Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio zaren zaren Yo over here, right, we got my hand up over here.
Elizabeth, Hi girl, how you doing doing well? Man?
Oh? You straight? I'm fine.
Listen.
I need to know what's ridiculous.
Oh, sit down, I got something that's going to buckle your knees. I don't want you to get hurt. I heard about this woman. Oh Don Brook, she got pregnant. Okay, she got She is the.
Oldest congratulations or I'm sorry to hear that kind of like that, but she either basically it were really for real though.
She's the oldest person to ever get pregnant without IVF or donor eggs. Oh how old those persons get pregnant with the in vitro fertilization. The IVF was seventy three? Whoa seventy three with IVF? They intentionally said, can we get something going in here? And they're like, with enough drugs into my ivfs? Yes they did?
Wow?
Right, but this person, Don Brook, Yeah, in twenty seventeen gave birth and was at the age.
Of fifty nine.
Wow.
No iv body went through menopause.
Elizabeth, Oh wait, she did well?
Obviously not did went into menopause, went through menopause, and then started taking a hormone replacement therapy. Yeah, and that can kick start the system where it started producing eggs. Dropped an egg that was still kicking inside. I guess it was all the way live got in, it got exminated. Now like a ten year old boy, she's sixty nine.
Kid, I guess he's seventy because you got the nine ten months older.
You are older when it's born.
But I'm telling it to no. I mean like she's now. She was fifty nine when she had the kid. Sixty nine now, but can you believe it?
She was? She got thought she was out, and they dragged her back down with like we're gonna give you this therapy. It's gonna be good for you. She's like, doctor, I am pregnant. Would you stop it? I am a fifty nine year old woman. I don't made this nonsense. Oh y nonsense.
Wow, that is ridiculous nonsense us. Do you know what else is ridiculous?
I was hoping you'd tell me.
Sir Isaac Newton Fighting Crime what this is? Ridiculous Crime? A podcast about absurd and outrageous caper's heis and cons it's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
I know you heard that.
You did. You watched that Netflix hit Peaky Blinders, Right?
I love that one.
I loerve that show. I love it, especially when Tom Hardy came on. Yes, look at how freely I can talk about television. I'm like, hi on, all I do is talk about TV. Tom Hardy was fantastic. But let's give it up for killing Murphy.
Yes, of course the best.
I've been a fan of his since The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which, if you haven't seen it, fantastic film. But anyway, Peaky Blinders takes place in Birmingham, England, after World War One. In the show, it's this gritty industrial city with a dirty underbelly of crime. Yeah, the Peaky Blinders, the eponymous gang in the show is based on a real gang from the late eighteen hundreds.
Aren't all based on gangs in the show? Aren't the all the gangs in the show based on gangs yet?
Yeah? And there's a movie coming out, by the way, It starts filming in September of this year. Let's go crush the set. We should record an episode from the set while Chase. Yes, but it's the movie's supposed to wrap the whole thing up anyway. Birmingham, so it was tough in real life back then, and apparently it was tough even before then, hundreds of years before then. I mean, settlement in Birmingham goes back to eight thousand BC.
Does it really? Yeah, that's not a Roman settlement. No, No, I was assumed so many of the big cities.
Of Roman settlement they had their own thing.
I know they did, I just didn't know.
I'm talking though about the sixteen hundreds, mid to late and so at that time it was known as the counterfeiting capital of England.
What counterfeiting, Oh, I was like like you were talking like countertops, like they were fitting counters. Like there's pipe fitters, there's counterfeitters.
They like there's something head but like marble countertop. Anyway, Yeah, it was badfitters.
So money fakers, I got you counterfeits.
I mean. It was also at that time that a kid from just outside of town in Warwickshire was born to a family of weavers name of William Chilloner.
Okay, William Chillona.
Yeah, Chu Loaner Challoner, little homie was a bad one. Really, yeah, he got into all sorts of troubles. So his parents shipped him off to the big city Birmingham to become an apprentice nail maker, not like at a nail salon. But the nails are using construction like the old bang.
Bang Yeah, and you're handmaking nails exactly. A lot of them are going into the of horses.
Right, So he was not doing acrylics. They sent They sent him off to Birmingham a k A brum yeah, AK a city of a thousand trades a k A O one two one?
Are you for real?
Aka Second City aka the pen Shop of the world AK Venice of the North.
Second City. They're the Chicago of.
That aka Workshop of the world. Yeah, they're the Venice of the North.
So no one call, No one calls them like b Ham or bro How.
Sure they do? I don't know. This is just what Wikipedia calls anyway, that's the list on Wikipedia. So they send him off to the city, praying that he'll.
Straighten up and fly right make good nails.
Yeah, well, they like you go out and make your living, make and.
Nails with metal.
But no, no, no, this was the counterfeit in capital of it, like working with paper and here's a young man of mischief and no integrity.
Oh yeah, perfect.
So he of course fell in with a group that made counterfeit groats.
Groats, groats.
Look at the look on your face, Elizabeth, not groats that are grain.
That's what I was, That's what my face was doing.
