Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio zaren zaren Yo
Speaker 1: over here, right, we got my hand up over here.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth, Hi girl, how you doing doing well? Man?
Speaker 1: Oh? You straight? I'm fine.
Speaker 3: Listen.
Speaker 1: I need to know what's ridiculous.
Speaker 4: Oh, sit down, I got something that's going to buckle
Speaker 4: your knees. I don't want you to get hurt. I
Speaker 4: heard about this woman. Oh Don Brook, she got pregnant. Okay,
Speaker 4: she got She is the.
Speaker 1: Oldest congratulations or I'm sorry to hear that kind of
Speaker 1: like that, but she either basically it were really for
Speaker 1: real though.
Speaker 4: She's the oldest person to ever get pregnant without IVF
Speaker 4: or donor eggs. Oh how old those persons get pregnant
Speaker 4: with the in vitro fertilization. The IVF was seventy three?
Speaker 4: Whoa seventy three with IVF? They intentionally said, can we
Speaker 4: get something going in here? And they're like, with enough
Speaker 4: drugs into my ivfs? Yes they did?
Speaker 3: Wow?
Speaker 4: Right, but this person, Don Brook, Yeah, in twenty seventeen
Speaker 4: gave birth and was at the age.
Speaker 2: Of fifty nine.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: No iv body went through menopause.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth, Oh wait, she did well?
Speaker 4: Obviously not did went into menopause, went through menopause, and
Speaker 4: then started taking a hormone replacement therapy. Yeah, and that
Speaker 4: can kick start the system where it started producing eggs.
Speaker 4: Dropped an egg that was still kicking inside. I guess
Speaker 4: it was all the way live got in, it got exminated.
Speaker 4: Now like a ten year old boy, she's sixty nine.
Speaker 2: Kid, I guess he's seventy because you got the nine
Speaker 2: ten months older.
Speaker 1: You are older when it's born.
Speaker 4: But I'm telling it to no. I mean like she's now.
Speaker 4: She was fifty nine when she had the kid. Sixty
Speaker 4: nine now, but can you believe it?
Speaker 2: She was? She got thought she was out, and they
Speaker 2: dragged her back down with like we're gonna give you
Speaker 2: this therapy. It's gonna be good for you. She's like, doctor,
Speaker 2: I am pregnant. Would you stop it? I am a
Speaker 2: fifty nine year old woman. I don't made this nonsense.
Speaker 2: Oh y nonsense.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is ridiculous nonsense us. Do you know what
Speaker 1: else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: I was hoping you'd tell me.
Speaker 1: Sir Isaac Newton Fighting Crime what this is? Ridiculous Crime?
Speaker 1: A podcast about absurd and outrageous caper's heis and cons
Speaker 1: it's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred
Speaker 1: percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I know you heard that.
Speaker 1: You did. You watched that Netflix hit Peaky Blinders, Right?
Speaker 2: I love that one.
Speaker 1: I loerve that show. I love it, especially when Tom
Speaker 1: Hardy came on. Yes, look at how freely I can
Speaker 1: talk about television. I'm like, hi on, all I do
Speaker 1: is talk about TV. Tom Hardy was fantastic. But let's
Speaker 1: give it up for killing Murphy.
Speaker 2: Yes, of course the best.
Speaker 1: I've been a fan of his since The Wind That
Speaker 1: Shakes the Barley, which, if you haven't seen it, fantastic film.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Peaky Blinders takes place in Birmingham, England, after
Speaker 1: World War One. In the show, it's this gritty industrial
Speaker 1: city with a dirty underbelly of crime. Yeah, the Peaky Blinders,
Speaker 1: the eponymous gang in the show is based on a
Speaker 1: real gang from the late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 4: Aren't all based on gangs in the show? Aren't the
Speaker 4: all the gangs in the show based on gangs yet?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And there's a movie coming out, by the way,
Speaker 1: It starts filming in September of this year. Let's go
Speaker 1: crush the set. We should record an episode from the
Speaker 1: set while Chase. Yes, but it's the movie's supposed to
Speaker 1: wrap the whole thing up anyway. Birmingham, so it was
Speaker 1: tough in real life back then, and apparently it was
Speaker 1: tough even before then, hundreds of years before then. I mean,
Speaker 1: settlement in Birmingham goes back to eight thousand BC.
Speaker 4: Does it really? Yeah, that's not a Roman settlement. No, No,
Speaker 4: I was assumed so many of the big cities.
Speaker 1: Of Roman settlement they had their own thing.
Speaker 2: I know they did, I just didn't know.
