Episode 7: Funny Money

Heart originals.

This is an iHeart original.

Isaac Newton had put dozens of people in the dock the defendant stand, but now he was sitting there himself.

But Challner had.

Already spent seven weeks in filthy Newgate. He felt he was entitled to something, an acknowledgment that he'd been wronged, maybe even some compensation. In February sixteen ninety eight, Challener took his case to the Court of Public Opinion. He wrote a letter to Parliament a letter that he also had made into pamphlets for public distribution.

Your petitioner did, in the last sessions of Parliament discover several abuses committed in the Mint, and showed by what methods false money was coined. Then some of the Mint threatened to prosecute me and take away my life before the next session of Parliament, telling me that this Honorable House had no power to meddle with the affairs of the Mint. This committee promised your Petitioner that I should

Challoner's accusations meant yet another investigation. This time it was Warden Isaac Newton at the center of it. Newton was forced to defend himself to a committee of senior government officials.

Mister Challoner before a committee of the last Sessions of Parliament, labored to accuse and vilify the Mint, and prove himself a more skillful coiner than they, that he might be made their supervisor, and then supply Thomas Holloway with tools out of the tower to counter it his own milled money, which he then concealed from that honorable committee, boastink secretly that he would fund the Parliament as he had done the King and back before.

Challoner was a liar and a counterfeiter, and it was for that, and not quote offending the Mint, that he was being prosecuted.

If therefore he be ruined, it's by his endeavoring not to say of the King and Government as he pretends, but to coin false money. And if he would but let the money and government alone and return to his trade of japanning, he is not so far ruined that he may still live as well as he did seven years ago when he left off that trade and raised himself by coining.

The committee believed Newton, it was, after all, stacked with a few of his maids, to be honest, and they dismissed Shalloner.

But Newton was pissed.

Newton is not a man to suffer insult lightly, and he most certainly felt insulted. And if we know anything about Newton, it's that he does not forgive and forget at all. For iHeartRadio, I'm Linda Rodriguez, McRobbie, and this is Newton's Law and I Heeart Original podcast episode seven, Funny Money.

It's more.

You are making you.

Act one the Malt tickets.

Jallaner's attempt to publicly discredit Isaac Newton and the Mint it was more or less a hail Mary. He had to know that they weren't giving out fistfuls of cash for wrongful imprisonment. That wasn't a thing back then. But he was desperate.

When Challeener had gotten out of Newgate in the autumn of sixteen ninety seven, he was broke.

While he'd been in Newgate, he not only had to pay off the witnesses who would have testified against him and get Holloway and his family plus made out of the country, but he also had to pay for everyday expenses, food and bedding. Newgate wardens also charged for every visitor who came in. So yeah, Challeener had spent pretty much every penny he had to keep afloat.

Challener needed money.

Big time, and as a lifelong career criminal, he really only knew a few ways of getting it. Challener first tried his hand at making some crude coins shillings over the fire.

In his flat.

He was living in a rented room above a pub near Covent Garden, which was then a noisy, formerly posh market district that was home to gambling dens and brothels. That big fancy house in nice Bridge that was long gone probably sold all of his silver plates and his gents clothing by now too, But not even as mates would try to pass his poorly made coins into the market. So Challener did some thinking making coins. Making good coins at the quality he had been producing took raw materials.

This recoinage is not work well atol. It must be somebody else's vault.

He was a man who never turned down a chance to gamble with someone else's money. In sixteen ninety four, Neil set up a lottery to bring in some revenue for the government, called and this was a real thing, even though it sounds like a scratch off ticket, the Million Adventure. Each ten pound ticket had a chance of winning up to one thousand pounds, but when it came

And the Treasury led him seriously.

Who thought it was a good idea to let Neil do literally anything at this point? But the Malt lottery was even weirder than the million Adventure. Here's Tom Levinson, author of Newton and the Counterfeiter, to explain.