Yeah, counterfeit grains are intriguing to me. Like saw rolls up a little bit. These are coins and they're made of silver, and then originally they were all four pence, but then some were eightpence and others were shilling. A pence is basically a penny shillings twelve of those. So so there's William making fake coins instead of nails. Tricky.
I'm still working with the metal mak Yeah.
Either way, bang bang groats. They first showed up in England in the twelve hundreds and by the sixteen hundreds they still weren't very refined. They're basically handmade. Edges are rough and while they're supposed to be silver, it wasn't always pure. What I'm trying to say is that they were super easy to counterfeit.
That's what it sounds like.
Yeah, the fakes.
Sounds like they're just like flattened bottle caps.
That's a lot of them look like that. The fakes were either not silver at all, or they had just a little in there which had been taken from clips around the edges of real coins because they weren't super smooth on the edge, and so the weight would be just slightly off. But you can clip enough off of a coin to make another coin. William did this for a while in Birmingham. He basically like apprentice.
Literally shaving profits.
Yeah, exactly. But he wanted to go straight. He wanted to get a real gig doing honest metalwork.
He did.
Yeah, so he went to London on foot. He walked to London. Now today, if you wanted to walk from Birmingham to London, Google Maps tells you it'll take forty hours work week.
That real.
Yeah, that's what it said. Did it take him that long or did it longer? Historians, keep your answers to yourself. Okay, I'm going to say it took him longer. Let's double it. So so however you slice it, it's like one hundred and fifteen miles.
Wow, I just know you can do it legally because they have all those rules about you.
To someone's yard and be like sorry, trade brow. Yeah, so he did. He did this in the sixteen eighties. He's in his thirties, you know.
Good for him in his thirties. Yeah, he still hasn't made good yet. Huh. I mean, I'm not judging him.
He had no judgment.
He's just knocking about looking for something that you call his own.
Well, he gets to London.
He's not getting married till he's got something in life, right this period of time.
Right, So he gets to London, he's like, hey, fellas, I'm here to work on metal, and everyone just like stares at him. Come to find out there's a guild system in place. Yeah, they're just sworn in. They're tight knit.
And he's aged most of it.
You got to be granted work at the behest of the crown. That's William, the third bo hit.
Got a license and stuff.
Yeah, So here's William. He's new in town, he's iced out from his profession. He needed work. He found it in japanning And that's the fake version of East Asian lacquer work.
Yeah.
So, like the real stuff at the time was super popular and also super expensive and so and the real stuff is used by coating objects like furniture, jewelry, bobbles and such with like a thick coating made from the sap of the toxicodendrum vernick flum tree.
Like a super strong lacker.
Yeah and so, and then they'd be like in lays of precious materials in the design. Well, like that tree didn't grow in England or the rest of Europe for that matter, so they made do with an enamel paint, usually black tree or something. And in Europe they did the same thing, but they used a shellac and it came in.
Like greens and blues and reds.
Japan Ors could make pieces on the cheap and then sell them as the real deal for.
The the sun exactly.
And that's that's what William did. He also got married and he had kids and just lived his life. He did try other businesses. One source said that William also got work making quote, ten watches with dildo's in them.
I'm sorry, I'm going to need you to run that.
You say he made ten watches, Elizabeth, why would I want to watch a bit of tin? But what was the part of it?
Also, I'm going to let you thank the ages that I'm not about to tell you a picture of it. Yes, So okay, when we say dildo in the sixteen hundreds, what we really mean is dildo exactly as we used it to say. So, Kieran Kanliffe wrote for Headstuff in a footnote on an article about William Chill owner quote. Dildo's had been available in England since at least the time of Shakespeare, but had increased in availability over the
previous decade, mostly in the form of Italian imports. A popular ballad of the day, Signor Dildo, drew a link between this and the arrival of Mary of Modina, the Italian wife of King James the second. Can I read to you from that popular ballad of the day.
Oh you got some lyrics of mister Dildo dravus? You got it? Bar please hit me?
So it begins, you ladies of Mary England who have been to kiss the Duchess's hand, pray, did you not lately observe in the show a noble Italian called Senior Dildo. This signor was one of the Duchess's train and helped to conduct her over the main But now she cries out to the Duke, I will go I have no more need for signor dildo. Where there's this verse. Yeah, the good lady Suffolk, thinking no harm, had got this
poor stranger hid under her arm. Lady Betty, by chance came the secret to know and from her own mother, stole senior dildo from her own mother.
Yes, do see proof positive my theory. We always been the same taking a dilda from her mom.
We've always been the same. What the he be freaky?
Have always been free.
People always act like I can't believe you know, I don't want to be like whatever they want to. These formers like propriety right. People think like I know I want to I don't want to have inappropriate this or inappropriate that. I'm like, Look, I hate to tell you this.
Everyone always grass and gross and freaking.
Two things everybody is which is corny and freaky.
