C. Ainsworth Mitchell

REMARKABLE FORGERY TRIALS

Trials—William Hale—The Perreaus—Caroline Rudd—Dr. Dodd—Whalley Will Case—Pilcher, etc.

The evidence given at the trial of William Hale, in 1728, at the Old Bailey has many points of interest. The accused was charged with forging a promissory note for £6,400.

At this time it was customary for certain privileged persons to frank letters by merely signing their names upon them and adding the word “free.”

In this case the forged promissory note bore the words “for myself and partners” followed by the signature, and the Attorney-General pointed out in his speech for the prosecution that this had been done by erasing the two “e’s” of “free,” inserting an “o” between the “f” and “r,” and then adding the additional words.

It was also alleged that the ink in the stroke of the beginning of the letter “m” in the word “my” was in an older kind of ink, and probably originally formed part of one of the “e’s” in the word “free.”

The old creases in the paper were also such as might have been produced by the folding of the cover of a letter.

Philip Booth denied the authenticity of the handwriting, and was then questioned further:—

“Are they in the same ink?”To which he replied, “I take them to be of a different ink.”

The prisoner was found guilty and condemned to stand thrice in the pillory, to pay a heavy fine, and to suffer five years’ imprisonment. He died the same year in Newgate.

Two celebrated trials for forgery in which evidence as to the authenticity of handwriting was given, took place in 1775, and the justice of the verdicts was hotly discussed for long afterwards. In the first of these trials Robert and Daniel Perreau, twin brothers, were accused of a series of frauds by means of false bonds, while in the second trial Caroline Rudd, who had given evidence for the Crown against the Perreaus in the first trial, was indicted for the same offence.

According to the contemporary accounts Robert Perreau was an “apothecary of great practice,” while his brother “lived in the stile of a gentleman.”

The evidence went to prove that Robert Perreau asked Drummond, the banker, to lend him £5,000 upon the security of a bond for £7,500 which, he alleged, had been given to his brother Daniel Perreau by a Mr. William Adair.

Mr. Drummond questioned the authenticity of the signature upon the bond, which he therefore retained for further examination, promising to return it the next day or to advance the money for the loan. In the meantime he showed it to the Secretary of the Admiralty, who at once agreed that the signature was a forgery.The next day Perreau willingly accompanied Drummond to Mr. William Adair who promptly denied all knowledge of the bond.

The Perreaus and Mrs. Rudd now attempted to escape in a coach, but were arrested and charged with forgery before Sir John Fielding at the Westminster Guildhall. Similar charges of obtaining money from other persons by means of bonds, all of which had been signed with the name of William Adair, were brought, and after Mrs. Rudd had given evidence that she had forged the signatures at their instigation, the two brothers were committed for trial at the Old Bailey.

At the trial evidence was given by William Drummond that he had had an interview with Mrs. Rudd, that then she had admitted having given the bond to Robert Perreau, and after confessing that she had forged it had begged them “for God’s sake to have mercy upon an innocent man.”

Robert Drummond, brother of the previous witness, stated in his evidence that when Mrs. Rudd acknowledged the forging of the bond he had expressed doubts whether she was speaking the truth, seeing that the handwriting was so different from that of a woman. Mrs. Rudd had then written the words, “William Adair,” upon a piece of paper in writing so like that of the signature on the bond that it had satisfied him and he had burned the paper.

Evidence was next given by a brother of William Adair and by a clerk that the handwriting upon the bond was not that of William Adair.

John Moody, a livery servant of Daniel Perreau, who was called for the defence, asserted that Mrs. Rudd had two different kinds of handwriting, in one of which she wrote letters to his master as though coming from Mr. William Adair, this fictitious writing being absolutely different from her ordinary writing. He also stated that she used different pens, ink and paper for these forged letters, and that the handwriting upon the bond was precisely the same as that in the fictitious letters.

The defence of both brothers was that they had been deceived by Mrs. Rudd, who had given them the bond as a true one and that they had presented it believing it to be genuine.

Many distinguished persons, including Sir John Moore, gave testimony as to their character, but in spite of this both were found guilty and sentenced to death.

After their conviction great efforts were made to secure a pardon for them, and especially for Robert Perreau, against whom the evidence was not so strong. A petition was presented to the King, and the newspapers were filled with letters in favour of the men, who, as a large section of the public believed, had been the victims of a designing woman. But all was of no avail and they were executed in January, 1776.

