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prove that the young lady's affection for Vaughan was otherwise than deep and sincere, yet even she began to lose confidence in him. His excuses were evidently evasive, and not always true. The time fixed for the wedding was fast approaching; and Vaughan saw that something must be done to restore the young lady's confidence.

people to know he had so much money till his certificate was signed. I then asked him to what intent he had left the notes with the young lady? He said, as I had of late suspected him, he designed to give her a proof of his affection and truth. I said, You have demanded them in such a way that it must be construed as an abatement of your About three weeks before the appointed affection toward her.'" Vaughan was again Easter Tuesday, Vaughan went to his mis- exceedingly urgent in asking back the packet; tress in high spirits. All was right: his cer- but Bliss, remembering his many evasions, tificate was to be granted in a day or two; and supposing that this was a trick, declined his family had come forward with the money, advising his niece to restore the parcel withand he was to continue the Aldersgate busi-out proper consideration. The very next day ness he had previously carried on as a branch it was discovered that the notes were counof the Stafford trade. The capital he had terfeit. waited so long for was at length forthcoming. In fact, here were two hundred and forty pounds of the five hundred he was to settle on his beloved. Vaughan then produced twelve twenty-pound notes; Miss Bliss could scarcely believe her eyes. She examined them. The paper she remarked seemed rather thicker than usual. “Oh," said Vaughan, "all Bank bills are not alike." The girl was naturally much pleased. She would hasten to apprise Mrs. Bliss of the good news.

Not for the world! So far from letting any living soul know he had placed so much money in her hands, Vaughan exacted an oath of secrecy from her, and sealed the notes up in a parcel with his own seal, making her swear that she would on no account open it till after their marriage.

Some days after, that is, on the twentysecond of March," (1758)—we are describing the scene in Mr. Bliss's own words-"I was sitting with my wife by the fireside. The prisoner and the girl were sitting in the same room-which was a small one-and, although they whispered, I could distinguish that Vaughan was very urgent to have something returned which he had previously given to her. She refused, and Vaughan went away in an angry mood. I then studied the girl's face, and saw that it expressed much dissatisfaction. Presently a tear broke out. I then spoke, and insisted on knowing the dispute. She refused to tell, and I told her that, until she did, I would not see her. The next day I asked the same question of Vaughan; he hesitated. Oh!' I said, 'I dare say it is some ten or twelve pound matter-something to buy a wedding bauble with.' He answered that it was much more than that-it was near three hundred pounds! But why all this secrecy?' I said; and he answered it was not proper for

VOL. XXI. NO. IV.

This occasioned stricter inquiries into Vaughan's previous career. It turned out that he bore the character in his native place of a dissipated and not very scrupulous person. The intention of his mother to assist him was an entire fabrication, and he had given Miss Bliss the forged notes solely for the purpose of deceiving her on that matter. Meanwhile the forgeries became known to the authorities, and he was arrested. By what means, does not clearly appear. The "Annual Register" says that one of the engravers gave information; but we find nothing in the newspapers of the time to support that statement; neither was it corroborated at Vaughan's trial.

When Vaughan was arrested he thrust a piece of paper into his mouth, and began to chew it violently. It was, however, rescued, and proved to be one of the forged notes; fourteen of them were found on his person, and when his lodgings were searched twenty more were discovered.

Vaughan was tried at the Old Bailey, on the seventh of April, before Lord Mansfield. The manner of the forgery was detailed minutely at the trial: On the first of March (about a week before he gave the twelve notes to the young lady), Vaughan called on Mr. John Corbould, an engraver, and gave an order for a promissory note to be engraved with these words:

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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 up-stairs 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."

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 of 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 offense 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 Here the court pertinently asked, "What of his possession; indeed, the imitation must imagination had you when a man thus came have been very clumsily executed, and deto you to print on secret paper, 'the Gover-tection would have instantly followed any atnor and Company of the Bank of Eng-tempt to pass the counterfeits. There was land?'"

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"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 that 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 any body. And I did not till he had discovered them himself. He was to settle so much in stock on me."

Vaughan urged in his defense, that his sole object was to deceive his affianced, and that he intended to destroy all the notes

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.*

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The criticism on Vaughan's note of a bank clerk examined on the trial was: 'There is some resemblance, to be sure; but this note" (that upon which the prisoner was tried) “is numbered thirteen thousand eight hundred and forty, and we never reached so high a number." Besides there was no water-mark in the paper. The note of which a fac-simile appeared in our eighteenth number, and dated so early as 1699, has a regular design in the texture of the paper; showing that the water-mark is as old as the bank notes themselves.

Vaughan was greatly commiserated. But

in the most important documents at that period; * Bad orthography was by no means uncommon the days of the week, in the day-books of the Bank of England itself, are spelled in a variety of ways.