It was several things at once. First of all, it was basically an annuity product. People would buy it and they would be promised a given rate of interest for some number of years. They wouldn't get their principle back, but they'd get this return for a long time. And that interest payment was a secured payment, and it was secured on a specific source of revenue tax on malt, which is effectively a tax on beer. So that's, you know, in the English context, that's a pretty secure revenue stream.

The Treasury issued one hundred and forty thousand of these ten pound malt lottery tickets. Just as with the adventure tickets, people group together to purchase shares in them, So again there's a bit of an equity market going something that had already been a part of the cultural landscape for decades now.

So the mall lottery.

Tickets were like a long term savings bond, and they were also a gambling instrument. But the mall lottery tickets had an extra feature, one that was pretty unusual.

There was a third thing that they could do. It turned out that this particular lottery did not sell very well, so in order to try and get as much use out of having decided to issue these things. Problem is that these could be legal tender, or at least if not legal tender precisely, they could be treated as money. So for captive audiences like you know, sailors in the Royal Navy, those guys were paid in lottery tickets. All of a sudden you have this one piece of paper

And it was a kind of continuation of the Bank of England's running cash notes, just on a much much larger scale. The Bank of England notes were issued in one hundred pounds denominations, huge amount of money for a lot of people.

But the Malt tickets were.

Only ten pounds, and there were potentially going to be a lot more of them in circulation.

And you know what was great about this is as money, they had a face value ten pounds. You knew what you were getting when you got one, or if you were a challenger, if you made one.

Challener cotton down pretty quickly. That the best thing about this Malt lottery was that it was going to be so so easy to exploit.

The Great Battle between Isaac Newton and William Challoner Ross sixteen ninety six and sixteen ninety seven. By the end of it, Challenger was really quite in desperate stakes. But Challoner had one more great scheme in him.

The problem was again money, though setting up a counterfeit lottery ticket operation was certainly less costly than trying to set up a fake mint. It still took supplies, the right paper, copper for creating the engraved plates, special ink. He needed a backer, someone who'd helped finance this operation for a cut of the profits. Challenger tapped into his dwindling network of contacts. He didn't have many people left who weren't in jail, or who he hadn't double crossed,

Procure me one of those so called malt tickets.

With what money, sir, I have but one chilling.

Again, these weren't cheap.

Ten pounds was more than a skilled tradesman earned in three months of work.

So Carter was.

Going to have to find someone who had enough capital to fund the scheme.

Perhaps you can find a man of adequate means who desires to increase his fortune. Well, I suppose, But whatever you do keep my nime out of it.

Carter came up with a man called David Davis, which sounds like a made up name, but not more so than the unlucky Daniel Decoiner, who in sixteen eighty four was executed for coining. Carter met Davis on Piccadilly, then a major thoroughfare through Westminster.

Please do explain this secretive and most urgent business.

I am acquainted with a man which could engrave very dexterously and had a strong inclination to grave a plate for malt tickets. The copper is not yet bought, and for my own part I have not been master of one shilling this month, and my friend is very indigent. Besides, this business requires a good stock for lodgings, provisions and other necessities to complete the work. You are not to see my workman all shall he be concerned with you.

Suppose that your friend, after a great deal of money is laid out and expended, cannot perform the plate. It's a very curious thing, and no person that I ever heard of did understands taking the reverse of a fine bill upon copper.

Besides, Challoner ask no questions, Bud. If you knew who my friend was, now he was as great a master as Challoner.

Davis agreed to back the enterprise. He provided three legitimate malt tickets and a bit of working money to Carter, who then passed them on to Challoner. It took Challoner the better part of two weeks to engrave the copper plates, laboriously etching the ticket in reverse, hunched over a tabletop in his rented lodgings above the Golden Lion in.

Wilde Street near kevent Garden.

Carter kept Davis in the loop, updating him on progress almost daily. When the plates were ready, Chaloner did a test run. Six score that's one hundred and twenty malt lottery tickets, so finely wrought as to be indistinguishable from the real thing. Challoner and Carter sold Davis about one hundred tickets, the first of many more they promised. Challoner stood to make hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds off the scheme. It was like printing money, because it was

I addressed myself to the right Honorable Secretary Vernon, and did acquaintum that a malt ticket plate was counterfeited, and that to prevent the distributions of several false tickets, there was a necessity to secure some that were done and to subsist the persons that had done them till I could obtain the advantage of seizing Challoner and of securing the plate.

