ROBY G THE BANK OF ENGLAND.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4300, 9 May 1885, Page 6 (Supplement)

ROBY G THE BANK OF ENGLAND.

It 13 somewhat remarkablo that nut;! 1758—ii period of sixty-five years from the foundation of tlie bntik — no attempt was made to imitate Its linlcs. Tlie doublful lionor of lmving. led Hie nay in this particular belongs to one Iliehnvfl. William Viiugliiin. There is an clement of Eomanoe about liia story.—ln August, .1757, a gentleman named Bliss, residing in London ndvei'tised fora clerk. Among oilier?, Vauglian, then aged 26, offered liimself and was aceppled. He was of ;;ood address and education, though he had inadebut.au indifferent ti?e of hi* advtiiilages. Hβ had started as a linen draper in Stafford, villi a branch establishment Aldersguto street London, but had failed, and at tlip time of

his engagement by Mr. Bliss was an uncor" tificated bankrupt. The young adventurer succeeded in winning the affections of a nieceof Sir Bliss, who wasinduced,aftersome pressure, to consent to their marriage, conditionally upon Ynughan's first clearing him self from his difficulties and showing that he was in a position to marry. Meanwhile he showed his lady-lore, and indeed placed in her keeping, twelve alleged Bank of England notes for £20 each. The wedding-day was fixed for Easter Monday (1758), some three weeks later. In the meantime however an engraver, whom Yaughan, under an assumed name, had commissioned to engrave part of the plates for the notes, suspecting something wrong, guve information to the police. Vaughan was arrested, and spent his intendad wedding day in the condemned cell under sentence of death for forgery. At the trial it was urged in his defence that the forged notes were net intended to be put in circulation, but merely to be used as a means of deluding Miss iJliss and her family. It was shown, however, that the twelve notes deposited formed only a part of those actually printed, and that Vaughan had endeavored to induce one John Ballinger to cash somo of them. The defence therefore failed, and Vaughan was hanged. The imitation of the bank nolo at that date was a much easier mutter than it is at present, the note itself being a very rough affair, and only partly engraved ; the amount, the name of the payee, and the signature of the cashier being supplied in writing. There was no attempt at bank-note forgery on a large scale until theycar 1780, when a no , c was one day presented at the bank, and was cashed in ordinary course. The paper, the water-mark, the engraving, and the signatures, all were in perfect order. Indeed, so complete was the deception, that it was only when the note w:is about to be posted to the ledger appropriate to returned notes of that particular date, that it was found to be a duplicate of a note already returned, and consequently a forgery. The attention of the cashiers once called to the matter, it would have been thought that cither the presentation of the forged notes would cease, or that tho detection of the forger would be at easy matter. But it was not so. Similar notes continued to be presented ; but tho identity of the forger remained a mystery. Lotteries were in vogue at that day, and the notes were generally traced to one or oilier of the lottery oflices ; but there the clue failed. At last, however, a note being traced to one of these offices, tho keepers reported that they had received it from a young man named Samuel living in a street oil the Strand. The police went to the address given, and iound tho young man, who admitted changing the note at the lottery office us alleged, but declared that ho had merely done so by order of His muster. Brank, his employer, handed him a note for £20, with instructions to purchase an £8 chance in the drawing then commencing, ■and to meet him with the ticket at the Par-liament-street Coffee-house. This done, lie trave him two more notes to be used in the same way, telling him to meet, him afterwards at tho City Coffee-house, Chcapsidc. On his way thither he was hailed from a coach by his venerablo employer and intrusted with £'100 more, to be expended in like manner at different offices ; and at the , end of tho day notes to the amount of £1400 had been thus placed in circulation. \ Tho next day notes for £1.200 were got rid [ of in like manner, and tho day following £500 more. In negotiating this last parcel of notes, Samuel was asked to write down 1 his name and address, and this led, as we 1 have seen, to his arrest. For five years ' paper forged by the same hand continued to be presented, and the bank authorities were at their wits' end, when, fortunately ! for them, the ingcnious£forgcr hit on a new form of fraud, which led to his capture. A custom at that time prevailed at tho Bank of England that when a person paid in gold to be exchanged for notes, hedidnot in tho first instance rcceivetlienotesthemselves, but only a ticket showing tho amount, which was ; exchanged at another counter for tho notes. On the 3.7 th December, 1785, £10 was paid 1 into the bank, for which the clerk, as usual, gave a ticket to ■.'occive a bank noto of equal 1 value. This ticket ought to have been carried immediately to the cashier, instead : of which the bearer took it home, added a 1 0 to the original sum, and returning, pre--1 sented it so altered to the cashier, for ' which lie received a noto of £100. The numbers of this, and two other notes issued had in usual course, been taken down, and their return was watched for with much 1 interest. At last one of them was pre- ; sentod, and was traced to a highly-respect-able silversmith. He was interrogated, and stated that he received the note from a gentleman who gave frequent entertain ments on a grand scale, and was in the hah it of hiring plate in large quantities for that purpose. A polico officer was stationed in the house ; unci at His next visit the hospi-