Let me give you another another verse. Doll Howard, no longer with his highness, must range, and therefore is proffered this civil exchange. Her teeth being rotten, she smells best below and needs must be fitted for senior dildo. Honestly, most of the other verses, and there are a lot of them, are way too filthy for me. To read
to you. Yes all. Poetry dot Com gives this assessment, quote Senior Dildo stands as a unique and controversial example of restoration poetry, challenging contemporary norms of propriety and offering a glimpse into the libertine culture of the English court.
Say it again for the row and back.
So back to Williams.
Libertine times then and our problems now.
Was like, he's he's apparently making watches with dildo's in them. I do not know how that works. And googling was so unhelpful, like, don't google quote dildo watch.
I just want to know how big these are big watches.
Don't or watch dil don't don't just yeah, I tried dildo time pieces as people because watch dildo dildo watch was like boyl yeah no, I mean it's like I'm host situation. So dildo time piece. I mean I did find one a historical article, but it was no help.
I want to see the FBI anyway.
That's what he.
Was up What the heck?
Like, that's what okay, So that's why that's what he was up to for a while in London.
Oh good for him. I meant he did well.
Yeah, and apparently it was a brisk business, I tell you. But then he moved on to other scams. Really yeah, that he could have retired as a tildo time piece crafter. He got into the early snake oil biz and he sold phony plague cures because you know, they're not going to come after you and it doesn't work rip. And then he got into fortune telling and like so he and this associate would steal things from people and then they would go to them and offer to use their
psychic powers to find the item for a cost. You know, They're like, give us, like, however much money and I'm sure we can, like, oh, we robbed my temples. I think I know where it is. In sixteen ninety, that game came to an end because like someone was on to him and his pal with the theft thing, and they went to the authorities. So William he had to go into hiding, and exactly he he ditched his wife and kids forever he never saw them again. And it's
not like he left the country or the city. He was just like, I gotta go into hiding.
Cross the street.
He's like, He's leave you in the dildo watch in a farewell. So he hit out for a while and then he crossed town. He sold us clothing for a while, clothing and.
Then not like it like not like a store where it's like nice, use clothing, this is like it's not warm.
Yeah, so maybe it was. At the same time he did a mini apprenticeship under a guy named Patrick Coffee who is a goldsmith. Okay, so now we're in sixteen ninety one. Sure, what a year I remember it well? Oh man, what with me being old because I remember cassette tapes.
Oh and we just survived that second ice Age, that little mini ice age. It's been rough.
So like at this point William has ditched the vintage tunic and stockings trade and gone all in on counterfeiting. Really, this is a big move. It's it's one thing to dupe people dying of the plague, but counterfeiting was something else.
Are still alive, right, But in.
Those days, counterfeiting was treason and they could get you by the government.
Oh yeah, hang them high capital crimes against the crown.
And that was for men, right, men would get hanged. For women who were caught making fake coin, the punishment was worse. They were burned at the stake, and like, well, because they're women, the I guess, and the government they're just like, you know, these foul women, let's just burn them up, but let's do let's do it nicely. They thought they would have this humane way to do it. They would tie a rope around the woman's neck so that they could like strangle her before she's fully engulfed
in flames. Oh god, because they thought that would be merciful. But the problem is that the rope would burn up before it totally choked them out. Did the Romans, they suffered even more justice zaren, but that didn't deter William hanging or making money, you know, willing to take the risk. And like I said, it was just so easy. So counterfeiters were still doing the thing where they clipped off the rough edges of the existing coins, cobbled together metals
to make new janky looking coins. But change was afoot. The government was just starting to introduce milled edges to coins. And then there was also the market itself. These are silver coins, and so the silver itself was starting to have a greater value than the coin, especially over on the continent, So it made illegal sense to melt down the groats and then move the bullion to Europe a little something called deflationary arbitageh So this became more prevalent,
so there were fewer coins in circulation. So William he gets to work making dummy coins to circulate in England. Let's hear some ads and let's think about what we've done, and when we come back, we'll check in with William and his coin business. Zaren.
That's mister dildo.
Thank you, senior dildo. When we last spoke, William Chiller was making I don't know, I can't ask this dildo how to say it. He's melting down English coins and he's either selling the raw metal in Europe or actually minting European coins himself. I'm guessing with like substandard metal. He was getting paid some.
Can like stamps to get the right press.
Well he would. He's a counterfeiter. You have fake ones, and then what they'd do is they'd have these dyes and then you'd have to like smash it with a hammer. So he bought this fancy house in knights Bridge. I'm wondering where the abandoned wife and kids are, but whatever, he had this nice whip like this gilded out carriage, wore all these slick outfits, and he had totally mastered creating those dies for the coins, you know, those press models. So historians, sir John, he's actually very good.
The gold silversmith who trained him really got him rest.
He's very very good at this. There's this historian, Sir John Craig. He wrote in nineteen forty six that William was quote the most accomplished counterfeiter in the Kingdom. So nice an artist of dies that it galled him to spoil their perfection by use break them over. Didn want to break them. So in sixteen ninety two, one of William's buddies was arrested and he squealed. William knew the law would be on his doorstep soon, so he got
to work for two days straight. He minted coins because he needed cash to be able to make a run for it, and run he did. He headed up to Scotland and he waited until his pal was hanged for his offenses. Oh and I told you he had no integrity.
