A gigantic conspiracy to defraud was discovered in the following year, when a solicitor named William Henry Barber, Joshua Fletcher, a surgeon, and three others were charged with forging wills for the purpose of obtaining unclaimed stock in the funds. There were two separate affairs. In the first a maiden lady, Miss Slack, who was the possessor of two separate sums in consols, neglected through strange carelessness on her own part and that of her friends to draw the dividends on more than one sum. The other, remaining unclaimed for ten years, was transferred at the end of that time to the commissioners for the reduction of the National Debt. Barber, it was said, became aware of this, and he gained access to Miss Slack on pretence of conveying to her some funded property left her by an aunt. By this means her signature was obtained; a forged will was prepared bequeathing the unclaimed stock to Miss Slack; a note purporting to be from Miss Slack was addressed to the governor of the Bank of England, begging that the said stock might be handed over to her, and a person calling herself Miss Slack duly attended at the bank, where the money was handed over to her in proper form. A second will, also forged, was propounded at Doctors’ Commons as that of a Mrs. Hunt of Bristol. Mrs. Hunt had left money in the funds which remained unclaimed, and had been transferred, as in Miss Slack’s case. Here again the money, with ten years’ interest, was handed over to Barber and another calling himself Thomas Hunt, an executor of the will. It was shown that the will must be a forgery, as its signature was dated 1829, whereas Mrs. Hunt actually died in 1806. A third similar fraud to the amount of £2,000 was also brought to light. Fletcher was the moving spirit of the whole business. It was he who had introduced Barber to Miss Slack, and held all the threads of these intricate and nefarious transactions. Barber and Fletcher were both transported for life, although Fletcher declared that Barber was innocent, and had no guilty knowledge of what was being done. Barber was subsequently pardoned, but was not replaced on the rolls as an attorney till 1855, when Lord Campbell delivered judgment on Barber’s petition, to the effect that “the evidence to establish his (Barber’s) connivance in the frauds was too doubtful for us to continue his exclusion any longer.”