table customer was arrested, and was found to bo the forger who had so long biifiled all attempts to discover Mm. This man Charles Price, the son of a slopseller in St, Giles , , had in his time "played many part?.' Ho first appears as a runaway apprentice ; then as a gentleman's servant, in which capacity lie travelled all over Europe, and doubtless picked up much useful information, lie then atavlod as a brewer, became bankrupt ; then a distiller, and was sent to the King's JBench Prison for defrauding the revenue. Ho then turned brewer again; then lottery-office keeper; then stockbroker ; again became bankrupt; and then-opened another lottery office ; this, his last public venture, bsing in King-street, Covcnt Ghmlni. From this elate (1780) lie disappears from public life, preferring thenceforth ' to blush unseen,' and to dovote his whole energies to his lucrative warfare against the money bags of the Bank of EnglaTiel. His only assistants were his wife and Airs Pountenay, a relative of his wifo, in whose house he executed the mechanical part of his forgeries, and who acted as a spy to watch the person employed to r.tter the notes, that Pricj might be warned in time of any hitch in the proceedings. When ' P-ric-p was taken, lv; in.ado a full confession. i : of ores llio dale at which ho should havo been brought to trial, lie hanged himself in hia cell. In I lie ineantimo a fraud of even greater magnitudes had been perpelruled within the bank itself by ono of its most trusted servants. In 1803, a Mr i'ish, a stockbroker, was instructed by Mr Robert Asllett, cashier of the "Dank of England, to dispose of some exchequer bills, which, from certain circumstances, Jiish kne.v to bo in the official custody of tho bunk. His suspicions being phu; aVcii3pti, ijo eonun'.iftica-liHj WJpb the directors; and it was found that Astlctt, who had charge of till exchequer bills brought into Hi? IjudU, and sliouju have transferred thorn, in parcols properly docketed, to (lie custody of the directors, had succeeded in diverting n> largo number of thorn to ills own viaos, his defalcations amounting to no less than £820/'OO. Astle.lt was tried for his offence, and was sentenced to death ; but the sentence was never earned into effect. '1 ho prisoner remained in Noivgatc for many years; but whether ho died in prison we do not find recorded. We now covne to the forgeries of Fauntleroy, which, from thoir magnitude and the position of the offender, produced an extraordinary ecneation. Henry Fauntleroy had succeeded his frtllicr as a partner in the banking firm of Marsh, Stracy, and Co. The firm was unfortunate ; and Fauntleroy speculated largely on the Stock Exchanges in the hope of improving ila fortunes, but actually involved himself thereby in still greater difficulties. To meet these, ho forged powers of attorney enabling him to deal with funded securities belonging to various clients, from time to time replacing ono fund by the pro(•mis of a. later forgery. Ho began in May, \til?>, with a p,owpv of attorney empowering Messrs Marsll and Go. to se\\ gut a" sum oj' £3,000 consols.' It is an everyday ocrurrence for clients to give such powers to their bunkers, and the one in question appeared to be in perfect order. It purported to be executed by flip fundholder, oho X'Vances Young, of Chiehestcr, and to be attested by two of the clerks of Messrs Marsh ami Co. Thopowpr was presented at the Rank of England. Tliero was nothing to excite suspicion, and the document wus acted on in ordinary course. From this date up to 182-1 the presentation of such powers by Messrs Marsh and Co. bpcame a.matter of frequent occurrence, and very largo sums were thus obtained. At last a crash came. Henry Fauntleroy was joint trustee with somo other gentlemen of certain moneys invest ed in the Threo per Gents. One of the trustees chancing to call at (he bank to make some enquiry respecting the trust fund,'found, to his horror, that it had been sold out, under an alleged power of attorney, by Mr. Faiintlevoy. . In conse-

quence of his communication to the bank authorities, the whole of the powers acted upon by Marsh anh Co. wero investigated and a great part of them were found to bo forged. On 9th September, 1824, Fauntlcivy was arrested in his own banking-bouse. He offered tho officer who arrested him £10,000 if he would connive at his escape ; but in rain. On searching his private office, a box wa3 found containing a long list of forgeries, with a memorandum in the following words : —' In order to keep up the credit of our house, I have forged powers of. attorney, and have therefore sokl out all these sums, without the knowledge of any of my partners. I have given credit in tho accounts for the intrest when it became due. (signed) He:n t ry Fauntlehoy.' It is stated that at the moment of his apprehension he had ready a fresh power of attorney, by means of which ho would have been enabled to replace the stock whose absence led to the discovery. The amount of loss to the Bank of England by Fauntlcroy's forgeries is said to havo been no less than £360,000 ! He was executed at Newgate on 30th November, IS2-JL —Chamber's Journal.