killed by the bank of england

I see that the Bank hanged, actually hanged, thirty-two forgers last year!

Murderous System!

The Bank had a long and controversial record of pursing forgers, resulting in at least 200 hundred deaths on the gallows in the period 1797-1821 alone. At the end of the eighteenth-century, the Bank faced a riot of forgery - and responded with fierce investigation and retributive prosecutions

Forgery was seen as an extremely serious crime, because of the threat to a rapidly growing commercial society that needed documents to be reliable: promissory notes, bills of exchange, Wills, deeds, and notes issued by country banks and of course by the Bank of England.

The Bank’s expertise in intelligence, investigation, coordination and prosecution was remarkable. Forgers of banknotes were the main target and although it took until 1729 for forgery in general to become a capital offence, the Bank had been well ahead of the game: 30 years earlier it had persuaded Parliament to make banknote forgery punishable by death, under the Bank of England Act 1696.

The problem exploded when Britain entered war against revolutionary France in 1793. People became nervous about the possible effect of the conflict on their money and rushed to exchange paper bills for silver and gold coins (sovereigns). Too much money was printed, to finance the armed forces. All citizens had right to demand a banknote’s value in coin (known as specie) and the Bank knew that it would not have enough to meet the demand and pay up. Its holding of gold decreased to less than £2m in late 1796, having been £7m two years earlier. Within a few months of this, things were becoming even tighter. Gold was disappearing fast. In late February 1797, some banks in the provinces had to stop payment; and specie was being withdrawn from the Bank at £100,000 per day. Some £130,000 of bullion was withdrawn on one Friday, which in modern values is over £17m.

The French invaded. On 22 February 1797, about 1,400 revolutionary troops landed in Fishguard in Wales, led by an Irish-American veteran of his home country’s War of Independence, Colonel William Tate. They were to march on Bristol, but their real purpose was to tie up British forces and so limit the availability of troops to reinforce those fighting the main French landing which was at Bantry Bay in Ireland.

The news reached London on 25th February, a Saturday. The Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, acted quickly. On Sunday, the Privy Council decided, and promptly notified the Bank, that cash payments were to be suspended and notes were to be used instead. Extraordinarily, the controversial Suspension was to last for 24 years, although the invasion was repelled in two days and the war with France was over by 1815.

The Suspension generated two commercial booms – the printing of banknotes, and their forgery. By 1809, a partner in Freshfields was not exaggerating when he wrote:

The fabrication and circulation of forged bank notes has lately become so systematic a matter of business that the security of the circulating medium of the country is seriously menaced and unless prompt and active measures are taken to detect and punish the offenders, the most serious consequences may be the result.

These same solicitors were unleashed by the Bank to pursue the forgers. They put the criminals on the defensive, but ‘never came close to defeating the epidemic’. There were already about 120 dealers in fraudulent coins in London alone: and they could easily diversify into forging notes. They knew the law and how to avoid detection, or successful prosecution - and the penalty if caught - but like many of the poor, they were so desperate that ‘no example of punishment is able to repress’ their activities. The Bank tried to make its notes harder to copy, but a small industry grew up, particularly in Birmingham, employing highly-skilled forgers. They focused on lower value banknotes, £1 and £2, which had not been used before.

The law firm that became commonly known as Freshfields undertook the lucrative tasks of investigation and prosecution. Some years were very busy: there were 260 cases in 1818, and an astounding 404 in 1821. Before 1797 there had only been a handful of cases each year

Freshfields promptly developed a national network of able men to investigate, arrest and prosecute. Focused on the threat in Birmingham, they reported from there that the Post Office had agreed to identify the suspected forgers’ letters so that they could be secretly copied. The same was done in Manchester. The Bank wanted solid evidence and would often decline to prosecute unless and until the case was unanswerable. Even so, 557 forgers were prosecuted over the two years ending in 1820, and 448 convictions resulted. Not everyone was happy. Juries were unwilling to convict even plainly guilty people because they knew that they would be sentenced to death. For the same reason, victims were reluctant to report, prosecute or give evidence. In 1818 William Cobbett, the lacerating journalist, railed against the paper-money system and then attacked the Bank, and Freshfields:

