Here is a lady who has traveled very far, perhaps, for her dividends. She has taken a seat and a number of curious eyes are gazing at her as she slowly takes a wing of a chicken and a piece of snowy white bread from a napkin and commences to eat, in the midst of all this wealth and confusion of the richest city in the world.
The number of ledgers and account books behind these bars are enough to frighten one. When the day's business is done all these huge books are stowed away by the porters in the fire-proof room under ground, and brought up again in the morning, for they are fully as valuable as the large sums inscribed on their leaves.
Machinery has been perfected so that these bulky account books may be hoisted and lowered every day.
Look at that young man with his banking case chained under his arm; the rolls of checks and notes he holds in his hands will probably amount to thousands of pounds; he catches the eyes of one of the clerks, calls out the amount, hands the bulky bundle over the brass mounted railing and quits the room, leaving the sum to be counted over at leisure.
See how carelessly the cashier handles that heavy bag of gold; he has no time to count it, but throws it into the scale as a coal heaver would a sack of coals—so long as it is right weight, that's all he cares about; he then shoots it into his large drawer and throws the bag aside as if he did not mind whether a sovereign stuck in the bag or not.
He counts sovereigns by twos and threes at a time; you feel confident that he must have given you either too many or too few, he appears so negligent; you count them, and there they are quite correct, and no mistake whatever.
The guide says to me: "Sometimes, Sir, the clerks are kept in the Bank for hours when there's a sixpence wrong in the balance, and they have to go over and over the books until they make the sixpence right. It's awful work, to have to go over them long columns of figures and no chance of getting away until everything is correct."
"Was there ever any great forgery committed on the Bank?" I asked the guide, who seemed to be a very intelligent man, having been in the Bank forty years.
"Ah, yes Sir, there was two great ones. In old times a great many men were hanged for forging Bank of England notes. In one year, I think it was 1820, there was over a hundred persons convicted of forgery, and nearly nine hundred were convicted for having forged notes in their pockets. Why, Sir, when I was a boy I remember as many as twenty-four hanged in one year for forgery on the Bank. I think the year was 1818. In 1803 there was a great forgery, committed by Mr. Astlett, who was one of the chief cashiers of the Bank. The amount was so large it frightened every body. Astlett done his work so well, by re-issuing Exchequer bills, that he defrauded the Bank out of £320,000 before they knew it. You may imagine what a row there was when it was found out. The old Governor nearly went mad."
"Was any other great forgery ever attempted?" said I, curious to hear those details of forgotten crime.