Yeah, you didnt tell me the one person coming at me.
Yeah, exactly.
So well that's no state.
So while in Scotland he came up with a new plan. This was a couple of years after the Jacobite Rising of sixteen. Yeah, so that's when you know, the Jacobites, believing in the divine rights of kings and the Stuart claimed to the throne, rebell They tried to put James the Second aka James the Seventh back in power. He's James the Second in England and Ireland, James the Seventh in Scotland. In a larger sense, it was part of
the Nine Years War France versus the Grand Alliance. So the Scottish Highlands hot bed of Jacobite activity and it was while in Scotland that William saw an opportunity. It was seen as seditious to support the Jacobites, which meant it was illegal to spread the message, like say, printing and distributing pamphlets.
Ah, yes, I've seen outlander.
So William he starts paying printers to run Jacobite pamphlets and that was in his true crime. He would then report the printers and get a reward from the state.
Are you kidding me?
No, It's like basically entrapman.
Wow, so in trapper Oh ye, I'll do this for you, don't.
Worry one time, he pays these four Jacobite sympathizers to print copies of James's declaration denouncing King William. Dudes show up to deliver the pamphlets and they were like cops there waiting.
I got surprised for you.
This was seditions. So they weren't in prison. They were had and William he collects one thousand pound reward. It's a huge amount. He had this guy, this protege named Aubrey Price, and the two of them they came up with another plan that would exploit the Jacobites. William and Aubrey went to some government officials and they told him they had a hot tip.
Did you have an exploiter named Aubrey in the story?
Isn't that an incredible cursed name. So the JAT they like, check it out. We have a hotline on this, a hotline blank. The Jacobites are fixing to attack Dover Castle. We have word and they tell the authorities look for a fee, we'll go undercover and like report back. We can foil the plot. I don't know what do you guys have in mind? And the authorities are like, no, get out of here. I don't think so Okay, this is William. Okay, what about this. I have here a
list of Jacobite sympathizers. How about you hire me and old Aubrey here to go investigate these fools. This, by the way, was just a random made up list of names, and they're like, okay, fine, you know what you're hired.
That's a long list.
That sounds great. So now William's getting paid to go around to quote unquote investigate a fake list of enemies of the state. So this gives him like some credibility. He's not operating on the fringes anymore. He's part of the machine, of course. But then it got a little dicey. He and some bozone named Coppinger they wrote together this Jacobite pamphlet to get all printed up, and they planned
to bust another printer and get the reward. When the time came to go to the cops to bust the printers, Coppinger tried to claim the full reward for himself.
Partner.
Yeah, but not for like the pamphlet thing. He rats William out for his counterfeiting. But William had like established himself he's almost a law man, right, so he's able to talk his way out of the jam, and then gets Coppinger pinched for writing the pamphlet and soliciting it to be printed.
So he actually flipped it back.
Coppingers hanged car, and William skates away. So he's just leaving all these like you know, like co conspirators in his wake. Back to legal Tender, I told you that as people melted down the silver in the English groats to sell in Europe, England starts running low on coins. There just wasn't enough in circulation, and the Crown started to notice this. As I said, it's during the Nine Years War, William the Third needed cash and this is
starting to be a big problem everything. Yeah, and then so like milling the edges of the coins, and this is creating a before and after line. So there were hand forged coins made before all the way up to sixteen sixty two, and then after that it's machine minted ones, like on a serious press. And the machine minted coins had these milled edges to prevent the clipping. There was even the text decus et Tutemann, the ornament and a safeguard that was added around the coin rooms.
Okay, it's like the certificate of authenticity, but they.
Could still be melted down and like silver's worth more in France and the Netherlands than as a coin in England.
So flames don't care.
And a lot of people proposed ways to address this issue, and then William he chimes in, but he didn't do so in his like trademark sleazy, underhanded negative way. He didn't and he didn't really propose a solution. He had a bunch of pamphlets printed up, like I'm surprised that printers will still work with him. He accused, he does know a paper guy. Okay, so he accused the Royal Mint of incompetence, calls we don't have money, question as
you're messing it up. Then he said that there should be this great recoinage, that is to say, old clip coins collected melted down machine meant it.
He has a person in mind to run and all the.
New coins, he said, should have this like deeper impressions that counterfeits can't counterfeiters can't mimic those lousy counterfeitters. What's cracked down on them too, So he's in order to crack down on them, he himself. He suggests a licensing system for coiners tools, and remember, counterfeiting is an active treasons. He's like, hello, killing these people, why is he going
so hard on counterfeitters? Calling for his own demise. He wanted to rebrand himself as a coin expert, and as you said, like he figured that way he'd get access to the Royal Mint and fox.
I'll take a stance, take a stamp, I'll take exactly.
So the Earl of Monmouth, who just recently lost his gig as Lord of the Treasury, totally on board. He's like, this guy makes so much sense. I love it, mainly because his successor, the Earl of Halifax, he wanted him to look foolish because if they're like, oh, the mint is competent, he loses his job as Lord of the Earl of Halifax. Also heard William out politics was that he like, he hears what William has to say, but then he went and fixed the issues on his own.