Between their conviction and execution came the trial of Caroline Rudd for the same forgeries. She pleaded that having been accepted as a witness for the Crown she ought not to have been prosecuted as a principal. This point of law was referred to the whole bench of judges, whose decision was that the trial should proceed, in order to determine whether the prisoner had spoken the whole truth.She had charged Robert Perreau with soliciting her to forge the bond and his brother Daniel with forcing her to imitate the handwriting of William Adair. “If,” ran the judgment, “she has suppressed the truth she has no equitable claim to favour; and if she has told the truth and the whole truth she cannot be convicted.” The trial therefore proceeded.

The principal witnesses were the wives of Robert Perreau and John Moody. Mrs. Perreau stated that she had seen Mrs. Rudd hand a bond to her husband, Robert Perreau, which was signed “William Adair.” In cross-examination she admitted that she had never before seen a bond, and when asked how she could recall, after three months, the names, amounts, date, and other particulars upon it replied, “I have the happiness to have a good memory.” At the same time she was unable to remember the date or sum in any other document which had been shown to her.

John Moody, Daniel Perreau’s servant, again gave evidence as to Mrs. Rudd’s using two kinds of handwriting, and asserted that he believed that the signature of Mr. William Adair upon the bond was in the handwriting of the prisoner. In cross-examination he admitted that he had never seen Mrs. Rudd sign the name of Mr. Adair.

The defence was that there had been a conspiracy on the part of the relatives and friends of the Perreaus against Mrs. Rudd, and Christian Hart, a friend of the prisoner, gave some evidence in support of this.

A short speech was then made by Mrs. Rudd, who concluded with an appeal to the jury: “Gentlemen, ye are honest men, and I am safe in your hands.”

After a short retirement the jury gave their verdict in the following curious form: “According to the evidence before us, not guilty.”

For many years after these trials sides were taken for and against the Perreaus, and an appeal even was made to Mrs. Rudd to “discover the secrets of a transaction concerning which public opinion has been so much divided.” It was plausibly suggested that a declaration of the fact if she was guilty could not then affect her since she had been acquitted by the laws of her country.

Two years after the trial of the Perreaus and Mrs. Rudd came another notorious forgery trial, which created a still greater sensation, owing to the fame of the prisoner as a clergyman and an author.

On the 8th of February the Reverend Dr. Dodd, editor of Dodd’s Beauties of Shakespeare, once one of the King’s Chaplains, and a preacher whom Sunday after Sunday fashionable London had flocked to hear, was arrested on the charge of forging the signature of his former pupil, the Earl of Chesterfield.

For years he had been attempting to live in the style which he thought his position required, and had been in constant difficulties with his trades-people. At length to satisfy some of the more importunate, he borrowed £4,000 in the name of Lord Chesterfield, whose agent he represented himself to be, and gave a false bond for the sum.

The manner in which the forgery was discovered is especially interesting, as being one of the earliest cases in which the appearance of the ink led to the detection of a fraud.

The bond had been left with a Mr. Manly, who was the attorney for Messrs. Fletcher and Peach, who had advanced the money, and, according to the evidence which he gave at the trial, he observed “a very remarkable blot in the first letter E in the word SEVEN, which did not seem to be the effect of chance but done with design. He thought it remarkable but did not suspect a forgery; yet he showed Mr. Fletcher the bond and blot, and advised him to have a clean bond filled up, and carried to Lord Chesterfield for execution.”

When this was done Lord Chesterfield immediately disowned the bond, and Dr. Dodd was thereupon arrested. The attorney advised him that if he returned the money it would be the only means of saving him. Accordingly he raised the £4,000, on the understanding that the bond should be returned to him cancelled, but the charge was not withdrawn, and he was committed for trial at the Old Bailey.

His defence was little more than a confession of guilt and a plea for mercy, and after an absence of only a few minutes the jury found that he was guilty, but recommended him to the royal mercy.

After the conviction unexampled efforts were made to gain a reprieve. In every newspaper there were letters pleading for the life of the prisoner, and the most distinguished men of the day, including Dr. Johnson, then the foremost English man of letters, used their influence on his behalf. Officers of the parish, dressed in deep mourning went from door to door, gaining signatures for long petitions to the king, and the names thus collected filled twenty-three rolls of parchment. Finally, the Lord Mayor and Council went in state to St. James’s Palace imploring mercy for the prisoner. But all was to no purpose, for the king obstinately refused to show any favour to the divine whom he had formerly dismissed from his chaplaincy. His constant reply to all these petitions was, “If I save Dodd I shall have murdered the Perreaus.”

