COUNTERFEIT MONEY

Hokitika Guardian, 7 June 1930, Page 2

COUNTERFEIT MONEY

NOTES PRINTED IN GAOL. There has been released • recently from Pankhurst Prison, Isle of Wight where he had been undergoing a second* sentence of seven years’ penal servitude, one of the cleverest note forgers ever known to Scotland Yard. The man once made the extraordinary assertion that, when he was previously under detention at Camp Dill —having been ordered seven years’ penal servitude for uttering forged currency notes in 1918 —lie was set to learn bow to engrave and provided with books on the subject. It is' certainly correct that in the craft he developed a high degree of skill, and that when he regained In’s liberty he reverted to his old mode of life. Both at Parkhurst and at Camp Hill, he wps allowed to do small jobs, engraving names on brasses, one of his tasks being to put inscriptions on a war memorial.'

Now.the man, Ernest Everett, who is fifty-six has made the astonishing statement that, while, at Camp IT ill be, with the assistance of n warder since dead, contrived to fabricate in fire than six hundred Treasury notes AH of these, Everett savs, were smuggled out of his .cell, which, owing to the work he was engaged in, was with the-permission of the authorities, converted into a sort of workshop, His warder friend, an vs Everett, provided him with the right sort of photograph lens. and. with the aid of a selfmade box camera, he was able to inabo the forged plates 'from a photograph of a £1 note—three colour plates for the front of the note, ope for the back and one for the watermark. A good c lass paper, also furnished by the warder, was specially and scientifically treated with chemicals.

Opt of lead for the printing, Everett states, he made a most effective press and with a roller for the colours, he ■ secured excellent impressions on his spurious productions. He kept the counterfeits concealed under his working bench and passed out the notes a few at a time, to his confederate. The notes were exchanged for good money among . the tradesmen of the Isle of Wight and in the towns of the Hampshire mainland.

On his. release, Everett adds, lie expected' to receive £IOO from the warder, lie got £75 and a promise of £25 which was never fulfilled. Regaining his . liberty in June, 1923, Everett returend to London, and set up in business as. an electro-plater and engraver. Later, he advertised for apprentices to the trade of electro-plating and engaving, and obtained premiums of from £lO to £25.

Eventually Everett was run to earth at Gravesend, and at the Police Station he threw on the table a bundle which was found to contain 400 forged Treasury notes. Notes exactly similar had been cashed in Leeds, Doncaster Wakefield, the Isle of Wight, Southampton, Gravesend, Chatam, Woolwich, Windsor, Kingston and many London boroughs. Following Everett’s arrest Chief-Detective-Inspector Collins of Scotland yard, search bis premises in London and discovered a plate the size of a £1 note, and pieces of wax bearing the letters ONE POU and ND, and it was suggested that the wax was used to simulate, a watermark on the notes.

When be appeared at Maidstone Assizes. Everett was sent back into penal servitude for seven years, the Jud"e remarking that “the only time society is safe from you is when you are within prison walls.” «fc.jinwnißinwiiii»wwiinwM