The prisoner was found guilty and condemned to stand thrice in the pillory, to pay a heavy fine, and to suffer five years’ imprisonment. He died the same year in Newgate.
Two celebrated trials for forgery in which evidence as to the authenticity of handwriting was given, took place in 1775, and the justice of the verdicts was hotly discussed for long afterwards. In the first of these trials Robert and Daniel Perreau, twin brothers, were accused of a series of frauds by means of false bonds, while in the second trial Caroline Rudd, who had given evidence for the Crown against the Perreaus in the first trial, was indicted for the same offence.
According to the contemporary accounts Robert Perreau was an “apothecary of great practice,” while his brother “lived in the stile of a gentleman.”
The evidence went to prove that Robert Perreau asked Drummond, the banker, to lend him £5,000 upon the security of a bond for £7,500 which, he alleged, had been given to his brother Daniel Perreau by a Mr. William Adair.
Mr. Drummond questioned the authenticity of the signature upon the bond, which he therefore retained for further examination, promising to return it the next day or to advance the money for the loan. In the meantime he showed it to the Secretary of the Admiralty, who at once agreed that the signature was a forgery.
The next day Perreau willingly accompanied Drummond to Mr. William Adair who promptly denied all knowledge of the bond.
The Perreaus and Mrs. Rudd now attempted to escape in a coach, but were arrested and charged with forgery before Sir John Fielding at the Westminster Guildhall. Similar charges of obtaining money from other persons by means of bonds, all of which had been signed with the name of William Adair, were brought, and after Mrs. Rudd had given evidence that she had forged the signatures at their instigation, the two brothers were committed for trial at the Old Bailey.
At the trial evidence was given by William Drummond that he had had an interview with Mrs. Rudd, that then she had admitted having given the bond to Robert Perreau, and after confessing that she had forged it had begged them “for God’s sake to have mercy upon an innocent man.”
Robert Drummond, brother of the previous witness, stated in his evidence that when Mrs. Rudd acknowledged the forging of the bond he had expressed doubts whether she was speaking the truth, seeing that the handwriting was so different from that of a woman. Mrs. Rudd had then written the words, “William Adair,” upon a piece of paper in writing so like that of the signature on the bond that it had satisfied him and he had burned the paper.
Evidence was next given by a brother of William Adair and by a clerk that the handwriting upon the bond was not that of William Adair.