Recollections of a Policeman

by William Russell

“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 up-stairs; 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 down-stairs, 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 anybody; sealed them up with his own seal, and obliged me by an oath not to discover them to anybody, and I did not till he 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 intrusted 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 endeavor 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.[D]