He's like, that's a great idea. I'm just going to do it.
I'm an expert.
Am I going to bring this clown into the operation. Thanks for the suggestions, dude, who needs a you got? William's like, okay, cool, cool, huh. Well, he tries another tack paper money. So this is a new thing. The Bank of England was printing one hundred pound bills on specially pattern paper, and William, of course, he gets his hands on some of this paper and prints his own bills. You know, he knows printers, but he wasn't as good at that as he was with like crude coins.
Yeah, these are new counterfeit skills.
Yeah, and the phony bills get traced back to him when the paper plug grasses him out. Oh, so he gets picked up by authorities. But here's the thing. There were no actual laws on the books about counterfeiting paper money for the law. Too new for the law. So they had to let him go. And they even let him hang on to the cash that he laundered. Like you know anyway, so.
I liked it. He didn't have a paper guy, and the paper guy tried to screw him.
But then on top of it, he gets in he makes another two hundred pounds a reward. Zaren remember his old pal Aubrey Price.
Oh yeah, yeah.
While in custody, William ratted him out for forging checks. And see William had come up with a perfect way to forge checks. He terrible, and he passed that technique onto Aubrey and he needed a little juice with the authorities, so he said he'd been told of a check. Counterfeitter leads him to Aubrey's busted, eventually hanged, and William is praised for his fraud busting, like, you are so good, you are such a good citizen hacker. Yeah, so he
got accolades. But now people, people have their eyes on him, i'd hope. So one very important person in particular the Warden of the Mint, none other than Sir Isaac Newton, Deep the applehead gravity him.
Newton.
There was that great recoining that William came up with. Charles Montague, Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, got Newton the gig as Warden of the Mint. And at this point the Mint is controlled by Parliament, not the Crown, and Parliament wanted Newton. He was the one who was going to oversee the whole process of this recoining. He moved from Cambridge to London.
To do just that. Really, they got him out of Cambridge for this.
Yeah, zaren my goodness, yes, I want you to picture it. It's March of sixteen ninety six. I remember it like it was yesterday. You are a worker at the Royal Mint, located within the Tower of London. The mid buildings form a narrow horseshoe shape around the three sides of the tower that aren't along the Thames. It's a ramshackle place and it's miserable. It's hot and dark. Your job is to help turn a screw operated press that stamps the coins. You are very restricted in being able to get in
and out of the place. This is a secure facility and you have an important job. There's also a lot of room for theft, which is why you've been totally vetted and are watched like a hawk. You and another man take turns pulling on a lever that turns round and round, stamping out tuppets. Your dad worked here when there were no machines. He was missing two fingers on his left hand from accidentally leaving his hand too close to the die as the hammer was slammed down by
his coworker. The wood of your press creaks. A horse outside the windows snorts and winnies. You are stripped down to what are basically your underthings, thin cotton shirt and thin cotton long underwhere a man in the corner adds coal to the furnace that melts down the precious metals. You are sweaty, but you know it's an honest day's work. You've been told the new big boss will be coming by today. Look alive. They said. He's an important bloke. You glance up and see a figure standing on the
wooden walkway above you. He's glorious. It's Isaac Newton. He's not a sur yet, but you wouldn't be surprised if he is one day. He's a famous scientist, you know that much, A real genius, with long, wavy gray locks down to his shoulders and a distinguished aquiline nose. He looks down at the workroom. He's holding a sheaf of paper and scribbles notes while talking to the foreman next to him. You and your press partner take a break. You lift the dyes and sweep the completed coins into
a bucket. The noise of the room settles a little, and you listen in as Newton quizzes your boss. He asks the foreman exactly how much coal the furnace burns each day, how much ore can each melting pot hold? And does that decrease over time. How long can these men and these horses work before they're spent? How long of a break do you give them? What's the output
each day? Where did you get those fabulous pants? Newton scribbles on the answers on his paper, pausing occasionally to scratch his chin, and thought, he looks down at you in nods and thanks for your hard work. You nod back and then return to the press. These shillings ain't gonna mint themselves. Boys. So Newton visited the mint, got all the data he needed, and then use that data
to calculate maximum efficiency for the operation. He figured out how to best utilize the workforce both man and beast, to get maximum work without overtaxing them, and he established a peak working pace. So he analyzed the infrastructure, the building, the workrooms. He also noted like improvements. But then he saw it all through he came up. He just crunched numbers, and before it looks so like here's the thing. Before he came on board, the mint was like barely producing
fifteen thousand pounds a week in pretty unsafe environs. After his overhaul, the place ran smoothly and put out more than fifty thousand pounds a week.
No problem, He's an efficiency expert. Henry Ford. Eat your heart out.
Exactly, Isaac Newton, O g badass. Let's take a break. Upon our return. I will tell you what happens when you cross a virtuous genius like Isaac Newton with a craven criminal like William chillowner.
