To that princely felony, Old Patch, as will be seen in the sequel, added smaller misdemeanors which one would think were far beneath his notice, except to convince himself and his mistress of the unbounded facility of his genius for fraud.
At that period the affluent public were saddled with a tax on plate, and many experiments were made to evade it. Among others one was invented by a Mr. Charles Price, a stock-jobber and lottery-office keeper, which, for a time, puzzled the tax-gatherer. Mr. Charles Price lived in great style, gave splendid dinners, and did everything on the grandest scale. Yet Mr. Charles Price had no plate! The authorities could not find so much as a silver tooth-pick on his magnificent premises. In truth, what he was too cunning to possess, he borrowed. For one of his sumptuous entertainments, he hired the plate of a silversmith in Cornhill, and left the value in bank notes as security for its safe return. One of these notes having proved a forgery, was traced to Mr. Charles Price; and Mr. Charles Price was not to be found at that particular juncture. Although this excited no surprise—for he was often an absentee from his office for short periods—yet, in due course and as a formal matter of business, an officer was sent to find him, and to ask his explanation regarding the false notes. After tracing a man whom he had a strong notion was Mr. Charles Price, through countless lodgings and innumerable disguises, the officer (to use his own expression) “nabbed” Mr. Charles Price. But, as Mr. Clark observed, his prisoner and his prisoner’s lady were even then “too many” for him; for although he lost not a moment in trying to secure the forging implements, after he had discovered that Mr. Charles Price, and Mr. Brank, and Old Patch, were all concentrated in the person of his prisoner, he found the lady had destroyed every trace of evidence. Not a vestige of the forging factory was left; not the point of a graver, nor a single spot of ink, nor a shred of silver paper, nor a scrap of anybody’s handwriting, was to be met with. Despite, however, this paucity of evidence to convict him, Mr. Charles Price had not the courage to face a jury, and eventually he saved the judicature and the Tyburn executive much trouble and expense, by hanging himself in Bridewell.
The success of Mr. Charles Price has never been surpassed, and even after the darkest era in the history of Bank forgeries—which dates from the suspension of cash payments, in February, 1797, and which will be treated of in the succeeding chapter—“Old Patch” was still remembered as the Cæsar of Forgers.
CHAPTER II.
IN the history of crime, as in all other histories, there is one great epoch by which minor dates are arranged and defined. In a list of remarkable events, one remarkable event more remarkable than the last, is the standard around which all smaller circumstances are grouped. Whatever happens in Mohammedan annals, is set down as having occurred so many years after the flight of the Prophet; in the records of London commerce a great fraud or a great failure is mentioned as having come to light so many months after the flight of Rowland Stephenson. Sporting men date from remarkable struggles for the Derby prize, and refer to 1840, as “Bloomsbury’s year.” The highwayman of old dated from Dick Turpin’s last appearance on the fatal stage at Tyburn turnpike. In like manner, the standard epoch in the annals of Bank-Note Forgery, is the year 1797, when (on the 25th of February) one-pound notes were put into circulation instead of golden guineas; or, to use the City idiom, ‘cash payments were suspended.’
At that time the Bank-of-England note was no better in appearance—had not improved as a work of art—since the days of Vaughan, Mathison, and Old Patch; it was just as easily imitated, and the chances of the successful circulation of counterfeits were increased a thousand-fold.
Up to 1793 no notes had been issued even for sums so small as five pounds. Consequently all the Bank paper then in use, passed through the hands and under the eyes of the affluent and educated, who could more readily distinguish the false from the true. Hence, during the fourteen years which preceded the non-golden and small-note era, there were only three capital convictions for the crime. When, however, the Bank-of-England notes became “common and popular,” a prodigious quantity—to complete the quotation—was also made “base,” and many persons were hanged for concocting them.
To a vast number of the humbler orders, Bank Notes were a rarity and a “sight.” Many had never seen such a thing before they were called upon to take one or two-pound notes in exchange for small merchandise, or their own labor. How were they to judge? How were they to tell a good from a spurious note?—especially when it happened that the officers of the Bank themselves, were occasionally mistaken, so complete and perfect were the imitations then afloat. There cannot be much doubt that where one graphic rascal was found out, ten escaped. They snapped their fingers at the executioner, and went on enjoying their beef-steaks and porter—their winter treats to the play—their summer excursions to the suburban tea-gardens—their fashionable lounges at Tunbridge Wells, Bath, Margate, and Ramsgate—doing business with wonderful unconcern, and “face” all along their journeys. These usually expensive, but to them profitable enjoyments, were continually coming to light at the trials of the lesser rogues who undertook the issue department; for, from the ease with which close imitation was effected, the manufacture was more readily completed than the uttering. The fraternity and sisterhood of utterers played many parts, and were banded in strict compact with the forgers. Some were turned loose into fairs and markets, in all sorts of appropriate disguises. Farmers, who could hardly distinguish a field of standing wheat from a field of barley—butchers, who never wielded more deadly weapons than two-prong forks—country boys, with cockney accents, bought gingerbread, and treated their so-called sweethearts with ribbons and muslins, all by the interchange of false “flimseys.” The better-mannered disguised themselves as ladies and gentlemen, paid their losings at cards or hazard, or their tavern bills, their milliners, and coachmakers, in motley money, composed of part real and part base bank paper. Some went about in the cloak of the Samaritan, and generously subscribed to charities wherever they saw a chance of changing a bad “five” for three or four good “ones.” Ladies of sweet disposition went about doing good among the poor—personally inquired into distress, relieved it by sending out a daughter or a son to a neighboring shop for change, and left five shillings for present necessities, walking off with fifteen. So openly—in spite of the gallows—was forgery carried on, that whoever chose to turn utterer found no difficulty in getting a stock-in-trade to commence with. Indeed, in the days of highwaymen, no traveling-gentleman’s pocket or valise was considered properly furnished without a few forged notes wherewith to satisfy the demands of the members of the “High Toby.” This offence against the laws of the road, however, soon became too common, and wayfarers who were stopped and rifled, had to pledge their sacred words of honor that their notes were the genuine promises of Abraham Newland, and that their watches were not of the factory of Mr. Pinchbeck.
With temptations so strong, it is no wonder that the forgers’ trade flourished, with only an occasional check from the strong arm of the law. It followed, therefore, that from the issue of small notes in February, 1797, to the end of 1817—twenty years—there were no fewer than eight hundred and seventy prosecutions connected with Bank-Note Forgery, in which there were only one hundred and sixty acquittals, and upwards of three hundred executions! 1818 was the culminating point of the crime. In the first three months there were no fewer than one hundred and twenty-eight prosecutions by the Bank; and by the end of that year, two-and-thirty individuals had been hanged for Note Forgery. So far from this appalling series of examples having any effect in checking the progress of the crime, it is proved that at, and after that very time, base notes were poured into the Bank at the rate of a hundred a day!
The enormous number of undetected forgeries afloat, may be estimated by the fact, that from the 1st of January, 1812, to the 10th April, 1818, one hundred and thirty-one thousand three hundred and thirty-one pieces of paper were ornamented by the Bank officers with the word “Forged”—upwards of one hundred and seven thousand of them were one-pound counterfeits.