On the 27th June, 1777, Dr. Dodd was taken in a cart with another condemned prisoner from Newgate to Tyburn and executed.

His bad luck attended him to the last, for he went cheerfully to the place of execution under the impression that the executioner would be able to cut him down and hand him over to his friends before it was too late to restore him to life. Unfortunately for him the scheme miscarried. A contemporary account thus describes the incident: “Just before the parties were turned off Dr. Dodd whispered to the executioner. What he said cannot be known; but it was observed that the man had no sooner driven away the cart than he ran immediately under the gibbet, and took hold of the doctor’s legs, as if to steady the body; and the unhappy man appeared to die without pain; but the groans, prayers and tears of thousands attended his exit.”

That Dr. Dodd was hanged at Tyburn is unquestionable, but it was commonly believed at the time that the plan arranged with the executioner had proved successful, and that after being cut down, he was handed over to his friends, who applied restoratives, and when he was well again smuggled him over to France, where he lived quietly for many years until his death.

There is no reliable evidence of this rescue from the gallows, and although a few years ago it was stated that an account appeared in a newspaper of 1784, of the life of Dr. Dodd in France, the present writer has been unable to find any mention of this in the papers of that date.

The trial popularly known as “The Great Matlock Will Case” is a good illustration of the way in which the internal evidence of documents may afford definite proof of their authorship.

In the year 1856 a surveyor named Nuttall who lived at Matlock died leaving an estate worth about £60,000. He had no near relatives, and the only other occupant of his house at the time of his death was his housekeeper, Catherine Marsden. Her sister’s husband, John Else, had been employed as a clerk for many years by Mr. Nuttall, and wrote in a handwriting so similar to the surveyor’s that people were frequently at a loss to tell by which of the two their letters had been written.

Nuttall had had his will drawn up by a solicitor, and had made a copy of it in his own writing, which was signed and witnessed. In this copy certain additions benefiting Else had been introduced between the lines. A number of codicils to this will were subsequently discovered when Else had become appointed successor to Nuttall, and these were signed and witnessed by a local farmer and a surgeon, so that if these codicils were not genuine, there was conspiracy to defraud and perjury on the part of these witnesses. The genuine nature of the signatures was vouched for by a bank clerk, who stated that he would have at once paid money upon cheques so signed.

The case was first tried before a jury at the Derby Assizes in 1859, and the codicils were pronounced genuine. The Master of the Rolls, not being satisfied with the verdict, directed a second trial, which took place in 1860, and this time the jury decided that the codicils were not genuine. The plaintiffs then appealed first to the High Court and then to the House of Lords and a new trial was ordered.

The final trial came on before the Lord Chief Justice (Cockburn) in 1864, and lasted for eight days. The jury decided against the genuineness of the codicils, mainly upon the characteristics of the writing and spelling.

Both Nuttall and Else were bad spellers, but their mistakes were different. For instance, throughout the will “daughter” was spelt correctly, whereas in the codicil it was “doughter,” and it was proved that Else spelt the word with an “o,” while Nuttall had never done so.

The way in which the “t” was crossed was, however, the most convincing piece of evidence. It was shown that Nuttall’s habit was usually to leave the “t” uncrossed, or when he did cross it to do so completely. On the other hand, Else generally made a half-cross to the “t’s.” In the will written by the testator there were no half-crossings, whereas in the interlineation and the codicils the half-crossed “t’s” predominated. This difference was also brought out in a large number of the letters of the deceased and of Else, which were shown to the jury.

After the verdict had been given against them the plaintiffs attempted, though without success, to obtain yet another trial of the case.

One of the most remarkable trials for forgery that has taken place in this country was the outcome of the famous Whalley will case, which occupied the attention of the courts for three years in the early eighties.

James Whalley, whose fortune was in dispute, died in 1881 leaving £60,000. He had been a reserved man with a touch of eccentricity, and parsimonious habits, and in spite of his wealth had lived for many years in bare lodgings in the house of a railway porter named Thomas, at Leominster.

On several occasions he had expressed his intention of leaving his money to a man named Priestman, who though at the time unaware of the truth, was in fact his natural son; and there was convincing evidence to show that he had made a will on blue paper to that effect.