Davis and Vernon worked out the next part of their plan to catch Challenge.

I returned to Carter, telling him I had a friend that would take two thousand pounds worth of false tickets, desiring him to let me have all the counterfeits that were taken off the plate, upon which Carter gave me a considerable parcel. Having thus secured all which I understood were printed.

Davis and Vernon believed that they had the situation contained. They believed that they had all the fake tickets that had been printed. Davis's next job was to find those plates, but Davis couldn't get a straight answer about where the plates were. He proposed that the engraver, actually Challener, print as many tickets as the plates could handle, and then break the plate in two so that no one could

The right Honorable Secretary Vernon seemed very much dissatisfied at these delays, which I hoped to bring to a period every day.

And here's where things start to get really complicated. As it turns out what was keeping Challeener from printing those last tickets was that he was being pursued by Elizabeth Halla. That's right, Thomas Holloway's wife and the gang's former utterer. Hell hath no fury like a woman shorted out of her fair share. When Challoner bribed her husband to light out for Scotland. He'd stiffed them, didn't give them what he promised. Elizabeth, back from Scotland, was now using what

At this rate, the nation may be imposed upon. While you're talking to.

Me, I will either find Challoner a printing with the plates in a week's time, or otherwise it will be in your honest discretion.

Carter then had more bad news for Davis, because, as of the heat Elizabeth was applying, Challoner had stashed the plates with a lady friend, a midwife by the name of Samson from over Clare Market Way, near Drooling, and she'd gone into the country, no idea when she'd be back.

Isaac Newton didn't get to yell arrest that man down a hall.

In fact, we don't even know how Challoner was found, just that a thief taker called Robert Morris became fifty pounds richer for bringing him in.

But at no point.

During the search for William Challoner did anyone in the Secretary of State's office communicate with the mint. I mean, why would they This isn't modern policing we're talking about. Technically, Challenger's arrest was Secretary of State James Vernon's big catch that made Challener his problem. Moreover, the crime of counterfeiting the mat lottery tickets was an actuality, not a mint problem, because it wasn't coin whose problem, wasn't whoa that was an open question.

Isaac Newton, however, was ready and eager.

To make it his problem once he found out about Challenger's arrest.

That is, we don't know how he found out.

It was either through his own agents or through his other contacts, but we do know that he was not going to let William Challoner wriggle off.

The hook this time.

Act three, the case against mister William Challoner.

The defeat in that first court case really stung Newton.

That's Tom Levinson, author of Newton and the Counterfeiter.

From the point that Challeoner gets off that first time, Newton really spends a lot of effort tracking Challenger's movements, trying to identify the different schemes he's in, trying to put the bite on his associates.

Newton convinced Vernon to let him be the one to prosecute Challoner once again.

However, the evidence was thin.

Challoner had been smart to ditch the plates when he did, and when he was arrested, he didn't have any of the counterfeit tickets on him. The best evidence that Newton had was Carter's testimony. Carter, who was one of the

But the prosecution, they're the agent who would to devise what the charge would be.

That's legal historian Harry Potter.

What was neaded to a Javid conviction was to present everages of guilt.

What Newton needed.

What he was looking for was evidence in the form of eyewitnesses, people who would be willing to swear before the jury and judge that they saw Challenger counterfeiting.

Some of the rules of law were not yet established, so we didn't really have a presumption.

Of innuss by modern standards, the evidence of eyewitnesses who maybe saw something in the distant past would likely be contestable. But this is the late seventeenth century, so as.

Long as the jury were convinced that they were sufficient debutence to convict, they would do so.

Newton decided to just find as many people as possible willing to testify that they had seen Challoner doing something anything, at some point, So he started in on everyone who'd ever been associated with Challoner.

