Forged Bank Notes.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 348, 6 March 1889, Page 6

Forged Bank Notes.

Tub forgory of bjink-nobes is a tempting, if nob often a profitable, industry. To the adept in this most modern of black arta it may seem a royal road to fortune. But a successful foiger requires consummate skill in ithe art of engraving. No bunger need attempt the business. The main diffi culty of the forger, however, is to dispose of his manufactured notes. It is by no means an easy matter for a private person, lot alone a forger, to got change for a good XIOO note— far less for one of £500— unless at a bank where he is known, or at the Bank of England, from which alone the holder of a bank-note has the right to demand payment on presentation. But the forger of a Bank of England note is nob likely to beard the old lioness in her den at Threadneedle-slreet. The plan which the forger generally pursues is to sally foith in the busiest part of the day with' a bundle of forged notes ot his possession, and, since in lack in hone&ty, boldness is the best policy in averting suspicion, presents the forged note in payment of some purchase at a shop inclose proximity to the bank of England. A master in this audacious art of making a rapid fortune has been known, in a walk from Temple Bar — it was befoie the hideous Otiilin aioso from the lower >egions —to the Poulbiy, to victimise in a couple ot hours more than 'a dozen hapless tradesmen, cairying away in exchange for his worthless no'e good notes and " gold in addition to the articles purchased. It sometimes, indeed, happens that the forger meets his match ; then comes the tug of war. A tradesman more lynx-eyed than his fellows has misgivings^ about the note ; it lacks the crispness and brightness, or the uniformity in the figures or lines, of the genuine note. He secretly despatches a messenger with the suspected note to the Bank. The forger, from experience, knows at once the meaning of the uncanny delay, and before the bank detective turns the street corner decamj)s, leaving behind, as a spoil to the victor, the worthless note. To protect its own interests and those of the public, the Bank of England long since organised a system of defence against the cunning attack? of the forger. It established an office of experts to detect forged notes on presentation either in Moneychanger's Hall or in the bankers' parcels. Somewhere between thirty and foity thousand notes of various denominations, ranging from the £5 note up to the £1,000 note, aro presented every day for payment at the Bank. All these notes have to be spparately and singly iscrutinisod by the experts known under the name of tank-noto inspectors. No ?ooner i& a black sheep detected among the Hock of the elect than it is scotched. The forged note, be it one of £5 or of £100 — e\e/i the Bank's secret annals do not tell of a forged £1,000 note— is ignominiously branded on its four corners with the ugly word, "Forced," in black letteiP of indelible ink. and re turned in this defaced condition, but uncancelled, to its luckless and often indignant owner. Woe betide the hapless clerk who in press and hurry of business, or by an act of carelessness or by an error of judgment, fails to detect the one guilty intruder among the thirty or forty thousand genuine notes daily brought up for examination at the tribunal of judgment. If he cancel a forged note (the technical term for tearing off the signaturo on tho right hand lower corner of tho note — an act which is the outward and visible sign of the inward grace and virtue of the note), the inspector has to mako good out of his own pocket; the loss to the Bank, as well as to bear the blame and c&'rele'ssness or the reproach of ignorance. No attempt is allowed to recover the value from the presenter of the forged note. And ri«hllj r ; since it would never do for "the . Jc&ank of England to acknowledge that it had accepted as one of its own legitimate children a forger's bastard. Sooner than that rvat ctdinn, which, broadly interpreted, means 'Let the clerk rue it." The Bank of England, like Cesar's wife, must be beyond suspicion. So great is the value which the Court of Diiectors attaches to that apple of its eye, public ciedit, nob only in regard to its own position, but as to the character of all concerned in the management of its business, that the Bank of England has rarely or never been known to prosecute any of its officers. In no largo a body ot officials, numbering, high and low, neaily a thousand, there must needs bo occasional lapses — though creditably rare — from honour or honesty. In such a case, the culprit receives a timely hint to send in his resignation or to pub himself beyond the c'ubches of bhe law ; for the Bank of England would rather allow one sinner to escape punishment than that its fair fame, as main \ taiued by its oih'cers, should be tarnished in public estimation. The foresight and sagacity of the directors of the Bank of England in establishing such an excellent and perfect system of inspection of notes have been amply rewarded by the event The forger's craft cannot, indeed, be altogether suppressed ; but its irregular and ci ratio activity is thwarted at every turn and robbed of its spoils by the art of the cxijcit. What the gallows in the eailier part of the century could not effect against the forger of bank-notes, the banknote inspector has accomplished to-day. How common, at bhab period, was bhc sighb df a ganir o f forgers expiating their guilt on the gallows, appears fiom the popular ditties of the day. Here is a specimen : — Four ancl-twoiity lorpers all of a row ; Their souls ascend to Rca'v en, their bodies drop below, This, perhaps, may be travesty of the famous words addressed by Abbo Edg worth to Louis XVI. on the scaffold : ' Fils dv Saint Louis, montez au ciel.' In illustration of this fine specimen of inspection, tako for instance the case of the £100 and t'soo forged Bank of England notes which a year or two ago deluged the Continent ; nob even one of bhese notes deceived the experts of the Bank of England. All of them that were presented were stopped, to tho valuo of L' 25,000. So great, indeed, at • the bime was the dread' of debecbion in England, that, rather than run the risk of trying t6 pass them, the terrified though nob con-science-striken forgers hid away a bundle of their spurious paper to the nominal value of £6,000 under a furze bush on Clapham Common. Tho less adroit money-changers of Paris and Vienna, of Rome and Naples and Madiid, fell easy victim's to the forger's art. • ' Just now, and when the forger is> again at work amongst us— has -been caught indeed black-handed in the very act — it is a comfort bo remember bhat it is chiefly on tho Continent that the forger ot English bank note 3 who flies at higher game than £5 or £10 notes betakes himself with his spurious wares. Bub, like chickens or curses, which come home to roost, bank notes inevitably return from their wanderings ab home or abroad to the Bank of England, whoro the good receivo tho reward of their virtue and the bad are incontinently branded with bhe felon's stamp.

Tho death is*"ainnomiced of , Sir Charles Ducane, K.C.M.G., who was Governor of Tasmania from 1868 to 1874