Forgery was an offence punished with death, and one of the latest cases was that of a young man from Meldreth parish, who went up in 1824 as clerk in Mr. Mortlock's warehouse in Oxford Street, forged his master's signature to a cheque, was sentenced to death and hung at Newgate, despite the exertions of his employer to save his life.
We sometimes hear, in these days of advanced education, that we are educating young people beyond the station they can possibly attain, and that we may find the cleverness expend itself in forging other people's names and signatures to obtain money without that honest labour by which their parents were content to earn a livelihood. The evidence, however, is altogether the other way. The number of forgeries committed before national education began, notwithstanding the fear of being hung for the offence, was incalculably greater than it has ever been since. In the matter of bank notes alone, the number of forged motes presented at the Bank of England in 1817 was no less than 31,180. By 1836, the number of forged notes presented had dwindled down to 267. The number of executions for the whole country for the three years, ending 1820, were 312; for the same period, ending 1830, only 176; and by 1840 they had decreased to 62. Many of these sentences were the results of crimes committed in the revolt against the introduction of machinery.
OLD MANNERS AND CUSTOMS--SOLDIERS, ELECTIONS AND VOTERS--"STATTIES," MAGIC AND SPELLS.
In glancing at the manners and customs which prevailed during the later Georgian era, I find several matters arising out of what has gone before, waiting for notice.
Prison discipline was evidently very different from our notion of it, for in 1803 we find prisoners in the Cambridge County Gaol stating that they "beg leave to express their gratitude to the Right Hon. Charles Yorke for a donation of five guineas."
If these little indulgences could be obtained in a county gaol it may be imagined that the parochial cage sometimes lent itself to stratagems for the benefit of the prisoner. At the old cage on the west side of the present Parish-room in Royston, Herts., many persons living remember some curious expedients of this kind. While the prisoner was waiting { 93} for removal to the Buntingford Bridewell (situate in the Wyddial Lane not far from the river bridge) to undergo his fortnight of such hard labour as the rules of that curious establishment exacted--while waiting in the Cage the prisoner's friends would help him in this way. Above the door of the Cage were some narrow upright openings, and through this a saucer was inserted edgewise, the prisoner took it and held it, while, by means of a teapot and the thrusting the spout through the openings, a good "drink" could be administered, according to the appetite of the prisoner!