I love that apple attractor, Sir Isaac Newton.
Would you call me?
I called you, Sir, Isaac, your new name Newton. I love the figs, big fig fan. So perhaps the greatest genius to ever live.
Definitely in the top three.
Yeah. Please indulge me by allowing me to read his epitaph from Westminster.
Please.
Here is buried Isaac Newton Knight, who, by a strength of mind almost divine and mathematical principles, particularly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the path of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and what no other scholar has previously imagined the properties of the colors. Thus produced diligent, sagacious and faithful in his expositions of nature, antiquity, and the
holy scriptures. He vindicated by his philosophy, the majesty of God Mighty and Good, and expressed the simplicity of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race. He was born twenty fifth December sixteen forty two and died on twenty five March seventeen twenty six.
Dope.
Now, of course it's actually engraved in Latin. But you don't want to hear me butcher that my butchering would not surprise my college Latin proposals. But the way, anyway, Newton, he's amazing.
I forget how it goes, but I'm fairly certain that it's like Galileo Newton and Stephen Hawking all have like the same birthday or same death day or overlaps it.
To them.
Either way, Newton, I'm telling you more than just an alchemist. That guy, he was amazing.
Most people are like, oh, a little bit, kind of weird, kind of quiet, stuck to himself. But what he did with light and gravity, I'm telling.
Incredible, incredible. So there he is later in life, leading the efforts of the Royal Mint to enter the modern age. He done the job.
I bet he did the challenges.
Oh yeah, I'll except for one part. The warden was responsible for both the capturing and prosecuting of counterfeitters.
Oh he was the UK Secret Service.
Yeah, that was not his jam.
He's like, I'm not into this.
He that part of the job was beneath him. I bet, and I'm not going to argue with that. Isaac Newton bounty hunter. So it was in March that he stopped by the Mint to assess operations. A few months later, throw a punch.
No, I don't think so. I don't. Yeah.
I think he had soft hands, very.
Soft hands, like like fruit, so soft.
We could bruise them. So end of July he catches his first cases. Ward okay, a set of dies had been stolen from the Mint, Sarah, did you steal this?
No?
I sold them. I didn't steal them.
Newton's told, like, you got to crack the case.
Really, you asked the science. You're so good with efficiency.
Can you ask the scientist to do something and the means will be scientific? Totally? So he went to work collecting data, nice number crunching. He went to Newgate Prison, made an offer to the people on death row. You tell me what you know, and I'll get you a stay of execution.
That's smart.
Sure.
Then he goes under so it's efficient exactly. He's like, look, I'm not going to mess around like you're dying soon, so what do you know? Right, he goes undercover. He puts on a bad boy costume.
Oh my goodness, like I'm undercover Newton.
Yeah, I'm imagining a costume that like the dude who played Huck on Scandal war for like how he looked before he joined.
Yeah, the super Afroeddy k Unbomber, Rip van Winkle.
Totally. Okay, that's how I imagine Sir Isaac Newton going around. He goes around all these like dives and dens of inequity, kidding where the criminals drink and corrouse, and he chats up the crowd and gets more intel. Are you he went undercover?
Like mister like talking to people? Is out there having to chat it up and like divy bars like so, uh do you see the Ruggers game? So fellow bad person, yeah, do you also like to throw the die?
So he just adds all that to his data set, right, He just like goes home, amazing, pulls out his excels.
And then going on with the data.
Yeah. In his quest. He also at one point he interviewed William what Yeah, And William took the opportunity to rail against the mint and he went on and on about how incompetent everyone was.
Did he interviewed as a suspector as an.
Expert, as like an expert, and he's like, you know, such a crappy operation over there. So it just like rolls his eyes and ignores him. He's like, okay, William child loser and so Newton like he gathers all this intel and it starts paying off. It would eventually lead
him to William, just just not yet. So as he put together the Stuart Restoration period version of a corkboard with pins and red thread, he developed a picture of this large counterfeiting operation and so he had names and locations and the whatnot.
He invents a camera we could put photos.
Like photo realistic draw and.
See what he's done.
He needed to conduct cross examinations of the suspects and like serious interviews for these witnesses. So he goes out and he becomes a justice of the peace. Are you like he gets official? Wow, He's yeah, and in the process he successfully prosecuted twenty eight criminals that were involved in this ring Isaac Newton for the people, dude, I'm telling you. Like so he's still he hadn't been able to connect everything to the mastermind behind the operation, Like
who was that? Yeah, and like so what's William the mastermind doing? He's just running his mouth.
So he's not afraid of Newton. He's got to know that he's on his case a little right kind of.
But like, okay, no one listens to his rants about incompetence at the Mint. So he starts saying that the die theft was an inside job, and he said that the chief engraver at the Mint had sold the missing dies to a fellow by the name of mister Chandler. Okay, it's like mister Chandler, you say, William William knew him. He knew him well because he was him. That was his alias.
John Baron.
He's totally went around sold it to John Baron. It's totally legal, totally cool. In sixteen ninety seven, William goes to the House of Commons, and not to the House of Common the.
