A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis: Containing a Detail of the Various Crimes and Misdemeanors by which Public and Private Property and Security are, at Present, Injured and Endangered: and Suggesting Remedies for their PreventionColquhoun, Patrick
History
A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis: Containing a Detail of the Various Crimes and Misdemeanors by which Public and Private Property and Security are, at Present, Injured and Endangered: and Suggesting Remedies for their Prevention
Colquhoun, Patrick
Crime -- England -- London; Police -- England -- London
It has not been an unusual thing for several of these dealers to hold
a kind of market every morning, where from forty to fifty of these
German Jew boys are regularly supplied with counterfeit halfpence;
which they dispose of in the course of the day in different streets
and lanes of the Metropolis, for _bad shillings_, at about 3_d._ each.
Care is always taken that the person who cries bad shillings shall
have a companion near him who carries the halfpence, and takes charge
of the purchased shillings (which are not cut:) so as to elude the
detection of the Officers of the Police, in the event of being
searched.
The bad shillings thus purchased, are received in payment by the
employers of the boys, for the bad halfpence supplied them, at the
rate of four shillings a dozen; and are generally resold to
_Smashers_, at a profit of two shillings a dozen; who speedily
re-colour them, and introduce them again into circulation, at their
full nominal value.
The boys will generally clear from five to seven shillings a day, by
this fraudulent business; which they almost uniformly spend, during
the evening, in riot and debauchery; returning pennyless in the
morning to their old trade.
Thus it is that the frauds upon the Public multiply beyond all
possible conception, while the tradesman, who, unwarily at least if
not improperly, sells his counterfeit shillings to Jew boys at
threepence each, little suspects that it is for the purpose of being
returned upon him again at the rate of twelve-pence; or 300 per cent.
profit to the purchasers and utterers.
But these are not the only criminal devices to which the coiners and
dealers, as well as the utterers of base money, have had recourse, for
answering their iniquitous purposes.
Previous to the Act of the 37 Geo. 3. cap. 126, counterfeit French
crowns, half-crowns, and shillings, of excellent workmanship, were
introduced with a view to elude the punishment of the then deficient
Laws relative to Foreign Coin.
Fraudulent die-sinkers are to be found both in the Metropolis and in
Birmingham, who are excellent artists; able and willing to copy the
exact similitude of any coin, from the British guinea to the sequin of
Turkey, or to the Star Pagoda of Arcot. The delinquents have therefore
every opportunity and assistance they can wish for; while their
accurate knowledge of the deficiency of the laws, (particularly
relative to British Coin) and where the point of danger lies, joined
to the extreme difficulty of detection, operates as a great
encouragement to this species of treason, felony, and fraud; and
affords the most forcible reason why these pests of society still
continue to afflict the honest part of the community.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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