I see, that the Bank hanged, actually hanged, thirty-two forgers last year! Murderous System! And, I also see, that, in some parts, the people refuse to take, or, at least, hesitate to take, Bank of England Notes, on account of the frequency of their being forged!... Nor would I forget their principal agent, their Solicitor, whose list of victims exceeds that of Marat or Robespierre. I wonder whether he has the ears or the noses hung up in his office as trophies!

In 1819 he returned to the subject but spent more time in condemning (and exaggerating) the prosecutions. His argument remained that the real fraudster was the Bank because it was issuing banknotes promising to pay cash to the bearer on demand when, because of the Suspension, it was refusing to do so:

The issuing of each of these promises [by the Bank] is an act of fraud, and yet, to imitate one of the promises is to be punished with death!

It was easy to see, that it was the gallows, and the gallows alone, that could uphold such a system; and, if the support of the gallows be withdrawn, the system will not live long. The juries in England seem to have resolved to shed no more blood in this way. This villainous Bank has slaughtered more people than would people a State. With the rope, the prison, the hulk and the transport ship, this Bank has destroyed, perhaps, fifty thousand persons, including the widows and orphans of its victims. At the top of this crew of fraudulent insolvents, there sits a council to determine, which of their victims shall live, and which shall swing! Having usurped the Royal prerogative of coining and issuing money, it was but another step to usurp that of pardoning or of causing to be hanged! Thus, a set of fraudulent dealers, of open cheats, of flagrant delinquents, are, as to two essential points, the real sovereigns of England.

He had hit on a sore point: the Bank and Freshfields were fulfilling multiple roles: victim, legal adviser, investigator, and prosecutor. And the Bank had in place a system of rewards for informers - and, for those captured, incentives to plead guilty. ("Forgery cases continued to form part of the firm’s work for the Bank until the creation of the Crown Prosecution Service in 1986" Freshfields write in 'Our History' of 2020.)

Controversy over the Bank’s approach to prosecutions ebbed and flowed. The James Freshfield senior wrote to his partners in 1802 suggesting that men convicted at Warwick Assizes should be executed in Birmingham, the heart of the forgery industry, as a very visible warning to those involved. This backfired when a condemned man publicly asserted his innocence. The Birmingham solicitor who acted as agent for Freshfields, William Spurrier, feared for his life, such was the level of local discontent.

Anger at the Bank’s enforcement work was mirrored by criticism that it had failed to make banknotes more difficult to forge. A letter to The Times in January 1819, from ‘One of the Grand Jury’ of London, accepted that complete prevention was impossible but lamented that if more been done, there would have been far fewer executions. It went on to complain about the discretion in the hands of the Bank:

In the mean time blood flows: young men who have been led astray by designing villains… daily forfeit their lives; and that public whose feelings are outraged by such executions are to be told from time to time that something is doing… and the Bank is become very merciful by permitting such a number of individuals to plead to the minor offence. Where was this mercy till there was an outcry over the whole country against the sacrifices which they made? Where was this mitigating, this amiable lenity? But it would lead me from my present object were I to enlarge upon this dangerous assumption of the Bank, in wresting from the hands of the Crown its most pleasing and endearing privilege – that of mercy. The victims are selected in the Chambers of the Bank: where they choose who shall be saved, and whom they deem worthy suffer death.

That the hanging decades during the Suspension entered the national consciousness is confirmed by the thoughts of a man born in 1812, Charles Dickens. He recalled it decades later as he restlessly walked London at night and passed Newgate:

Not an inappropriate time either to linger by that wicked little Debtor's Door - shutting tighter than any other door one ever saw - which has been Death's Door to so many. In the days of the uttering of forged one-pound notes by people tempted up from the country, how many hundreds of wretched creatures of both sexes - many quite innocent swung out of a pitiless and inconsistent world, with the tower of yonder Christian church of Saint Sepulchre monstrously before their eyes! Is there any haunting of the Bank Parlour by the remorseful souls of old directors, in the nights of these later days, I wonder, or is it as quiet as this degenerate Aceldama [field of blood] of an Old Bailey?

