On March 10, 1775, the discovery of a forged bond brought to light an affair that, according to Borrow’s chronicle, had already been unfolding for some time. The instrument bore the signature of William Adair and covenanted to pay a considerable sum. Robert Perreau presented it at the banking house of Drummond to secure an advance of five thousand pounds. The banker hesitated: the signature struck him as suspicious. He detained the paper until the following day. In the interval, Mr. Stephens, Secretary to the Admiralty, chanced to call upon him. He compared the signature with letters he had himself received from Adair and deemed it a counterfeit. When Robert returned, Drummond proposed that they pay a visit to the gentleman whose name stood surety for the loan. Robert accompanied him without the slightest demurring.
Adair denied ever having signed the bond. Robert smiled, answering that he must be jesting. Adair replied that the matter was no laughing matter at all. Robert retorted that he had been sent upon a strange errand; he asked to have the bond back, announcing that he would make his own inquiries, but Drummond refused to return the document. Robert had come in quest of five thousand pounds; he could not even depart with the paper meant to procure them.
Robert was an apothecary, and had hitherto enjoyed an unblemished reputation. Daniel, his twin brother, maintained a more affluent establishment. Margaret Caroline Rudd lived with Daniel. These three names were soon intertwined with the forged instruments: Robert protested that he had been deceived, Daniel likewise denied any conscious complicity, and Rudd was depicted as the hand that had crafted the signatures. The inquiry was tasked to determine not merely who had held the pen, but who had carried the notes to the lenders and who had enjoyed the fruits of the advances.
Sir Thomas Frankland recounted several earlier advances—first of four thousand, then of five thousand, and again of four thousand pounds upon similar instruments; he stated that the initial sum had been punctually discharged.
The inquiry laid bare other dealings. Henry Drummond recalled having lent Robert fourteen hundred pounds toward a land purchase of twelve thousand; Robert had deposited the title deeds of a house in Harley Street as collateral, promising to return ten days later. When he returned, he solicited five thousand pounds upon the Adair bond, offering first to clear the prior debt.
Dr. Brooke described yet another channel through which funds were allegedly obtained: fifteen bonds of the Ayr Bank, of a value of one hundred pounds each, delivered against a forged bond of three thousand one hundred pounds. William Watson, a scrivener, testified that he had drawn up eight bonds at the behest of one or the other brother. He hesitated to declare which of them it was, for their likeness forbade any certainty; when pressed, he named Daniel.
The servant Moody described two distinct handwritings practiced by Rudd: one for ordinary domestic affairs, the other for the letters attributed to Adair. By his account, she changed her pen, her ink, and her paper. She would then entrust these letters to him, bidding him deliver them to Daniel under the pretense that Adair had called during his absence; half a crown occasionally rewarded a service well performed. In the examination recorded by Borrow, Robert asked Rudd whether she had given him the bond. She replied that she had forged it, imploring him not to allow an innocent man to be condemned. Robert Drummond initially voiced his doubt that a woman could counterfeit that hand; Rudd took a sheet of paper and reproduced the name of Adair, or part of that name, with sufficient fidelity to convince him. The banker burned the trial piece, as he had promised. At that moment, the bankers believed her and dismissed the constable. Yet the investigation did not rest there: Robert and Daniel were committed to two separate houses of detention, whilst Rudd was admitted as an evidence for the Crown. At trial, the jury subsequently weighed the entirety of the papers, the advances, and the parts assigned to the brothers, rather than this solitary demonstration.
At the bar, Robert and Daniel defended themselves separately. Each maintained that he had been the dupe of Rudd. Persons of high repute appeared to speak to their character. But the jury also heard the demands for money, the bonds, the letters, and the narratives of the lenders. Robert’s defense endeavored to present Rudd as the sole author of the forgery; the twin resemblance of the brothers and the difficulty of discerning who had written or carried each document obscured the distribution of guilt. Nevertheless, this uncertainty did not persuade the jury to dismiss the indictments.
Robert was found guilty, and Daniel after him. Borrow relates that both maintained to the very end that they were ignorant of the fact that the papers had been forged. The capital conviction ushered in a season of petitions and solicitations. In Robert’s favor, seventy-eight bankers and merchants subscribed a memorial praying for royal clemency. His profession as an apothecary, his former good name, and the contrasting character of his twin brother were urged in the hope of obtaining a reprieve or a commutation. Their plea failed to stay the execution.
Prior to that execution, Rudd herself had been compelled to stand before a jury. Admitted at first as a witness for the Crown, her counsel pleaded this status in bar of her trial; the judges deliberated upon the point. Such an admission was not an absolute immunity to be pleaded without further scrutiny. In the statements brought into comparison, she accused Robert of having importuned her to imitate Adair’s hand, and Daniel of having compelled her to the forgery under pain of death. The bench noted several contradictions. Her trial took place on December 8, 1775.
Robert’s wife appeared to recount the delivery of a bond, which her husband had laid upon a table whilst brushing his coat. Moody once more described Rudd’s two hands. Frankland confirmed the loan he had granted upon that paper, acknowledging that he had subsequently received jewels and wearing apparel, sold by the brothers. Rudd, for her part, denounced a conspiracy hatched against her. Following her defense and a brief deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty upon the evidence laid before them. The acquittal pertained to her own trial; it in no way overturned the conviction of the twins.
The two brothers were executed together at Tyburn on January 17, 1776. Borrow depicts their arrival in a mourning coach and the vast concourse assembled to witness the spectacle. They stood close to one another; their hands joined and remained clasped. They left behind written declarations in which they denied their guilt and charged Rudd with the whole contrivance of the affair. Their hands parted only after the drop fell. The woman whom they accused was at large; they, on their part, left their dying protestations in the hands of the ordinary.