Speaker 1: I'm talking though about the sixteen hundreds, mid to late
Speaker 1: and so at that time it was known as the
Speaker 1: counterfeiting capital of England.
Speaker 4: What counterfeiting, Oh, I was like like you were talking
Speaker 4: like countertops, like they were fitting counters. Like there's pipe fitters,
Speaker 4: there's counterfeitters.
Speaker 1: They like there's something head but like marble countertop. Anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was badfitters.
Speaker 2: So money fakers, I got you counterfeits.
Speaker 1: I mean. It was also at that time that a
Speaker 1: kid from just outside of town in Warwickshire was born
Speaker 1: to a family of weavers name of William Chilloner.
Speaker 2: Okay, William Chillona.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Chu Loaner Challoner, little homie was a bad one. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: he got into all sorts of troubles. So his parents
Speaker 1: shipped him off to the big city Birmingham to become
Speaker 1: an apprentice nail maker, not like at a nail salon.
Speaker 1: But the nails are using construction like the old bang.
Speaker 4: Bang Yeah, and you're handmaking nails exactly. A lot of
Speaker 4: them are going into the of horses.
Speaker 1: Right, So he was not doing acrylics. They sent They
Speaker 1: sent him off to Birmingham a k A brum yeah,
Speaker 1: AK a city of a thousand trades a k A
Speaker 1: O one two one?
Speaker 2: Are you for real?
Speaker 1: Aka Second City aka the pen Shop of the world
Speaker 1: AK Venice of the North.
Speaker 2: Second City. They're the Chicago of.
Speaker 1: That aka Workshop of the world. Yeah, they're the Venice
Speaker 1: of the North.
Speaker 2: So no one call, No one calls them like b
Speaker 2: Ham or bro How.
Speaker 1: Sure they do? I don't know. This is just what
Speaker 1: Wikipedia calls anyway, that's the list on Wikipedia. So they
Speaker 1: send him off to the city, praying that he'll.
Speaker 5: Straighten up and fly right make good nails.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, they like you go out and make your living,
Speaker 1: make and.
Speaker 2: Nails with metal.
Speaker 1: But no, no, no, this was the counterfeit in capital
Speaker 1: of it, like working with paper and here's a young
Speaker 1: man of mischief and no integrity.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, perfect.
Speaker 1: So he of course fell in with a group that
Speaker 1: made counterfeit groats.
Speaker 2: Groats, groats.
Speaker 1: Look at the look on your face, Elizabeth, not groats
Speaker 1: that are grain.
Speaker 2: That's what I was, That's what my face was doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, counterfeit grains are intriguing to me. Like saw rolls
Speaker 1: up a little bit. These are coins and they're made
Speaker 1: of silver, and then originally they were all four pence,
Speaker 1: but then some were eightpence and others were shilling. A
Speaker 1: pence is basically a penny shillings twelve of those. So
Speaker 1: so there's William making fake coins instead of nails. Tricky.
Speaker 2: I'm still working with the metal mak Yeah.
Speaker 1: Either way, bang bang groats. They first showed up in
Speaker 1: England in the twelve hundreds and by the sixteen hundreds
Speaker 1: they still weren't very refined. They're basically handmade. Edges are
Speaker 1: rough and while they're supposed to be silver, it wasn't
Speaker 1: always pure. What I'm trying to say is that they
Speaker 1: were super easy to counterfeit.
Speaker 2: That's what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the fakes.
Speaker 2: Sounds like they're just like flattened bottle caps.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of them look like that. The fakes
Speaker 1: were either not silver at all, or they had just
Speaker 1: a little in there which had been taken from clips
Speaker 1: around the edges of real coins because they weren't super
Speaker 1: smooth on the edge, and so the weight would be
Speaker 1: just slightly off. But you can clip enough off of
Speaker 1: a coin to make another coin. William did this for
Speaker 1: a while in Birmingham. He basically like apprentice.
Speaker 2: Literally shaving profits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But he wanted to go straight. He wanted
Speaker 1: to get a real gig doing honest metalwork.
Speaker 3: He did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he went to London on foot. He walked
Speaker 1: to London. Now today, if you wanted to walk from
Speaker 1: Birmingham to London, Google Maps tells you it'll take forty
Speaker 1: hours work week.
Speaker 2: That real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what it said. Did it take him that
Speaker 1: long or did it longer? Historians, keep your answers to yourself. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to say it took him longer. Let's double it.
Speaker 1: So so however you slice it, it's like one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen miles.
Speaker 2: Wow, I just know you can do it legally because
Speaker 2: they have all those rules about you.
