INDEX

e-mail me

Great Britain - Stock Exchange Forgery

What many well the closest thing to a perfect crime was perpetrated in Great Britain's Stock
Exchange Telegraph Office in 1872-1873, and wasn't discovered for 26 years!!!. The crime
involves a Clever Forgery of the then-current One Shilling green, Scott #54, which like many
Telegraph forms.

In 1898, when workmen at a Hamper Mill, England, storage bin discovered old documents
classed as security waste. The workmen, noticing the Stamps on the documents, stole as
many as they could at the time. The Stamps taken by the workmen eventually ended up in the
Stock of British Stamp Dealer Stanley Gibbons. A Collector named Charles Nissen discovered
one in Gibbons' stock and was able to locate nearly 100 of the fakes.

An Official investigation into the matter led authorities to recover nine tons of Security waste
paper from the Hamper Mill site. A survey of these forms processed only on June 24, 1872
revealed724 counterfeits, since the fakes were in use for more than a year, The British Post
Office no doubt lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in Revenue during the life of the scam.

Since the Revenue Stamps were applied by an Internal Clerk, it was reasoned that an
employee of the Office was substituting the fake Stamps for real ones during 1872-73. He was
then redeeming the real Stamps for cash at the Post Office. Since Telegraph forms were
stored and destroyed without examination, the chance of detection was slim. No leads or
suspects ever turned up.

Today, the One-Shilling Stock Exchange Forgery is highly valued by Collectors and worth
many multiples of the modest value for a use genuine Stamp. There may well be examples of
this rarity lying undetected in Collections.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rodolfo / rtvstamps
Resource: (My archives, Youngblood & Rockwell, 1994).
 

Back to European Philately     /     Exchange with Collectors from Europe