The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 1/2: being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841.Pelham, Camden
History
The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 1/2: being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841.
Pelham, Camden
Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England)
The persons whose names are mentioned above, having been apprehended on
suspicion of being concerned in this cruel murder, were tried at
Clonmel, and being found guilty, were executed in 1766.
WILLIAM GUEST.
EXECUTED FOR DIMINISHING THE COIN OF THE REALM.
Guest was the son of a clergyman of unblemished character, of the city
of Worcester, who placed him apprentice to a genteel business. He passed
the term of apprenticeship to the satisfaction of his master, and then
came to London, and took a shop in Holborn, where he carried on business
some years with the usual success of trade. His father's good name
assisted him in procuring a clerkship in the Bank of England; and there
he pursued a system of fraud which procured his execution for a crime
amounting to high treason--that of diminishing the gold coin of the
realm.
He took a house in Broad-street Buildings, in a room in the upper part
of which he used to work. Having procured a curious machine for milling
guineas, not unlike that made use of by mathematical instrument-makers,
he used to take guineas from his drawer at the Bank, file them, and
return them to the Bank, and take out guineas of full weight in their
stead. Of the filings he made ingots, which he sold to an assayer, who,
on his trial, deposed that they were of the same standard as our
guineas.
About three years before his conviction he became a teller at the Bank,
and Mr. Leach, who was also a teller there, observing him picking out
new guineas from the old ones, and having some suspicion, watched him,
to discover whether this was a frequent practice; and finding that it
was, he communicated his suspicions to some others. On the 4th of July
1766, Mr. Guest paid thirty guineas to Richard Still, a servant to Mr.
Corner, a dyer, at Bankside, Southwark; and Leach observing him take
some gold out of a bag in the drawer, and put it among the rest on the
table, went after Still, asked him if his money was right, and begged he
would walk with him into the Pay-office, and let him tell it over. The
man consented, and Leach found three guineas that appeared to have been
newly filed, which he took away, giving Still other guineas for them. He
then carried the light guineas into the hall, and showed them to Mr.
Robert Bell, another teller, who carried them to Mr. Race, the principal
cashier. The latter weighed them, and found that they wanted from ten
pence to about fourteen pence of weight each; and he then, having
examined the edges, delivered them to Leach.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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