Speaker 1: To someone's yard and be like sorry, trade brow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he did. He did this in the sixteen eighties.
Speaker 1: He's in his thirties, you know.
Speaker 2: Good for him in his thirties. Yeah, he still hasn't
Speaker 2: made good yet. Huh. I mean, I'm not judging him.
Speaker 1: He had no judgment.
Speaker 2: He's just knocking about looking for something that you call
Speaker 2: his own.
Speaker 1: Well, he gets to London.
Speaker 2: He's not getting married till he's got something in life,
Speaker 2: right this period of time.
Speaker 1: Right, So he gets to London, he's like, hey, fellas,
Speaker 1: I'm here to work on metal, and everyone just like
Speaker 1: stares at him. Come to find out there's a guild
Speaker 1: system in place. Yeah, they're just sworn in. They're tight knit.
Speaker 2: And he's aged most of it.
Speaker 1: You got to be granted work at the behest of
Speaker 1: the crown. That's William, the third bo hit.
Speaker 2: Got a license and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So here's William. He's new in town, he's iced
Speaker 1: out from his profession. He needed work. He found it
Speaker 1: in japanning And that's the fake version of East Asian
Speaker 1: lacquer work.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, like the real stuff at the time was super
Speaker 1: popular and also super expensive and so and the real
Speaker 1: stuff is used by coating objects like furniture, jewelry, bobbles
Speaker 1: and such with like a thick coating made from the
Speaker 1: sap of the toxicodendrum vernick flum tree.
Speaker 2: Like a super strong lacker.
Speaker 1: Yeah and so, and then they'd be like in lays
Speaker 1: of precious materials in the design. Well, like that tree
Speaker 1: didn't grow in England or the rest of Europe for
Speaker 1: that matter, so they made do with an enamel paint,
Speaker 1: usually black tree or something. And in Europe they did
Speaker 1: the same thing, but they used a shellac and it
Speaker 1: came in.
Speaker 5: Like greens and blues and reds.
Speaker 1: Japan Ors could make pieces on the cheap and then
Speaker 1: sell them as the real deal for.
Speaker 2: The the sun exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's that's what William did. He also got married
Speaker 1: and he had kids and just lived his life. He
Speaker 1: did try other businesses. One source said that William also
Speaker 1: got work making quote, ten watches with dildo's in them.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm going to need you to run that.
Speaker 4: You say he made ten watches, Elizabeth, why would I
Speaker 4: want to watch a bit of tin? But what was
Speaker 4: the part of it?
Speaker 1: Also, I'm going to let you thank the ages that
Speaker 1: I'm not about to tell you a picture of it. Yes,
Speaker 1: So okay, when we say dildo in the sixteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: what we really mean is dildo exactly as we used
Speaker 1: it to say. So, Kieran Kanliffe wrote for Headstuff in
Speaker 1: a footnote on an article about William Chill owner quote.
Speaker 1: Dildo's had been available in England since at least the
Speaker 1: time of Shakespeare, but had increased in availability over the
Speaker 1: previous decade, mostly in the form of Italian imports. A
Speaker 1: popular ballad of the day, Signor Dildo, drew a link
Speaker 1: between this and the arrival of Mary of Modina, the
Speaker 1: Italian wife of King James the second. Can I read
Speaker 1: to you from that popular ballad of the day.
Speaker 2: Oh you got some lyrics of mister Dildo dravus? You
Speaker 2: got it? Bar please hit me?
Speaker 1: So it begins, you ladies of Mary England who have
Speaker 1: been to kiss the Duchess's hand, pray, did you not
Speaker 1: lately observe in the show a noble Italian called Senior Dildo.
Speaker 1: This signor was one of the Duchess's train and helped
Speaker 1: to conduct her over the main But now she cries
Speaker 1: out to the Duke, I will go I have no
Speaker 1: more need for signor dildo. Where there's this verse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the good lady Suffolk, thinking no harm, had got this
Speaker 1: poor stranger hid under her arm. Lady Betty, by chance
Speaker 1: came the secret to know and from her own mother,
Speaker 1: stole senior dildo from her own mother.
Speaker 4: Yes, do see proof positive my theory. We always been
Speaker 4: the same taking a dilda from her mom.
Speaker 1: We've always been the same. What the he be freaky?
Speaker 2: Have always been free.
Speaker 4: People always act like I can't believe you know, I
Speaker 4: don't want to be like whatever they want to. These
Speaker 4: formers like propriety right. People think like I know I
Speaker 4: want to I don't want to have inappropriate this or
Speaker 4: inappropriate that. I'm like, Look, I hate to tell you this.
