FALSE TREASURY NOTES

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12393, 12 March 1926, Page 11

FALSE TREASURY NOTES

PLANT IN ARTIST’S STUDIO. A story of the forgery of £1 Treasury notes in an Oxfordshire village bv an artist was told recently at the Old Bailey. Charles Ebsworth, aged 27, a barmnn, was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude for uttering three of the notes and to possessing seven others.

Mr G. D. Roberts, for tho prosecution, stated that Ebsworth tried to get a packet of cigarettes with one of the notes at a shop. He knocked the shopkeeper down and ran away when the genuineness of the note was questioned. He succeeded in changing one at a tobacconist’s. A quarter of an hour later, when he tried to get rid of another, he ran away, but was captured. Ebsworth, proceeded counsel, made a !■ statement that he had taken a friend as a lodger, an artist named Pusey, whom he afterwards discovered making £1 . notes. As he was out of work' he assisted Pusey in disposing of them in Liverpool. Later they took a furnished house in a village in Oxfordshire, where Pusey continued to make the notes, coming to -London once a week to change them. After changing some of the notes on November 25th, the statement added, Pusey collapsed on the platform of Paddington station and was taken to a nursing home at Tlfame, Oxfordshire, where he died, anfl was buried in the name of Davis. Mr Roberts added that at the houso in Oxfordshire there was found a complete outfit for the forgeries. There were bottles of various coloured inks, pens, paint, brushes, and tracing paper. There were also several unfinished notes. Inspector Ebsary . said that . there were a number of forged notes in circulation qt Hie present time, and the offence was on the increase.