STUDENT’S FALSE COINS

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20887, 19 August 1939, Page 16 (Supplement)

STUDENT’S FALSE COINS

Made After He Read Ex-’Yard” Man’s Book

Ex-public schoolboy, and son of a Windsor schoolmaster, 19-year-old Roy Baboneau Hoare, at present a student at the Royal College of Music, ■was stated at the Old Bailey, London, to have made counterfeit coins after reading a description of the process in a book written by a former Scotland Yard officer.

Pleading guilty to silvering a farthing with intent to make it resemble or pass for a sixpence, making a counterfeit shilling, and being in possession of a mould for making half-crowns, he was bound over for three years.

It was stated that counterfeit shillings were found in a number of cigarette machines in Windsor. Subsequently Hoare was arrested, -and it appeared that for some time he had been experimenting in a laboratory at his home.

Mr Greer Jackson, defending, declared that Hoare had been experimenting to discover a silver which,, in soldering, would work on aluminium.

Last September he read a book “Cornish of the Yard." in which ex-Detective-Inspeclor Cornish gave a minute description of how counterfeit coins were made.

The Common Sergeant: Other people who appear in this court tell me they learn coining out of books in (he prison library. Officer's Evidence Criticised Hoare decided to try to follow Mr Cornish’s prescription, went on Mr Jackson. “1 submit he had no criminal intent whatever,” saJd counsel. “Some of the coins he made were no good at all, but he thought several were works of art, and he gave some to his friends as examples of his work find simply out of pride. Referring to the evidence of De-tective-Inspector Carter, Mr Jackson remarked: It is felt strongly by the father that this officer has given false evidence to make a better story out of the case. It is not true that the place where the coins were made was kept locked, and that no one except the youth had a-ccess to it.” Mr Colin Charles Hoare stated that he knew nothing 'about his son making coins, and added: ''He has been interested in chemistry for the past eight years. From that he has gone to wireless, and now to music. He has an adequate allowance, and no extravagant tastes.”