DEFEATING COINERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22258, 10 May 1934, Page 16

DEFEATING COINERS

INVENTION BY CONVICT TESTS AT KOVAL MINT. A Liverpool counterfeiter, who is serving a sentence of three years’ penal servitude, is believed to be responsible for a coming revolution in British coinage. Experiments are being carried out at the Royal Mint with a view to providing a new type of coin with a milling which, it is thought, will make counterfeiting impossible. In this connection it is recalled that when Alfred Edward White was convicted at Liverpool Assizes last October for counterfeiting bo put forward a remarkable defence. He declared he had discovered a secret process, and when his house was raided by detectives he was really experimenting with the idea of bringing about the defeat of counterfeiting. “ I have invented a method,” he told the jury, '‘by which counterfeiting can he stopped.” He offered to demonstrate this method, and he handed a sketch of his invention to the jury, stating be had forwarded it to the Home Office. He explained that an inverted grove running through the centre of the milling would make it impossible of reproduction by a counterfeiter. White’s friends in Liverpool hope that the experiments now going on at the Royal Mint on these lines will lead to some remission of the man’s sentence.