style="font-size:15px;"> Viotti's division of violin-playing into two great classes – good playing and bad playing – is applicable to Bank note making. The processes employed in manufacturing good Bank notes have been often described; we shall now cover a few pages with a faint outline of the various arts, stratagems, and contrivances employed in concocting bad Bank notes. The picture can not be drawn with very distinct or strong markings. The tableaux from which it is copied are so intertwisted and complicated with clever, slippery, ingenious scoundrelism, that a finished chart of it would be worse than morally displeasing: it would be tedious.
All arts require time and experience for their development. When any thing great is to be done, first attempts are nearly always failures. The first Bank note forgery was no exception to this rule, and its story has a spice of romance in it. The affair has never been circumstantially told; but some research enables us to detail it:
In the month of August, 1757, a gentleman living in the neighborhood of Lincoln's Inn Fields, named Bliss, advertised for a clerk. There were, as was usual even at that time, many applicants; but the successful one was a young man of twenty-six, named Richard William Vaughan. His manners were so winning, and his demeanor so much that of a gentleman (he belonged indeed to a good county family in Staffordshire, and had been a student at Pembroke Hall, Oxford), that Mr. Bliss at once engaged him. Nor had he occasion, during the time the new clerk served him, to repent the step. Vaughan was so diligent, intelligent, and steady, that not even when it transpired that he was, commercially speaking, "under a cloud," did his master lessen confidence in him. Some inquiry into his antecedents showed that he had, while at College, been extravagant; that his friends had removed him thence; set him up in Stafford as a wholesale linen-draper, with a branch establishment in Aldersgate-street, London; that he had failed, and that there was some difficulty about his certificate. But so well did he excuse his early failings, and account for his misfortunes, that his employer did not check the regard he felt growing toward him. Their intercourse was not merely that of master and servant. Vaughan was a frequent guest at Bliss's table; by-and-by a daily visitor to his wife, and – to his ward.
Miss Bliss was a young lady of some attractions, not the smallest of which was a handsome fortune. Young Vaughan made the most of his opportunities. He was well-looking, well-informed, dressed well, and evidently made love well, for he won the young lady's heart. The guardian was not flinty-hearted, and acted like a sensible man of the world. "It was not," he said on a subsequent and painful occasion, "till I learned from the servants, and observed by the girl's behavior, that she greatly approved Richard Vaughan, that I consented; but on condition that he should make it appear that he could maintain her. I had no doubt of his character as a servant, and I knew his family were respectable. His brother is an eminent attorney." Vaughan boasted that his mother (his father was dead) was willing to re-instate him in business with a thousand pounds; five hundred of which was to be settled upon Miss Bliss for her separate use.
So far all went on prosperously. Providing Richard Vaughan could attain a position satisfactory to the Blisses, the marriage was to take place on the Easter Monday following, which, the Calendar tells us, happened early in April, 1758. With this understanding, he left Mr. Bliss's service, to push his fortune.
Months passed on, and Vaughan appears to have made no way in the world. He had not even obtained his bankrupt's certificate. His visits to his affianced were frequent, and his protestations passionate; but he had effected nothing substantial toward a happy union. Miss Bliss's guardian grew impatient; and, although there is no evidence to prove that the young lady's affection for Vaughan was otherwise than deep and sincere, yet even she began to lose confidence in him. His excuses were evidently evasive, and not always true. The time fixed for the wedding was fast approaching; and Vaughan saw that something must be done to restore the young lady's confidence.
About three weeks before the appointed Easter Tuesday, Vaughan went to his mistress in high spirits. All was right: his certificate was to be granted in a day or two; his family had come forward with the money, and he was to continue the Aldersgate business he had previously carried on as a branch of the Stafford trade. The capital he had waited so long for, was at length forthcoming. In fact, here were two hundred and forty pounds of the five hundred he was to settle on his beloved. Vaughan then produced twelve twenty-pound notes; Miss Bliss could scarcely believe her eyes. She examined them. The paper she remarked seemed rather thicker than usual. "Oh," said Bliss, "all Bank bills are not alike." The girl was naturally much pleased. She would hasten to apprize Mistress Bliss of the good news.
Not for the world! So far from letting any living soul know he had placed so much money in her hands, Vaughan exacted an oath of secresy from her, and sealed the notes up in a parcel with his own seal; making her swear that she would on no account open it till after their marriage.
Some days after, that is, "on the twenty-second of March," (1758) – we are describing the scene in Mr. Bliss's own words – "I was sitting with my wife by the fireside. The prisoner and the girl were sitting in the same room – which was a small one – and, although they whispered, I could distinguish that Vaughan was very urgent to have something returned which he had previously given to her. She refused, and Vaughan went away in an angry mood. I then studied the girl's face, and saw that it expressed much dissatisfaction. Presently a tear broke out. I then spoke, and insisted on knowing the dispute. She refused to tell, and I told her that, until she did, I would not see her. The next day I asked the same question of Vaughan; he hesitated. 'Oh!' I said, 'I dare say it is some ten or twelve pound matter – something to buy a wedding bauble with.' He answered that it was much more than that – it was near three hundred pounds! 'But why all this secresy?' I said; and he answered it was not proper for people to know he had so much money till his certificate was signed. I then asked him to what intent he had left the notes with the young lady? He said, as I had of late suspected him, he designed to give her a proof of his affection and truth. I said, 'You have demanded them in such a way that it must be construed as an abatement of your affection toward her.'" Vaughan was again exceedingly urgent in asking back the packet; but Bliss, remembering his many evasions, and supposing that this was a trick, declined advising his niece to restore the parcel without proper consideration. The very next day it was discovered that the notes were counterfeit.
This occasioned stricter inquiries into Vaughan's previous career. It turned out that he bore the character in his native place of a dissipated, and not very scrupulous person. The intention of his mother to assist him was an entire fabrication, and he had given Miss Bliss the forged notes solely for the purpose of deceiving her on that matter. Meanwhile the forgeries became known to the authorities, and he was arrested. By what means, does not clearly appear. The "Annual Register" says that one of the engravers gave information; but we find nothing in the newspapers of the time to support that statement; neither was it corroborated at Vaughan's trial.
When Vaughan was arrested he thrust a piece of paper into his mouth, and began to chew it violently. It was, however, rescued, and proved to be one of the forged notes; fourteen of them were found on his person, and when his lodgings were searched twenty more were discovered.
Vaughan was tried at the Old Bailey, on the seventh of April, before Lord Mansfield. The manner of the forgery was detailed minutely at the trial: On the first of March (about a week before he gave the twelve notes to the young lady), Vaughan called on Mr. John Corbould, an engraver, and gave an order for a promissory note to be engraved with these words:
"No. – .
"I promise to pay to – , or Bearer, – , London – ."
There was to be a Britannia in the corner. When it was done, Mr. Sneed (for that was the alias Vaughan adopted), came again, but objected to the execution of the work. The Britannia was not good, and the words "I promise" were too near the edge of the plate. Another was in consequence engraved, and on the fourth of March, Vaughan took it away. He immediately repaired to a printer, and had forty-eight impressions taken on thin paper, provided by himself. Meanwhile, he had ordered, on the same morning, of Mr. Charles Fourdrinier,
