WILLIAM WYNNE RYLAND.
EXECUTED FOR FORGERY.
IN the execution of this unhappy man, the world may be said to have sustained a severe loss; for Mr. Ryland was an engraver of first-rate abilities, and of very considerable celebrity. He was a native of Wales, and his father having been patronised by the Welch baronet, Sir Watkin Williams Wynne, he was named after that individual. While yet young, he displayed considerable talent, and in the early part of his apprenticeship he engraved a head of his godfather in a style which betokened unusual taste and power. Having completed his term, he visited the French and Italian schools; and in the former obtained the honorary medal, which was presented to him in Paris. On his return to England, he introduced the admired art of engraving in imitation of chalk drawings; and soon after George III. had ascended the throne, he was appointed by him to the situation of his engraver, with a salary of two hundred pounds a year; and the queen added one hundred pounds a year more out of her privy purse, as a testimony of her approbation of his extraordinary talents.
A few years previous to the fatal act for which he suffered, Mr. Ryland entered into partnership with a Mr. Bryer, and they jointly opened a shop in Cornhill, where they carried on a very extensive trade in prints; the former still continuing to exercise his abilities in the art of engraving. But although their business was productive of great profit, several heavy losses, occurring almost at the same time, so deranged their pecuniary affairs, that a bankruptcy ensued.
Some years after this failure, Mr. Ryland, on his own separate account, opened a print-shop in the Strand, where he had every prospect of success; but being fond of a private life, he quitted his business, and retired to Pimlico, and thence to Knightsbridge, where, by one fatal act, he entirely ruined his reputation as a man; but his name, as an artist, will ever stand in the highest estimation. At this time Mr. Ryland had recovered his losses in trade, and was bequeathed shares in the Liverpool Water Works, which were then deemed to be worth ten thousand pounds: his business was worth two thousand pounds a year, and his stock was valued at ten thousand pounds more. Such was his own statement of his property, in his defence on his trial; and it was supposed that, in order to engross the remaining shares in his Liverpool concern, he committed the forgery for which he suffered.
The forged instruments so exactly resembled the real bills that it was scarcely possible to know one from the other; but it being discovered that two bills of the same tenor and date were out, and consequently that one of them must prove a forgery, suspicion fell so strong on Ryland that he was induced to secrete himself, and a reward was offered for his apprehension. He went in disguise to Stepney, and took an obscure lodging at the hovel of one Richard Freeman, a cobbler, accompanied by Mrs. Ryland, the wretched partner of his misfortune, passing as Mr. and Mrs. Jackson; and there he continued for some time to evade the search after him, till one fatal step of the unfortunate woman who was watching over his safety caused his apprehension. She took, unconscious of danger, one of her husband’s shoes to the cobbler to be mended, with the name of “Ryland” on the inside of it. This was fatal: the cobbler, in order to obtain the reward, delivered up his lodger.
When the officers of justice went to apprehend Ryland, they found him in a corner of the room on his knees, and heard a noise like a guggling in his throat, and upon approaching him they found that he had attempted suicide. He had a razor in his hand, and a basin stood before him; but the wound which he had inflicted did not prove mortal.
On the 20th July, 1783, he was arraigned at the bar of the Old Bailey, on an indictment charging him with feloniously forging and uttering a certain bill of exchange for 210l. sterling, purporting to be a bill drawn by the gentlemen of the factory at Fort George, Madras, on the Hon. East India Company, with intent to defraud the said Company, &c.
The solicitor to the East India Company, who prosecuted the prisoner, endeavoured, by several proofs, to bring home the charge to the accused; but, though forgery was manifest, yet it was so nice a point to distinguish the true bill from the false one, that it was, during the trial, supposed that they could not convict him, until Mr. Whatman, paper-manufacturer at Maidstone, appeared as a witness.
Mr. Whatman deposed that the paper of the forged bill was of his manufacture. He then explained to the Court his reasons for thinking so: the moulds, he said, in which the paper of the bill was made, were received by him in February, 1780, but were not used before the December following: they were then worked with; and the first paper sent to London made by them was on the 27th of April, 1781: but he was convinced that the paper on which the bill was written was not sent before the 3d of May, 1782; and the way by which he knew it was, that there were defects in it, which exactly agreed with those in the sheets of paper which he produced, and which had been made by him at that period. It was further proved that the instruments bore date antecedent to the time of the paper being made; and this evidence being conclusive, in spite of the prisoner’s arguments that his fortune being ample he had no reason to commit the offence imputed to him, he was found guilty.
He was executed at Tyburn on the 29th August, 1783, being the last person who suffered by the hands of the executioner at that place.