After his death, however, no such will could be found, whereas Thomas, the railway porter, produced a will on white paper, in which the bulk of the fortune was left to him.

Certain suspicious circumstances led Whalley’s next of kin to challenge the genuineness of the will, and though as yet there was no suggestion of forgery, it was urged that the signature had been obtained by some trick.After some time a compromise was made, and it was arranged that Thomas should have £17,000 and that the remainder of the money should be divided between Priestman and Whalley’s relatives. The will was proved on this understanding.

Here the matter might have ended had it not been for an act of folly upon the part of Thomas.

Priestman invited his solicitor and some friends to come to Leominster to celebrate the occasion, and on their way from the station the carriage drove past the house where Whalley had lived.

As it passed by Thomas stood at the window flourishing a piece of blue paper.

The solicitor, seeing this, jumped to the conclusion that this paper was the “blue will,” which Thomas was flourishing out of bravado, to show that he had beaten them. This led him to make further inquiries, which finally resulted in his concluding that the “white will” was a forgery.

As the Court of Chancery regarded the question as one to be decided by a jury the case was tried in the Queen’s Bench Division, eminent counsel being engaged on each side.

Evidence was given by David Reece, whose name appeared upon the will as one of the witnesses. He swore that he had never seen Whalley sign a will, but that, together with the other witness, Nash, he had put his signature above Whalley’s signature on a piece of white paper on which was some writing in pencil.

Other evidence was then called to prove that shortly before his death Whalley had asked Thomas to write a letter in pencil to Priestman, to which he had appended his signature in ink. This letter Priestman had never received.

The inference, therefore, from this evidence was that the will had been written upon a sheet of paper from which pencil writing had been erased.

A minute examination of the “white will” disclosed the presence of traces of the pencil marks, and words could be sufficiently deciphered to show that they had formed part of a letter.

The evidence of a number of expert witnesses, including Mr. Holmes, the librarian of Windsor Castle, made clear the manner in which pencil marks upon paper which had apparently been erased might reappear. When india-rubber is passed over the surface of the paper it removes part of the fibres of the material but only doubles over another portion, so that in time the latter may unroll again and uncover the writing which had for a time been concealed by it. It was proved further that the words which had now reappeared upon the paper were in the handwriting of Thomas.

The expert evidence that was brought fully confirmed the story of the witness Reece, and the “white will” was pronounced a forgery.

Subsequently Thomas was tried on this charge and was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years’ penal servitude. It is strange to reflect that had it not been for his being unable to resist the temptation of showing his triumph over his rivals, by flourishing a blue paper, his ingenious fraud would in all probability never have been detected.It is scarcely likely that this paper was the original “blue will.” In any case, the latter was never discovered, but the Courts held on the evidence laid before them that its intention should hold good, and that the money should go to Priestman.

An elaborately designed forgery was detected in 1891 by the evidence furnished by the different documents. An action was brought by a man named Howe against the executors of a Mr. Ashton to recover £1,375, which he alleged, had been given him in a cheque shortly before the testator’s death.

The body of the cheque was admitted to be in the handwriting of Howe who said that he had written it at Ashton’s request.

The cheque was signed “B. Ashton,” whereas in the cheques (produced by Mr. Ashton’s bank) for many years previously, the signature was invariably “Benj. Ashton,” and the shorter signature was only employed in letters. The evidence went to show that Howe had traced the signature from one of these letters.

A further discrepancy was apparent in the form of the figure “seven,” Howe invariably forming it laboriously and with a vertical stroke at the top, whereas Ashton had always made it in a continuous stroke. In support of his statement Howe produced some memoranda of sums due to himself, which he asserted to be the handwriting of Ashton.

In these the figure seven was invariably formed in the same way as Howe made it, while the figure was never made in that fashion by Ashton.

To account for one sum of £200, which he claimed to have lent to the deceased, Howe stated that he had borrowed the sum from his mother-in-law, and in corroboration produced a promissory note which he said he had given her at the time.

The note was dated 1889, and the date-mark to have coincided with this should have been “89.” An examination of this document suggested to the judge, Mr. Justice Wills, that there had been some tampering with the date. A hole in the paper came where the “8” should have been, the explanation offered for this being that the paper had been put upon a file. The appearance of the curve of what was left of the first letter, however, was not like the curve of an “8,” and by carefully working at the back of the paper with an instrument, the torn edges of the hole were pushed back into their place, and the figures of the year 1890 were made plainly visible.