Forgers and fraudsters who targeted the Bank were taking on two expert, well-organised, fully resourced and determined organisations: the Bank and Freshfields, who could also use police officers and freelance ‘thief-takers’, such as the highly effective and much-feared brothers Daniel and John Forrester. The Forresters had operated as ‘runners’ in the City since around 1820. They took jobs from prosecutors to earn private rewards. They were not part of the police, but they were eventually paid a salary by the Corporation of the City of London and worked alongside the City New Police that was formed in 1848. They would travel to France and the USA, indeed anywhere, to track down suspects.

The Forresters were well known to those who worked in the Bank. In the USA, after arresting one suspect, a Mr Elder, John Forrester carried on his hot pursuit of one Burgess who had used his position as a Bank employee to steal:

I took [Elder] before a justice, and proceeded with Mr. Bord and officers from Boston, in search of the prisoner [Burgess], to Nahant, which is a small peninsula, I think, about fourteen miles from Boston. There is an hotel there. I went to the hotel. The American officer who was with me showed himself at the hotel. I did not see the prisoner there. I stopped there all that night, Thursday, the 31st, and part of the next day. I was about different parts of the island on Friday, and on Friday night I returned to Boston. Before that, I saw this carpet-bag at the hotel at Nahant, and left it there. On Saturday I went to a place called Brewsters's Island, which is up the river, about eleven miles from Boston. I had an American officer with me. I went to a kind of wooden hut, or cottage there, and found the prisoner there. He knew me before, and I was acquainted with his person. The officer went in first. I followed, and the prisoner was by the fire. At that time he was without whiskers. When I knew him at the Bank I think he used to wear a little whisker, but I am not positive. I went up to him, and he said to me, "How are you, John?" I said, "I am very well, but am very sorry to see you in such a situation" He said, "So am I, but it can't be helped now, old fellow." We came away together in a boat, and in the boat he asked, "Where Is Elder?" I said he had made away with himself, which was the fact… The prisoner said, "Well, I think he is a fool for that, he might as well have seen it out." I searched him, but found nothing particular. I found some bags at Nahant. I brought the prisoner to Boston. He was locked up, and sent before a Ma­gistrate on Monday morning. After the prisoner was secured I got the carpet bag from the hotel at Nahant. It is the one that has been produced. 130 sovereigns were found at Nahant, and handed over to me by the American officer. I did not see them found. After taking the prisoner before the Magistrate in America, he was entrusted to me to bring to this country. Before I came away I obtained possession of £6,500, which I brought over and delivered to the Governor of the Bank of England. I got it from Mr. Blatchford, agent for Mr. Freshfield, at New York. I had heard the prisoner say there was money in the Bank. He said the money was in the Merchants' Bank at Boston, and be should be very glad to sign it over, for the Bank of England to have it. … I went with Mr. Bord and a Judge Warren to the prison the prisoner was in, but what passed I do not know. I went to identify Mr. Bord as the gentleman representing the Bank of England, and after that I received from Mr. Blatchford the £6,500, which I brought to England with the 400 and 120 sovereigns.

Not only was Burgess found and brought back to London, where he was sentenced to be transported for life, but the money was recovered. The Forrester brothers were not to be under-estimated.

Did William and Joshua know about Daniel and John? Or about the fierceness of the Bank’s response to fraud and forgery?

[For references, see Chapter 10 of One Man’s Justice, Uncut from which most of the above text has been taken, modified for a short summary. Key sources are the various publications of Randall McGowen, David Kynaston, John Francis, J.J. Tobias, William Cobbett, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, and Jerry White.]