FAMOUS FORGERIES

Taranaki Daily News, 4 January 1935, Page 10

FAMOUS FORGERIES

CRIMINAL CLEVERNESS I PORTUGUESE BANK-NOTE CASE. OTHER NOTABLE INSTANCES.

It might be supposed that modern scientific methods of examining documents —the metric measurement of handwriting, the use of ultra-violet light, in-fra-red photography and microscopy in the scrutiny of paper, ink and penmanship—would have made the life of a forger singularly dangerous and unprofitable. Dangerous; yes, but the criminal history of the last decade suggests that the field for successful fraud by uttering fa Is: documents is far larger than the forger of the 19th century ever dreamed. The Portuguese bank-note swindle is a case in point.

If the public, which imperfectly understood that notorious fraud, has forgotten its salient aspects and startling consequences in the last ten years, bankers have not. It was the most perfect forgery of modern times. Sir Cecil H. Kisch published the history of the case two yeans ago, but no one has arranged the facts in more simple perspective than Mr. Henry T. F. Rhodes, of the Institute of Criminology, University of Lyons (France), whose new book paints 3 graphic picture of forgery through the ages. On December 4, 1924, Sir William Waterlow, of the firm of Waterlow and Sons, printers, received a call from Mr. K. Marang van Ysselveere, who presented a letter of introduction from a reputable firm of Dutch printers, and diplomatic credentials signed by the Portuguese Minister at The Hague. Sir William Waterlow did not know that these documents were forgeries, and in all the transactions which followed he did not suspect that he was being made the dupe of a gang of unscrupulous rogues. Mr. Marang asked him to arrange for the printing of a large number of Portuguese bank-notes for circulation in the Portuguese colony of Angola. Sir William Waterlow demanded to see the authority of the Bank of Portugal for such a large order. He was shown documents, since known to have been forged, relating to a contract between the Bank of Portugal and the Government of Angola,

GENUINELY SIGNED. The documents, which Sir William Waterlow sent to an English notary for examination, were signed, genuinely, by three consuls. Neither Sir William Waterlow nor the notary, however, appreciated the suspicious circumstances that the signatories were fixed not to the documents, but to separate sheets of paper attached to them. Sir William Waterlow was inclined to make personal Inquiry into the contract he was about to undertake, but he was persuaded not to do so by Mr. Marang, who said that the printing of the notes must be absolutely confidential. When a letter arrived from the chairman of the Bank of Portugal thanking Sir William Waterlow for his secrecy and cooperation, and authorising him to begin at once the printing of the notes, there seemed to be no reason to doubt Mr. Marang’s credentials. The letter from the bank chairman was forged and curiously, Sir William Waterlow’s acknowledgment, sent by the next mail, never reached Lisbon. Hundreds of thousands of notes were printed. But it is one thing to be possessed of counterfeit money and another to utter it without arousing suspicion. The real magnitude and ingenuity of the fraud was in the way the conspirators set about placing their illicit paper in circulation. While Mr. Marang was entertaining Sir William Waterlow with his specious words and suave manners an application was received by the Portu- j guese Government for permission to open a new bank. The permit was issued, and in July, 1925, the Banco Angola e Metropole arose from nowhere with a capital of 200,000 counterfeit escudos. The fraud caused a loss of £1,000,000 before it was discovered, and the financial structure of Europe shook under the blow. Only the brave a,nd determined action of the directors of the Bank of Portugal saved collapse in that country. The sequel was almost as astonishing as the crime. Marang, the arch conspirator, escaped, and has not been traced. Four of his fellow-swindlers were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The Bank of Portugal sued Waterlow and Sons for contributory negligence, and received an award of £569,000 in damages. Waterlow and Sons appealed, and the damages were reduced to £300,000, but when the Bank of Portugal took the case to the House of Lords the final award was £610,000. So ended what is surely the most successful large-scale forgery of the 20th century.

