ROMANCE OF CRIME.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 432, 3 September 1908, Page 4

ROMANCE OF CRIME.

Ex-Forger and Card-Sharper as Reformers. Three remarkable men recentlyarrived in LfOndon. One was Mr John P. Quinn, the erstwhile •prince” of gamblers and cardsharpers, and now founder of the International Anti-Gambling Association of New York; another was Mr Edwin Noyes Hills, the only one living of the four men who, in 1873, committed the great forgery on the Bank of England, known as the “ Milhous of Money Forgery ” ; the third was Mr Geo. D. Dane, the secretary of the association mentioned.

The Anti - Gambling crusade, which was so successfully completed in the United States, is to be carried on by these three men throughout the length and breadth of England. Mr Quinn, it is said, was acknowledged by the foremost sharpers to be the cleverest of them all. In his time, instead of going about looking for dupes, he waited until he found the robbers, and himself robbed them. At the height of his career he was a wealthy man ; now, owing to his self - abnegation, he is comparatively poor. To him also, Mr Hills owes his conversion. It was for the purpose of obtaining money with which to gamble that Mr Hills attempted to obtain millions from the Bank of England—an attempt which resulted in his receiving a life sentence. If they chose, these two men could probabty make a big income by card-sharping—with, cf course, the usual attendant risks. Instead, they prefer to travel this country, and by practical and ocular demonstration at lectures, arranged under the auspices of various organised bodies here, prove to the ‘‘innocents” the impossibility of their ever getting the better of the practised sharper. One cf their telling arguments is that just as a lawyer cannot hope to carry on the physician’s business, so neither can the average citizen ever hope to win in a game of chance with the experienced gambler. Every conceivable description of gambling machine — the majority having been captured from gambling hells both in the United States and on the Continent—is produced to prove the crookedness of the gambler’s game, and to show that in the hands of au experienced operator, the man who stakes his money cannot hope to win.

To find funds for the campaign, Mr Hills decided to write the story of his life, to include the correct statement of the essential facts of the colossal forgery on the Bank of England, and the book entitled “ One of the Four in a Million of Money,” is to be published shortly. Associated "with Mr Hills in the production of the book has been Mr Charles Cook, the author of “ The Prisons of the World.”

Mr Hills having had his ticket of leave cancelled by Mr H. J. Gladstone, has signified his appreciation of the fact by dedicating the book to the present Home Secretary. He describes the whole operation of the forgery, which, had it succeeded, would have meant a loss to the Bank of England of one million sterling. The boldness of the scheme, the magnificence of the enterprise, the carefulness of detail and coolness of execution, constituted a crime story which the world has not forgotten iin the couise of over thirty years. The plot was successful almost to the very last, and then failed because of a slight accident.

Hills’ trial cost the Bank of England altogether After being sentenced, the four prisoners shook hands, and promised that in order to know what each would be thinking about on a particular day, they would read a chapter of the Bible, beginning with the first day of the sentence and with the first chapter. It took them noo days to reach the last chapter. Of Hills’ three accomplices, Geo. and Austin Bidwill and George Macdonald, the last-named died in California, a comparatively rich man. The Bidwills died in Butte, Montana, within three hours of each other.