant was
directed to call on Mr. Brank, at 29, Titchfield Street, Oxford Street.
At this interview Brank inveighed against his whimsical ward for his
love of speculating in lottery-tickets; and told the servant that his
principal duty would be to purchase them. After one or two meetings, at
each of which Brank kept his face muffled, he handed a forty and twenty
pound Bank note; told the servant to be very careful not to lose them;
and directed him to buy lottery-tickets at separate offices. The young
man fulfilled his instructions, and at the moment he was returning, was
suddenly called by his employer from the other side of the street,
congratulated on his rapidity, and then told to go to various other
offices in the neighbourhood of the Royal Exchange, and to purchase more
shares. 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 thus
circulated; lottery-tickets purchased; and Mr. Brank—always in a coach,
with his face studiously concealed—was ever ready on the spot to receive
them. The surprise of the servant was somewhat excited; but had he known
that from the period he left his master to purchase the tickets, one
female figure accompanied all his movements; that when he entered the
offices, it waited at the door, peered cautiously in at the window,
hovered around him like a second shadow, watched him carefully, and
never left him until once more he was in the Company of his
employer—that surprise would have been greatly increased.[2] Again and
again were these extraordinary scenes rehearsed. At last the Bank
obtained a clue, and the servant was taken into custody. The directors
imagined that they had secured the actor of so many parts; that the
flood of forged notes which had inundated that establishment would at
length be dammed up at his source. Their hopes proved fallacious, and it
was found that “Old Patch,” (as the mysterious forger was, from the
servant’s description, nick-named) had been sufficiently clever to
baffle the Bank directors. The house in Titchfield Street was searched;
but Mr. Brank had deserted it, and not a trace of a single implement of
forgery was to be seen.
Footnote 2:
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 entirely
by himself. His only confidant was his mistress. He was his own
engraver. He even made his own ink. He manufactured his own paper. With
a private press he worked his own notes; and counterfeited the
signatures of the cashiers, completely. But these discoveries had no
effect; for it became evident that Mr. Patch had set up a press
elsewhere. Although his secret continued as impenetrable, his notes
became as plentiful as ever. Five years of unbounded prosperity ought to
have satisfied him; but it did not. Success seemed to pall him. His
genius was of that insatiable order which demands new excitements, and a
constant succession of new flights. The following paragraph from a
newspaper of 1786 relates to the same individual:—
“On the 17th of December, ten pounds was paid into the Bank, for which
the clerk, as usual, gave a ticket to receive a Bank note of equal
value. This ticket ought to have been carried immediately to the
cashier, instead of which the bearer took it home, and curiously added
an 0 to the original sum, and returning, presented it so altered to the
cashier, for which he received a note of one hundred pounds. In the
evening, the clerks found a deficiency in the accounts; and on examining
the tickets of the day, not only that but two others were discovered to
have been obtained in the same manner. In the one, the figure 1 was
altered to 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, added
smaller misdemeanors which one would think were far beneath his notice;
except to convince himself and his mistress of the unbounded facility of
his genius for fraud.
At that period the affluent public were saddled with a tax on plate; and
many experiments were made to evade it. Among others, one was invented
by a Mr. Charles Price, a stock-jobber and lottery-office keeper, which,
for a time, puzzled the tax-gatherer. Mr. Charles Price lived in great
style, gave splendid dinners, and did everything on the grandest scale.
Yet Mr. Charles Price had no plate! The authorities could not find so
much as a silver tooth-pick on his magnificent premises. In truth, what
he was too cunning to possess, he borrowed. For one of his sumptuous
entertainments, he hired the plate of a silversmith in Cornhill, and
left the value in bank notes as security for its safe return. One of
these 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 his
office for short periods—yet in due course and as a formal matter of
business, an officer was set to find him, and to ask his explanation
regarding the false note. After tracing a man who he had a strong notion
was Mr. Charles Price through countless lodgings and innumerable
disguises, the officer (to use his own expression) “nabbed” Mr. Charles
Price. But, as Mr. Clarke observed, his prisoner and his prisoner’s lady
were even then “too many” for him; for although he lost not a moment in
trying to secure the forging implements, after he had discovered that
Mr. Charles Price, and Mr. Brank, and Old Patch, were all concentrated
in the person of his prisoner, he found the lady had destroyed every
trace of evidence. Not a vestige of the forging factory was left. Not
the point of a graver, nor a single spot of ink, nor a shred of silver
paper, nor a scrap of anybody’s handwriting, was to be met with.
Despite, however, this paucity of evidence to convict him, Mr. Charles
Price had not the courage to face a jury, and eventually he saved the
judicature and the Tyburn executive much trouble and expense, by hanging
himself in Bridewell.
The success of Mr. Charles Price has never been surpassed; and even
after the darkest era in the history of Bank forgeries—which dates from
the suspension of cash payments, in February, 1797, and which will be
treated of in a succeeding paper—“Old Patch” was still remembered as the
Cæsar of Forgers.