Lord Portman's Troublesome Wife. Mary Nichols
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distraction and as I have no great estate to worry about, there is no need.’
‘But you have mistresses?’
‘Naturally I have. But there are ways to prevent conception.’
‘What use is that to a man who needs a legitimate heir?’
‘But you must have an heir somewhere,’ Ash said.
‘So I have, a muckworm of a cousin who has no care for the land, nor the people who depend upon it, and would ruin his inheritance in a twelvemonth with his gambling.’
‘Then you must prevent that and marry again.’
‘I am not like to die in the immediate future.’
‘I hope you may not, but you can never be sure, can you?’
‘No.’ The answer was curt, and spying a couple of chairs for hire, Harry beckoned the men over and they climbed in, effectively ending the conversation. In this fashion they were conveyed to the Old Bailey where they took their seats to listen to the trial.
The room was already crowded. Some of the audience had an interest in the case, but many came to the proceedings simply out of curiosity. Until the entrance of the court officials they talked, ate pies and fruit and noisily speculated on the fate of those to come up before the judge.
Those of the Dustin Gang who had been apprehended were brought into court and ranged in the dock. There was Alfred Dustin, his wife Meg, their twenty-four-year-old daughter, Matilda, and her husband, Bernard Watson. All were charged that ‘they not being employed at the Mint in the Tower, nor being lawfully authorised by the Lord High Treasurer and not having God before their eyes, nor weighing the duty of their allegiance to our lord, the King, and his people, did between the first day of May and the tenth in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and sixty-one, feloniously and traitorously forge and counterfeit forty coins of pewter in the likeness of silver shillings and sixpences’. They all pleaded not guilty.
The first witness was the landlady of their lodgings who had gone into their rooms to clean them when they were out and had found a mould filled with chalk, some clay pipes, much burned, and two sixpences, which had been stamped on one side but not the other. When Bernard Watson came home she had taxed him with her finds and he had admitted to her that he was counterfeiting and had shown her how the coins were made.
‘He had a mould,’ she said. ‘It was filled with chalk and had an impression of a sixpence in it. He poured in pewter, which he had heated in a tobacco pipe over the fire. He said good-quality pewter was best and he obtained it by cutting up a tankard. When the piece was taken from the mould he nicked it with a clean tile to mill the edges, then he scoured it with sand to make it look bright. Lastly he put it into a pot of water boiled with a powder he called argol to make it look silver.’
‘What did you say to this?’ the judge asked.
‘I told him I would have none of it and they must all find other lodgings.’
‘You lie,’ Bernard Watson protested. ‘I never made a false coin in my life.’
The woman turned to the judge. ‘Your honour, as God is my witness, I tell you true.’
‘Then what happened?’ the prosecutor urged her.
‘He said he would pay me well to pass the coins off when I went shopping, but I refused and said they must all leave.’
‘And did they?’
‘I left the house and went to fetch a constable. When I brought the constable back, they had packed up and gone and taken all the sixpences with them.’
The constable was called next and told the court that he found nothing except a broken-up pewter tankard and the bowl of a pipe with a residue of pewter in it. He saw no counterfeit coins.
‘God, I do believe the rascals will get off,’ Ash murmured.
‘Patience,’ Harry responded, flicking invisible fluff from his sleeve.
‘Where did they go?’ the prosecutor asked the witness.
‘They went to a house in White Lion Street. I got the address from a man at the Nag’s Head, who heard them speak of it. I went there with Constable Bunting and we broke down the door and found them all gathered to make coins.’
‘I suppose you were the man at the Nag’s Head,’Ash whispered to Harry.
‘Shh,’ Harry warned him, smiling.
Other witnesses were called to corroborate. Their defence that they were making buttons and buckles to sell in the market was thrown out. Alfred, Meg and Bernard were sentenced to hang; Matilda’s plea that she was not aware her parents and husband were doing anything but making buttons was accepted and she was set free. She left the court vowing vengeance against whoever had ratted on them.
Harry and Ash did not wait to hear the next trial, but made their way out to the street and comparative fresh air. ‘I did not know it was so easy to make false coins,’ Ash said. ‘But surely the profits are minimal.’
‘Not if you make enough of them. Take a counterfeit shilling or even a sixpence to a shop to buy something for a ha’penny or a penny and receive the change in good money and you soon make a tidy profit. Usually the coiners employ what they call passers-off to go into the country with a supply of bad coins with which they buy goods needing change.’
‘Not worth the candle,’ Ash said.
‘Not for such as we are, but for the lower sort a welcome supplement to low wages and, for those with no work at all, better than starving.’
‘The young woman was very angry. Do you think she will try to carry out her threat?’
‘She has no idea who turned them in.’ He paused. ‘They are small fry. The really big profits come with clipping gold coins, but for that you need to be supplied with real coins to make a start and it is altogether on a more lofty plane. That is what I’m going after next.’
‘What have you discovered?’
‘Not a great deal as yet, but I was handed a clipped guinea at the wine merchant’s the other day. It had been used to purchase wine. Unfortunately he could not remember who had passed it to him. He has promised to let me know as soon as he sees another one.’
‘You can’t do it more than once in the same shop, surely?’
‘It depends how observant the shopkeeper is. And if the rogue thought he had got away with it he might be tempted to try again.’
They had been walking back towards St James’s as they talked and turned into White’s and the subject of coiners and, indeed, of crime in whatever form was dropped in favour of playing cards. Harry drank and gambled in moderation; he found that men in their cups often let fall titbits of information that helped him in his work for the Piccadilly Gentlemen. And there was nothing to go home for. He could attend soirées, routs and balls, he was always a welcome guest, simply because of his title, wealth and unmarried status, but he became tired of gushing mamas throwing their daughters in his way. He found himself reiterating that he had decided not to marry again, but that did not stop them trying to change his mind.
He could, of course, find one of the hundreds of ladies of the night to amuse him for an hour or two, but he had always found paying for that dubious pleasure distasteful. He went frequently to the theatre and enjoyed supper with the cast afterwards, but there was a limit to the number of times he could view one play, especially if it were not particularly well done. It was easier to spend his evenings at one or other of his clubs.
A four was made up by Benedict Stafford and Sir Max Chalmers. Benedict was a pimply youth of no more than twenty, heir to a Viscount who kept him on short commons, which everyone knew. Harry had never met Sir Max, but he was well dressed in sober black, relieved by silver embroidery and a white lace cravat, matched by the froth of lace emerging from his coat sleeves. With his sharp nose and chin and thin legs, he reminded Harry of a magpie.