Rapper, but the House of Commons in Chicago.
No, and he accuses the Mint of this inside job. Okay, Like so he's not just like the Whisper campaign. He elevates it. He goes right in there and this proof. He brings one of the coins that he himself had minted, but he doesn't say that I minted them. He's like, you know it's that no good, mister Chandler.
This is on the streets.
Mister Chandler keeps getting away. He's a handsome guy.
By the way, charming man, beautiful.
Dancer brings out the coin, gasps ring out.
I like to see him coming. I like to see him going. I love the guy.
They're like, this man has cracked the case that Newton could not. William's like, look, I just need to get into the mint and fix the dies. Like I'll make the impressions deeper. That would fix everything. So the house they go to Newton. They're like, you have to let William access the mint. He'll get to the bottom.
Newton said, no, I just got this running.
Well.
He was like, legally I can't, because he had taken an oath to forbid outsiders from having access to the tools in the mint. He's like, I'm good with my word. I can't go back on an oath. He also said that William's thing about making the impressions deeper was total bulk, and like they're like, I don't know, it sounds like it's pretty logical. He's like, hold up. He does a demonstration for them, and it's obvious that Newton's.
Right, He's got more patients than they.
So the House of Comments is like, okay, yeah, never mind, as you were.
Brilliant.
Frustrated William, he goes back to his old ways. He tries to set up a counterfeiting operation in Surrey, and that fell apart when everyone else got bus did. He tried to fire up another Jacobite conspiracy and he took that ruse to court. Newton had his number. He had finally pieced everything together, and he determined it was William that he needed to catch. Like he's at the top of the pyramids, so he keeps his eye on William.
Newton had all the other pieces of the counterfeiting operation in place, had arrested and convicted pretty much all the other players in this except for William Parliament. Newton sees William, like this is his chance. William, what is he doing just swanning around Parliament. Who knows. So Newton has William arrested for that Surrey counterfeiting operation Parliament, Yeah, and sent
to Newgate Prison. And the problem is that William still had connections, so there were those in power who bought his act and there were those who could be bought. William had someone else pay off witnesses for him and like telling him to scram up to Scotland, like run up to Scotland. The charges are drop, Williams released. So but William needs money because like all of his operations are shut down, he had to spend a lot of money getting out of the jam with So he goes
back to accusing the Royal Mint of Malfeasan's contents. So then he goes back to Parliament and he's like launch an investigation. He said that he'd been arrested and imprisoned because he knew too much. They're trying to shut him up.
Oh yeah, flips.
Newton gets called in front of Parliament and is made to answer for these accusations.
Why are you deep state muses?
Right? So they of course believe Newton and William's claims are dismissed, but the whole affair only served to make Newton white hot with rage. Like he's like me, now he's just perpetually angry. So Newton, he's now on this mission to destroy William Good He's like, that's it. He goes out, he interviews every associate of Williams that he could find, and they're all up against Syria charges. Don't
forget counterfeiting his treason. You can get hanged. The thing is, that's why there were so few convictions, because juries didn't want to take a life for something like that. So like guilty verdicts were few and far between.
They just let them languish.
Yeah, they just be like, well no, they just let him off and just don't do it again.
I was kind of like, oh, I didn't know he was still in there.
Yeah. No.
So Newton he wasn't going for a high conviction rate with these criminal associates. He wanted to gather an insane amount of charges against William, just rack them all up until a jury would have no choice but to convict. So there was there had to be something in all that he would have done that would come back as guilty. You know, you don't just put before the one charge and have that risk. Newton dedicated his life at this point to the pursuit. He's determined to take him down.
He set aside all math, all physics, everything, forget gravity. He gets taken this guy down.
One hundred and forty witness statements, he gathered troves of evidence, and then he waited and he knew that William was going to mess up. He's going to step out of line, and that's when Newton's going to strike. In sixteen ninety eight, William dun goofed. So he gets this new scheme going. He's forging malt lottery tickets. So the malt lottery was this like early English state lottery, and the benefits were going to be paid out of excise duties on malt.
And the government like they came up with this because the nine years of War was not going well. Coin supplies dweling economic crisis for.
Our latest bad joys they had a lot.
Of which was a disaster. By the I'm sure it wasn't whole other story. I mean, like the tickets, they tried to use them as legal tender after the lotto.
Anyway, so selling children for these tickets.
So William he here's about the Malt lottery, and he engraved a copper plate of tickets for it, and he thought he'd get away with it and like hide the plates, but he got busted coming from two different sides. So another counterfeiter ratted him out to the office of Charles Talbot,
first Duke of Shrewsbury, Secretary of State. That's the same guy that William had tried to blackmail the year before, so he's especially excited to get At the same time, a pawnbroker to whom William had sold a ticket got busted with the faky and he.
Rats with it where I got it? Yeah, okay.
