No. III.—COINERS AND COINING.
FIG. 1.—BURNISHING BOARD.
The up-to-date counterfeit-money coiner is one of the most difficult individuals with whom the police have to deal. He is a positive artist. He no longer cuts shillings with a pair of scissors out of brass and silvers them over, as was done in the early part of the present century. He employs more scientific means, and his methods are such that only men of considerable ingenuity and inventive powers could possibly hope to bring them to a successful issue. But, alas! as in most things—woman's in it!—and to the fair sex belongs the first case on record in which any person appears to have been executed for counterfeiting the coin of the realm.
In May, 1721, Barbara Spencer had the crime brought home to her of indulging in the—in those days—highly treasonable pastime of manufacturing shilling pieces. She employed two other women, Alice Hall and Elizabeth Bray, to act as her agents, or "passers," and it is a significant fact that in almost every case of counterfeiting up to the present day women are employed in this particular branch of the profession. Barbara, it should be mentioned, was strangled and burned at Tyburn, on the 5th July, 1721, her accomplices being acquitted.
The question may be asked: Is the manufacture of counterfeit coin in a flourishing condition? The answer is a very decided affirmative. True, the convictions against counterfeiters are few and far between; but that is owing to the very elaborate measures adopted by the counterfeiters themselves of preventing a knowledge of their whereabouts becoming the property of the police. Your next-door neighbour may be a magnificent hand at turning out "five-bob" pieces; your butcher, greengrocer, and milk purveyor may all be adepts at the game. In proof of this, examine this bell and its companion. One is an ordinary electric bell—the other an invalid's bell-push.
Thomas Raven, alias Cooper, Beauchamp, and "Tom the Tailor," was a tailor in the salubrious neighbourhood of Bethnal Green. The police made a raid upon the premises and discovered something like 200 pieces of base coin in the cellar below, and between the joists some lampblack, plaster of Paris, and a spoon which had contained molten metal. The coiners were fairly caught. It was the duty of the gentleman in charge of the shop upstairs to give a certain signal with the bell, to warn the enterprising personages downstairs. A mistake was made, and the irrepressible Tom remarked, when told the charge: "Well, I have had a long run; but if they had given the signals right this morning, you would not have had me now."
It was, indeed, a long run. It took three years to run "Tom the Tailor" and a lady who helped to get rid of the coin to earth; and it was believed that the pseudo coat-cutter had been making counterfeit coin for the last seventeen years, and before that he had acted as coiners' agent. If time is money, Tom is still at his old occupation—fourteen years' penal servitude.
New Scotland Yard has every reason to be proud of its counterfeit collection—it certainly has real and original samples of everything associated with this glittering profession, which we shall now proceed to specify. We do so without the slightest qualms of conscience, and without any fear that anything we may say may lead to anybody admiring these remarks too greatly, and seeking to imitate. We are informed that years of practice are necessary to come up to the standard counterfeit coin of to-day. Take this sovereign, which is accorded the place of honour in one of the glass cases. It was made in Barcelona, and actually contains sixteen shillings' worth of gold in its composition. It would deceive a banker—there is the true, honest, unadulterated ring about it. Its date is 1862. To those whom it may concern—that is, those who happen to be in possession of sovereigns of this date—this fact may be interesting. Beware of Barcelonas!