So carefully thought out had this fraud been that it took twelve days to unravel the whole matter. After the exposures described above Howe naturally lost his case, and the papers were sent to the Public Prosecutor. Subsequently Howe was tried at the Old Bailey for forgery and convicted.

The trial of Frederick Pilcher at the Old Bailey in July, 1910, on the charge of forging his cousin’s will, was notable as being the first occasion upon which chemical evidence as to the age of modern inks has been given.

Pilcher, who was a naval architect and colonel in the Territorials, in Liverpool, had for many years been on very friendly terms with his cousin, Marian Lilian Kerferd, and had been entrusted by her with the management of some of her property.

Miss Kerferd died in March, 1909, leaving an unsigned will in which she divided the bulk of her estate, amounting to £20,000 to £30,000, between various relatives, while only £130 a year was left to Colonel Pilcher, whom she had appointed her executor.

Shortly after her death Pilcher produced a signed will bearing the date of 1898, which he stated he had found among the papers of the deceased, and in this will he was left the whole of the property and appointed sole executor.

He obtained probate of this will and took possession of the estate, dealing liberally with the members of the family mentioned in the unsigned will.

The relations, however, were not satisfied with this state of affairs, and Mr. Frank Stokes, as next-of-kin, brought an action, which Colonel Pilcher did not defend, and succeeded in getting the probate set aside, and the deceased lady was declared to have died intestate. In the meantime the prisoner had succeeded in spending about £5,000 of the estate.

When arrested he stoutly denied that the will was a forgery, but after evidence had been given at Bow Street he was committed for trial. The writing upon the will showed a close resemblance to that of Miss Kerferd, but the bank manager of the deceased lady stated in the witness-box that in his opinion it was an imitation.

A remarkable fact was brought out in his evidence. Up to the year 1903 Miss Kerferd had invariably formed the letter with a particular loop, and this was seen upon all the cheques, which had been retained by the bank. After that date, however, she made her “k’s” in a totally different manner, and the looping of former years never occurred in any of her writing. Now in the will alleged to have been written in 1898 it was significant that the “k’s” were formed in the manner of later years, and not as Miss Kerferd made them in 1898.

Certain mistakes of spelling in the will were also characteristic of the prisoner, whereas Miss Kerferd never made such slips. The names of the witnesses upon the will, which by the way were also wrongly spelled, were those of men who had been dead several years, but their relatives gave evidence that these signatures were not genuine.

Evidence was also given by the present writer as to the age of the ink upon the alleged will. The body of the will and the signatures of both witnesses were all written in the same kind of ink—a fact of importance in connection with the half-confession subsequently made by the prisoner.

On his appearance at the Old Bailey, Pilcher was defended by Mr. Marshall Hall, and after two days’ trial, he acted upon the advice of his counsel and agreed to plead guilty to uttering the will, though he persisted in his denial of having forged it.

When the prisoner’s counsel rose to make this statement there was dead silence, for everyone in court was aware that something unusual had happened, and there passed over the room one of those feelings of tension that make each individual in a crowd lose sight of everything except the unfolding of the drama before them.

After calling several witnesses to the good character of the prisoner, Mr. Marshall Hall made a strong appeal for mercy. Colonel Pilcher, he said, had been a very intimate friend of this lady, who had frequently expressed the intention of leaving him her money. Unfortunately, having put off signing her will from day to day, she had died without carrying out that intention, and unluckily for him the prisoner had found a will among her papers, but without the signatures of the testatrix or witnesses. He now owned that the signatures were not genuine, but did not know how they had been put upon the will. In uttering the will he had only been attempting to carry out the wish of the dead woman.

In mitigation of his offence it was pointed out that he had not spent all the money he might have done, that he was over sixty years of age, and that his wife who had known nothing of this unfortunate liaison of her husband freely forgave him for any pain he might have caused her.

Before sentence was passed Mr. Muir, who conducted the case for the prosecution, protested against the explanation of the finding of the will that had been given in this confession, and said that in face of the evidence that the ink upon the will was not more than six years old he could not accept the view that the prisoner was not the forger of the document.

The judge, in passing sentence, said that even now the prisoner had not made a clean breast of the matter, for they were still in the dark as to who had signed the names upon the will. However, taking into account the good character that had been given to the accused by those who had known him, and the points urged in his favour, he did not think that the extreme measure of penal servitude was deserved, and the sentence would be one of three years’ penal servitude.