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sideration for the note, he brought an action for the recovery of the amount; and at the trial it was ruled by the Lord Chief Justice, that "any person paying a valuable consideration for a bank-note, payable to bearer, in a fair course of business, has an understood right to receive the money of the bank." It took a quarter of a century to bring the art of forging bank-notes to perfection. In 1779, this was nearly attained by an ingenious gentleman, named Mathison, a watchmaker, from the matrimonial village of Gretna Green. Having learned the arts of engraving and of simulating signatures, he tried his hand at the notes of the Darlington Bank; but, with the confidence of skill, was not cautious in passing them, was suspected, and absconded to Edinburgh. Scorning to let his talent be wasted, he favored the Scottish public with many spurious Royal Bank of Scotland notes, and regularly forged his way by their aid to London. At the end of Feb

despite the unskillfulness of the forgery, and
the insignificant consequences which followed
it, the crime was considered of too dangerous
a character not to be marked, from its very
novelty, with exemplary punishment. Hang-
ing created at that time no remorse in the
public mind, and it was thought necessary
to set up Vaughan as a warning to all future
bank-note forgers. The crime was too dan-
gerous not to be marked with the severest
penalties. Forgery differs from other crimes
not less in the magnitude of the spoil it may
obtain, and of the injury it inflicts, than in
the facilities attending its accomplishment.
The common thief finds a limit to his depre-
dations in the bulkiness of his booty, which
is generally confined to such property as he
can carry about his person; the swindler
raises insuperable and defeating obstacles to
his frauds if the amount he seeks to obtain
is so considerable as to awaken closev igilance
or inquiry. To carry their projects to any
very profitable extent, these criminals are re-ruary he took handsome lodgings in the
duced to the hazardous necessity of acting in
concert, and thus infinitely increasing the
risks of detection. But the forger need have
no accomplice; he is burdened with no bulky
and suspicious property; he needs no re-
ceiver to assist his contrivances. The skill
of his own individual right hand can com-
mand thousands; often with the certainty of
not being detected, and oftener with such
rapidity as to enable him to baffle the
suit of justice.

pur

Strand, opposite Arundel-street. His industry was remarkable: for, by the 12th of March, he had planed and polished rough pieces of copper, engraved them, forged the water-mark, printed and negotiated several impressions. His plan was to travel and purchase articles in shops. He bought a pair of shoe-buckles at Coventry with a forged note, which was eventually detected at the Bank of England. He had got so bold that he paid such frequent visits in Threadneedle-street, that the bank clerks became familiar with his person. He was continually changing notes of one for another denomination. These were his originals, which he procured to make spurious copies of. One day seven thousand pounds came in from the Stamp Office. There was a dispute about one of the notes. Mathison, who was present, though at some distance, declared, oracularly, that the note was a good one. How could he know so well? A dawn of suspicion arose in the minds of the clerks ; one trail led into another, and Mathison was finally apprehended. So well were his notes forged, that, on the trial, an experienced bank clerk declared that he could not tell whether the note handed him to examine was forged or not. Mathison offered to reveal his secret of forging the water-mark, if mercy were shown to him; this was refused, and he suffered the penalty of his crime.

It was a long time before Vaughan's rude attempt was improved upon : but in the same year, (1758), another department of the crime was commenced with perfect success; namely, an ingenious alteration, for fraudulent purposes, of real bank notes. A few months after Vaughan's execution, one of the northern mails was stopped and robbed by a highwayman; several bank-notes were comprised in the spoil, and the robber, setting up with these as a gentleman, went boldly to the Hatfield Post-office, ordered a chaise and four, rattled away down the road, and changed a note at every change of horses. The robbery was, of course, soon made known, and the numbers and dates of the stolen notes were advertised as having been stopped at the bank. To the genius of a highwayman this offered but a small obstacle, and the gentleman-thief changed all the figures"1" he could find into " 4's." These notes passed currently enough; but on reaching the bank, the alteration was detected, and the last holder was refused payment. As that person had given a valuable con

Mathison was a genius in his criminal way, but a greater than he appeared in 1786. În that year perfection seemed to have been reached. So considerable was the circulation

564

HISTORY AND ANECDOTES OF FORGERY.

of spurious paper-money, that it appeared as
if some unknown power had set up a bank
of its own.
Notes were issued from it, and
readily passed current, in hundreds and thou-
sands. They were not to be distinguished
from the genuine paper of Threadneedle-
was presented
street. Indeed, when one
there, in due course, so complete were all its
parts, so masterly the engraving, so correct
the signatures, so skillful the water-mark,
that it was promptly paid; and only disco-
vered to be a forgery when it reached a par-
ticular department. From that period forged
paper continued to be presented, especially
at the time of lottery drawing. Consulta-
tions were held with the police. Plans were
laid to help detection. Every effort was made
to trace the forger. Clarke, the best detect-
ive of his day, went, like a slut-hound, on
the track; for in those days the expressive
word "blood-money" was known. Up to a
certain point there was little difficulty; but,
beyond that, consummate art defied the in-
genuity of the officer. In whatever way the
notes came, the train of discovery always
paused at the lottery-offices. Advertisements
offering large rewards were circulated; but
the unknown forger baffled detection.