March third, sixteen ninety nine, William's case goes to trial. Newton figured out a way to get a very specific judge, assigned Judge Silathiel Lovel. What yeah s A L A T H I E L Silathiel Lovel interesting a hanging judge like known known to just like everyone's guilty, everyone's hanging old fat Yeah, do mess with them. So I told you Newton wants to die of course. Yeah, so
William rope too. Yeah. William thought the whole thing was just about the lot of tickets, like no big deal, and then Newton said, welcome to the show, son like brings him in the court. He proceeds to bring out witness after witness after witness to testify to crimes committed by William. He brings out all these former associates, all the ones that he's like has you know, they're basically they're they're cooperating with the state.
He brings out everybody but senior Dildo.
Well, then he brings out all these widows of guys that William had double crossed and who'd been said to hang. Oh yeah, and so they're like, all these women are just lining up telling these.
They got notes and everything, like I can give you the documentation.
William's freaking out right, he gets desperate. First he starts acting like he's mentally ill and then mentally incompetent, like just drooling. Then he says that absolutely everyone's lying, every last one, right, and then his last move was just to beg so he said if they found him guilty, please, Well they're like, if you find me guilty, I'm going to be sentenced to death. And that means you're basically murdering me. So you're a murderer, now, can you live with that.
I save you.
The judge and the jury shrugged and we're like, yeah, I could be a murderer the rope. I can live with that. So, after like no real deliberation at all, william Is fund guilty. Was like yeah, I mean they look over at all the widows and they're like all right.
Uh.
Williams found guilty of high treason, sentenced to death by hanging. Just a couple of weeks later, he's like awaiting his fate and he's trying everything. He writes to Isaac Newton, he said, quote, oh, dear sir, nobody can save me but you. I shall be murdered unless you save me. Oh, I hope God will move your heart with mercy and pity to do this thing for me. Newton, the cold blooded g that he has been forced to become through this gig, didn't answer him.
That's his move.
Yeah, William told anyone who would listen that he was framed. So now he's going on that tack. They send a priest out to read him his last He sends the guy away like I wouldn't have wasted that chance, brother, I would have had that chat. So he goes when he goes to the gallows of Tyburn Tree in London. He yells out to the crowd that he was about to be quote murdered under pretense of law.
Yeah, we all agree on that one.
And he was yeah, and that that was curtains for him.
So wait, the Tyburn Tree was an actual tree, like that was their old hanging tree he turned into like the place of justice, this wide branch tree being hanged like three four at a.
Time, right, exactly, that's wild. So the Great Recoinage was completed later that year, and with that and William out of his way, Newton focused more of his time on science. Seventeen oh four, he published Optics, foundational text on the nature and behavior of light. He worked for the Mint for the rest of his life.
Whoa, because optics is it's probably my favorite thing he does. And I was like, wait, I know that that happens in seventeen.
Yeah, he wrote, he's a size Yeah, he's just all.
That work asides. If he could deal with all this, go be undercover Newton. And then he gets back He's like, okay, now about the sun.
I'm ready. Yeah, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
I love Undercovered Newton.
Oh, I want to see Newton in a bar trying to turn to someone savory character back from the colonies.
Yeah, it's like, when was the last time you stabbed a guy?
I did like four hours ago. Nice cud piece, buddy, So what's yours on Elizabeth?
My ridiculous takeaway is that I, you know, just out of principle, and it's my own personal philosophy. I'm not a supporter of the death penalty, but I'm not sad. It's terrible the number of people that he's set up to be.
If you think of that as murder, like knowing that he knew that they were inno center that he was not innocent, but that he was basically fingering them for the guilt, then he basically, yeah, murked a bunch of people. So yeah, he's not just a counterfeiter. He's a multiple figure. Not serial murder. I don't want to say that, but it was a multiple murder.
I just when you when I start reading about him, I'm like, oh, this is kind of funny, and then you're just like, he's horrible. He's a horrible human being. He doesn't deserve one. But Newton led a bad ass. Uh, Daves after that, I think I need a talk back.
Oh my god, did you do Seper?
I love you. I'm behind on episodes, but I just listened to the furry episode. Zaren. You can get a tail also ears, but a tail that attaches to your belt instead of other ways. I know this because I have a fox ear and tail set that I got from Etsy for Spirit Animal Night at Adult Summer Camp, which is a whole other story, but it comes in handy if you forget that, you have a costume party to go to.
Dude, I'm getting to tell Elizabeth, you're gonna look at me. You're gonna laugh on a show up here to record. I got the ears, I got my nose, my tail on, got some furry slippers.
No, you know, it's the summer of dark Elizabeth and yet all, if you all, if you get your giggles at it.
Show up here in a fur bikini. I'm gonna go with a tale. You're right, how is that attached?
Just don't come with a tin watch. That's it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. You can email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, Leave It Talkback, most importantly on the iHeart app, which is free to download reach Out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette, produced and edited by
Mintmaster Dave Cousten, starring Annals Rutger as Judith. Research is by Dildo watchdealers Marissa Brown and Andre Song Sharpened Tear. The theme song is by Birmingham Nail Salon owner Thomas Lee and costume Friendly Criminal Dive Bar proprietor Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are Malt Lottery Scapegoat Ben Bolan and Chancellor of the ex Checkerboard Van's Noel Brown.
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