DIVERSIFIED CRAFT. No aspect of the diversified craft of forgery is more entertaining than the identification of handwriting. Allan Pinkerton, founder of the famous American private detective agency, and Bertillon, the great French handwriting expert, built up their reputation in this branch of criminology, and Mr. Rhodes included in his book some engrossing chapters on the reliability of evidence and proof in cases now historic. No examples have greater interest than those in which failure to employ accurate standards in detection caused grave miscarriage of justice. The trial of Dreyfus in 1894 is a classic instance. Suspected of having supplied military secrets to the Germans, Captain Dreyfus was ordered by his commandant to write some words on a sheet of paper. When he had written a few sentences he was arrested by the commandant and charged with treason. The prosecution alleged that his handwriting was identical with the writing on documents addressed to the German military attache. M. Bertillon, the eminent handwriting expert, agreed with this opinion and Dreyfus was sentenced to degradation and imprisonment for life. But Bertillon’s methods of identification were behind the times. He knew nothing, for instance, of the modern device of enlarging handwriting to discover minute points of error. Madame Dreyfus called in the American handwriting expert David Cavalho, who insisted that the writing on the secret documents was an imitation. The judgment of the French court-martial was severely shaken. Dreyfus was pardoned after he had served six years in prison, and some time later Colonel Henry confessed that he had forged the documents, and Major Esterhazy confessed to conspiracy. Henry committed suicide, and Esterhazy fled to England. In 1906 the Supreme Court of France de - clared Captain Dreyfus innocent. A case which was forgotten, but bearing somewhat similar features, was the sentence of imprisonment for 10 years imposed on Lieutenant La Ronciere in 1832. In August of that year young La Roncieie was invited to dinner at the apartments of Baron de Morell, commandant at the French military school of Saumur. sat next to the Baron’s daughter, Marie, aged 16, a girl of good education and great charm, but excessive vanity. “How do you like my mother?” she asked during the dinner. “She is charming,” replied the Lieutenant. The girl looked at him curiously. “Isn’t it a shame I am so unlike her?” she said. Nov/ the lieutenant was youthful and

clumsy in repartee, and the reply he made was, “It would be a pity if you did resemble her at your age.” The girl seemed mortally offended, and turned her back on him. Four days later a young officer of the girl’s acquaintance received a letter in La Ronciere’s handwriting. It made damaging accusations against the girl. Marie, too, received letters in the same handwriting. For days the letters continued to pour in until the girl was reduced to hysteria, and her family was roused to action. La Ronciere, on trial, flatly denied his guilt, and experts who gave evidence confirmed his protestations by stating that, so far from the letters being written by the young lieutenant, they had been written by Marie. But the Court set all this evidence aside. It refused to believe that a girl of noble ancestry could resort to such a trick as writing criminal letters to herself. La Ronciere served eight years of his sentence, he was then given an official post in Algeria, and later was awarded the Legion of Honour. Modern judgment upon these letters categorically confirms the opinion of the French handwriting experts at the time, namely, that the girl copied the handwriting of La Ronciere and forged his signature. Psychologists endorse the opinion bv adding a motive—that the girl, secretly in love with La Ronciere, was grievously annoyed by his words at the dinner table, and sought revenge. In the public mind the mantle of the successful forger has fallen on the shoulders of James Townsend Saward, known to ignominy as Jim the Penman. Mr. Rhodes claims that this almost legendary figure has earned a reputation in criminal history to which he is not entitled Saward, he says, was not a great forger; he was a crude copyist, and his pencraft was anything but convincing. His niche in the forger’s hierarchy is deserved because he invented a technique of uttering forged cheques which has been followed by thousands of petty forgers since his day. Mr. Rhodes had much to say about other notorious forgers, including literary ones, and he advances credible theories about the motives that impelled their deeds. He knows more about the ruses employed by experts to test suspicious documents than the wary forger would care to suspect, and his assertion, “It is a much more dangerous proceeding to manipulate a document or imitate a signature or piece of handwriting than it was 10 years ago,” should be taken to heart by anyone whose fingers may perchance itch to tamper with another’s penmanship.