Oh, Missus Matthews's maid Mary Ball. In June or July last mister Challoner and mister Davis came to my mistress's lodgings, and mister Challoner locked himself in a room upstairs.

Or I was curious, so well through the keol I.

Saw mister Challoner sitting with his back to me and his face towards the window. As he turned his head aside, I could save something very bright lying before him, which looked like a plate. I am satisfied it was a copper plate. It looked like a thing that was scratched. Newton seemed to hit upon a good seam of evidence.

In exchange for information.

Ask people named Catherine, evidently because he had like three of those.

I saw that he was making bills, and I told him he would come to be hanged for it as price was.

Gave me some of those shillings and said they were dangerous, or else you could make them as well as they were in the tower. He told me that he was to make a one hundred pounds in Dutch money for a merchant, and for that purpose he borrowed a room off of me to work in.

I saw Will Challoner often coined French pistoles with stamps and a hammer.

His brother in law Gravina.

He said that Will used to make the silver blanks they used for Guineas.

Newton was relentless.

The same fixation that had him sleeping in his kitchen lab in Cambridge had him pulling in witness after witness in the hopes of men enough damning testimony to finally sink Chaloner.

I keep the subject constantly before me till the first dawnings opened slowly, little by little into the full and clear light.

In one ten day stretch in February sixteen ninety nine, he took a deposition every single day. It was probably more than that, but Newton later had many of his depositions burned. The more Newton dug, the more he uncovered people like blacksmith Nathaniel Peck, who bought some fake coins off of Chaloner back when he'd been calling himself Chandler Chandler.

Hath several times owned to me that he made those pistoles himself. He used to boast how well they were done, and that they were better than ever were made, and no man in England could do the like besides himself.

Or Humphrey Hanwell. Thomas Carter's meat from prison.

I saw Challoner coin French pistols in line in shape, saw it with a hammer in stamps.

John Abbott, who might have solved the mystery of the missing tower dies. Challoner, it seems, had gotten them from a man inside the mint.

William Challoner, now prisoner in Newgate, showed me three or four blank stamps for guineas.

Which he said he could get to be struck with the tower dies.

And then there were the Holloways. Thomas Holloway had once been Chaloner's right hand man, his protege in the art of coining, but that was before Challoner had swindled him in that Scotland deal.

I heard Challoner own that hey struck some of them and boast his workmanship, and have seen the guinea dies in Challoner's hands.

His wife Elizabeth, told Newton that she'd seen Challoner making fake guineas and pistols down in Egham just a year before, and that he definitely bought her husband off. During his last day in Newgate, Michael.

Gillingham came to the set tom Ali to the baltantn Inn in Fleet Street and said Challona, who was then a prisonery Newgate, had sent him to tell him Challona would give Thomas twenty quid if he would not appear as a witness against him in the following sessions.

The portrait of Chalner that emerged from the testimony of the witnesses arrayed against him was damning. He routinely boasted of his own skill in counterfeiting. He had a recipe for a water that could erase the printing on any bill. He threatened people who got in his way. He once locked a woman in a room and refused to let her out until she gilded the number of guineas he

But it didn't matter. All that testimony added up to one thing.

Newton had a case, and this time, as sure as that apple rotten or not always falls to the earth, he.

Was going to get that conviction.

Coming up on the final episode of Newton's Law.

When he arrived there, he made very light of the matter, bragging he had a trick left yet. But when he heard how many witnesses came in against him, he began to droop.

All you that in the condemned hold do lie, prepare you, but tomorrow you shall die.

Newton's Law is a production of iHeartRadio. It's written and hosted by me Linda Rodriguez McRobbie. Our senior producer is Ryan Murdoch. Our producer is Emily Meronoff. Our executive producer is Jason English. Original music by Elise McCoy, with editing help from Mary Do Sound design and mixing by Jeremy Thal, Research and fact checking by Me and Jocelyn Sears. Voice acting by Keith Fleming, Mark McDonald, Robert Jack, Paul Tinto, Emma Fulkins and Ruthie Stevens. Special thanks to Tom Levinson

It's a very curious thing.