The forged order of payment suffered from a singular flaw: it was drawn with too consummate an art. Not only did it observe every prescribed formality, not only did it bear the very signatures calculated to disarm the vigilance of the clerks, but it took heed of the recent indisposition of a staff officer and the identity of the colleague who supplied his place. The forger was cognizant of the office’s very absences. To discover wherein the paper lied, it was therefore necessary to ascertain what it knew.
This affair brought Thomas Maynard to Newgate, where he was executed on the final day of the year 1829. It had begun neither with a forced portal nor with the report of a pistol. A man had presented himself with a document, answered the customary inquiries, and subscribed a name. The wickets and ledger-desks did the rest, with that unruffled regularity in which administrations take a legitimate pride, and from which rogues derive no small profit.
One Thousand Nine Hundred and Seventy-Three Pounds
The warrant bore the date of the 13th of April, 1829. It purported to emanate from the Comptroller of Customs at Fowey, in Cornwall, and demanded the disbursement of 1,973 pounds. Five days later, it was exhibited at the proper desk, accompanied by the receipt customary in such transactions. The bearer was asked, according to usage, on whose banker’s behalf he presented himself. The name of Thomas Maynard was written down for S. Smith & Co., with an accompanying address.
A draft upon the Bank of England was forthwith prepared. Two individuals carried it thither and requested the bulk of the sum in notes, the remainder in coin. The money was paid over. The narrative published in September by Bell’s Life in London describes the expeditious return of a messenger who came to convert a portion of the paper into gold. There was a pressing urgency in this conversion; yet it left an indelible trail, for the numbers of the notes had been noted down.
One may conceive the relief of the man who walked forth with an independent fortune where he had entered merely with a scrap of paper. The record does not inform us whether he quickened his pace or had the address to saunter slowly. It tells us something more momentous: whilst the funds shifted their shape, the entries in the books endured. That which the Bank had just paid out could never again be wholly anonymous.
The Green Book
That very day, a customs clerk felt a stir of suspicion upon re-examining the instrument. He laid it before a colleague. They consulted the registry wherein every operation was required to be entered prior to the drawing of a warrant. Not an entry corresponded to the discharged document. The Green Book—as the journal terms it—supplied a contradiction far stouter than any mere impression regarding the penmanship: the instrument feigned an authority that had never been recorded.
There remained the minute familiarity with the inner workings of the service. Two clerks were ordinarily charged with checking the warrants according to the ports concerned. One had fallen ill at the beginning of the month; the other had taken his place. The spurious paper reflected this substitution. The hand that had prepared it, or the prompter who guided it, had not merely transcribed an ancient precedent. He followed the day-to-day life of the bureau.
Richard Huband Jones was employed there. He understood the routine of the Customs and had served in those departments through which the progress of such drafts might be traced. He kept company with Maynard and Joseph William West; he had lodged under the latter’s roof. These associations did not suffice to establish a conspiracy, but they furnished the inquiry with names between which the magistrates might direct their questions.
The Notes Had Travelled
A five-pound note was recovered in May. After arduous search, it was traced back to a woman named Jennings, who lived under Maynard’s protection. The scent did not immediately lead to the wanted men. The gazette mentions an interval during which the investigators lost their track; yet the chase was resumed upon fresh expenditures, recalled encounters, and the contrast between the former penury of the suspects and the affluence they had displayed since April.
Jones, whose annual stipend was modest, had abruptly opened an account by depositing a considerable sum in gold. He had purchased sundry articles, paying down ready money. In a jeweller’s shop in Prince’s Street, a patron answering his description had tendered a large note for a trifling purchase. The shopman, lacking change, had sent the note out to be broken. As the delay lengthened, the customer’s uneasiness aroused suspicion; he departed, promising to return anon.
The note itself pursued a different course. Forwarded to the Bank, it was readily compared against the recorded numbers. Other bills had been negotiated in Paris; these were connected with West. The money, from which the prisoners had perhaps hoped to purchase a new existence, traced step by step the itinerary of their meetings.
Spurious papers often suffer from this infirmity: that the genuine bank-notes obtained by their means are kept with strict accountancy. In daily spending, one sovereign is the fellow of another; but in a criminal inquiry, a note’s serial number may render it as personal as an epistle.
The Hands and the Men
At the bar of justice, the three prisoners protested their innocence. A witness, Edward Bushell, deposed that certain writings were in the hand of West and of Maynard. The defense produced three witnesses who swore they would not believe the man upon his oath. It is well to preserve this circumstance, lest the trial be recounted as a mere chain of uncontroverted proof. A signature had been identified; the veracity of him who identified it was impeached.
The 1829 journal records the conviction of Jones and Maynard, and the acquittal of West. The broadsheet preserved in the London Museum details the differing fates of the convicts: Jones was sentenced to transportation for seven years; Maynard was sent to the scaffold. We shall not extract from this disparity any fanciful tale of a bargain between confederates. The records establish the issue; they do not yield up every personal motive the men may have harboured.
On the 31st of December, Maynard was hanged at Newgate in company with other condemned malefactors. Upon the execution broadside printed for the hawkers, their names stand side by side, united by the fatal day though their offences had little else in common. A stroke of a pen, a theft of sheep, and petty burglaries thus met upon the self-same page, beneath a woodcut of the gallows destined to serve many a turn.
Maynard had not required, in pocketing the 1,973 pounds, to convince each clerk of his wealth or integrity. It had been enough for him to present that which each expected to see. The investigation, conversely, commenced at the moment when a man ceased to take the appearance for granted and sought the origin.
In the Green Book, the line was still to seek. An absence of a dozen words had unmasked the fraudulent order; yet months of hearings and legal process could not avail to restore the doomed man to his life. It is thus, on occasion, that a momentous tragedy finds its place within the archives: at the very point where nothing was ever written.