While this base paper was in full currency,
there appeared an advertisement in the Daily
The successful
Advertiser for a servant.
applicant was a young man, in the employ-
ment of a musical-instrument maker; who,
some time after, was called upon by a coach-
man, and informed that the advertiser was
waiting in a coach to see him. The young
man was desired to enter the conveyance,
where he beheld a person with something of
the appearance of a foreigner, sixty or seventy
years old, apparently troubled with the gout.
A camlet surtout was buttoned round his
mouth; a large patch was placed over his
left eye; and nearly every part of his face
was concealed. He affected much infirmity.
He had a faint hectic cough; and invariably
presented the patched side to the view of the
After some conversation-in the
course of which he represented himself as
guardian to a young nobleman of great for-
tune-the interview concluded with the en-
gagement of the applicant; and the new
servant was directed to call on Mr. Brank,
at 29 Titchfield-street, Oxford-street.
this interview, Brank inveighed against his
whimsical ward for his love of speculating in
lottery-tickets; and told the servant that his
principal duty would be purchase them.
After one or two meetings, at each of which
Brank kept his face muffled, he handed a

servant.

At

servant to be very careful not to lose them;
forty and twenty pound bank note; told the
and directed him to buy lottery-tickets at
The young man fulfilled
separate offices.
his instructions, and at the moment he was
returning, was suddenly called by his em-
ployer from the other side of the street, con-
gratulated on his rapidity, and then told to
go to various other offices in the neighbor-
hood of the Royal Exchange, and to purchase
more shares. Four hundred pounds in Bank
of England notes were handed him, and the
These scenes were
wishes of the mysterious Mr. Brank were
satisfactorily effected.
continually enacted. Notes to a large amount
were thus circulated; lottery-tickets pur-
chased; and Mr. Brank-always in a coach,
with his face studiously concealed-was ever
ready on the spot to receive them. The sur-
but had he known that from the period he
prise of the servant was somewhat excited;
left his master to purchase the tickets, one
female figure accompanied all his movements;
that when he entered the offices, it waited at
the door, peered cautiously in at the window,
hovered around him like a second shadow,
until once more he was in the company of
watched him carefully, and never left him
his employer-that surprise would have been
greatly increased.* Again and again were
these extraordinary scenes rehearsed.
last the Bank obtained a clew, and the ser-
vant was taken into custody. The directors
imagined that they had secured the actor of
so many parts; that the flood of forged notes
which had inundated that establishment,
would at length be dammed up at itssource.
found that "Old Patch" (as the mysterious
Their hopes proved fallacious, and it was
The house in
forger was, from the servant's description,
nick-named) had been sufficiently clever to
baffle the Bank directors.
Titchfield-street was searched; but Mr.
Brank had deserted it, and not a trace of a
single implement of forgery was to be seen.
All that could be obtained was some little
knowledge of "Old Patch's" proceedings.
It appeared that he carried on his paper
He was his own en-
fidant was his mistress.
coining entirely by himself. His only con-
graver. He even made his own ink. He
With a pri-
manufactured his own paper.
vate press he worked his own notes; and
counterfeited the signatures of the cashiers,
completely. But these discoveries had no
effect; for it became evident that Mr. Patch
had set up a press elsewhere. Although his

* Francis's History of the Bank of England.

At

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secret continued as impenetrable, his notes became as plentiful as ever. Five years of unbounded prosperity ought to have satisfied him; but it did not. Success seemed to pall him. His genius was of that insatiable order which demands new excitements, and a constant succession of new flights. The following paragraph from a newspaper of 1786 relates to the same individual:

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 buisness, an officer was set to find him, and to ask his explanation regarding the false note. After tracing a man, who 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. Clarke 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 bad 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 any body'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.

"On the 17th of December, ten pounds were paid into the Bank, for which the clerk, as usual, gave a ticket to receive a Bank note of equal value. This ticket ought to have been carried immediately to the cashier, instead of which the bearer took it home, and curiously added an 0 to the original sum, and returning, presented it so altered to the cashier, for which he received a note of one hundred pounds. In the evening, the clerks found a deficiency in the accounts; and on examining the tickets of the day, not only that but two others were discovered to have been obtained in the same manner. In the one, the figure 1 was altered to 4, and in another to 5, by which the artist received, upon the whole, nearly one thousand pounds." 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 every thing on the grandest scale. Yet Mr. Charles Price had no plate! The authorities could not find so much as a silver tooth-pick on

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-" Old Patch" was still remembered as the Cæsar of Forgers.

ITALICS-Manutius Aldus was the first who invented, or, at all events, the first who made a general use of the italic type, in contradistinction to that which we call Roman. The reader unaccustomed to this form is, in the first instance, so greatly surprised by the extraordinary amount of emphasis which he feels called upon to apply to every word, that he generally loses his voice before he has got through half a page. The employment of italics is sometimes dangerous; and a notable example of this is given in the case

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of the Irish member of parliament, who was seen in a rabid state one morning, with a horsewhip in his hand, in the vicinity of Printing-house-square. Being asked by a friend, who accidentally met him, what he was going to o, he answered, "To horsewhip the editor of the Times." "For what reason?" was the inquiry. "What reason, sir! Why, look here, sir; he has printed every word 1 said in italics, and I never uttered one of 'em!"-New Monthly Magazine.

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