Speaker 1: Everyone always grass and gross and freaking.
Speaker 2: Two things everybody is which is corny and freaky.
Speaker 1: Let me give you another another verse. Doll Howard, no
Speaker 1: longer with his highness, must range, and therefore is proffered
Speaker 1: this civil exchange. Her teeth being rotten, she smells best
Speaker 1: below and needs must be fitted for senior dildo. Honestly,
Speaker 1: most of the other verses, and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of them, are way too filthy for me. To read
Speaker 1: to you. Yes all. Poetry dot Com gives this assessment,
Speaker 1: quote Senior Dildo stands as a unique and controversial example
Speaker 1: of restoration poetry, challenging contemporary norms of propriety and offering
Speaker 1: a glimpse into the libertine culture of the English court.
Speaker 2: Say it again for the row and back.
Speaker 1: So back to Williams.
Speaker 2: Libertine times then and our problems now.
Speaker 1: Was like, he's he's apparently making watches with dildo's in them.
Speaker 1: I do not know how that works. And googling was
Speaker 1: so unhelpful, like, don't google quote dildo watch.
Speaker 2: I just want to know how big these are big watches.
Speaker 1: Don't or watch dil don't don't just yeah, I tried
Speaker 1: dildo time pieces as people because watch dildo dildo watch
Speaker 1: was like boyl yeah no, I mean it's like I'm
Speaker 1: host situation. So dildo time piece. I mean I did
Speaker 1: find one a historical article, but it was no help.
Speaker 2: I want to see the FBI anyway.
Speaker 1: That's what he.
Speaker 2: Was up What the heck?
Speaker 1: Like, that's what okay, So that's why that's what he
Speaker 1: was up to for a while in London.
Speaker 2: Oh good for him. I meant he did well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and apparently it was a brisk business, I tell you.
Speaker 1: But then he moved on to other scams. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: that he could have retired as a tildo time piece crafter.
Speaker 1: He got into the early snake oil biz and he
Speaker 1: sold phony plague cures because you know, they're not going
Speaker 1: to come after you and it doesn't work rip. And
Speaker 1: then he got into fortune telling and like so he
Speaker 1: and this associate would steal things from people and then
Speaker 1: they would go to them and offer to use their
Speaker 1: psychic powers to find the item for a cost. You know,
Speaker 1: They're like, give us, like, however much money and I'm
Speaker 1: sure we can, like, oh, we robbed my temples. I
Speaker 1: think I know where it is. In sixteen ninety, that
Speaker 1: game came to an end because like someone was on
Speaker 1: to him and his pal with the theft thing, and
Speaker 1: they went to the authorities. So William he had to
Speaker 1: go into hiding, and exactly he he ditched his wife
Speaker 1: and kids forever he never saw them again. And it's
Speaker 1: not like he left the country or the city. He
Speaker 1: was just like, I gotta go into hiding.
Speaker 2: Cross the street.
Speaker 1: He's like, He's leave you in the dildo watch in
Speaker 1: a farewell. So he hit out for a while and
Speaker 1: then he crossed town. He sold us clothing for a while,
Speaker 1: clothing and.
Speaker 2: Then not like it like not like a store where
Speaker 2: it's like nice, use clothing, this is like it's not warm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so maybe it was. At the same time he
Speaker 1: did a mini apprenticeship under a guy named Patrick Coffee
Speaker 1: who is a goldsmith. Okay, so now we're in sixteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. Sure, what a year I remember it well?
Speaker 1: Oh man, what with me being old because I remember
Speaker 1: cassette tapes.
Speaker 2: Oh and we just survived that second ice Age, that
Speaker 2: little mini ice age. It's been rough.
Speaker 1: So like at this point William has ditched the vintage
Speaker 1: tunic and stockings trade and gone all in on counterfeiting. Really,
Speaker 1: this is a big move. It's it's one thing to
Speaker 1: dupe people dying of the plague, but counterfeiting was something else.
Speaker 2: Are still alive, right, But in.
Speaker 1: Those days, counterfeiting was treason and they could get you
Speaker 1: by the government.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, hang them high capital crimes against the crown.
Speaker 1: And that was for men, right, men would get hanged.
Speaker 1: For women who were caught making fake coin, the punishment
Speaker 1: was worse. They were burned at the stake, and like, well,
Speaker 1: because they're women, the I guess, and the government they're
Speaker 1: just like, you know, these foul women, let's just burn
Speaker 1: them up, but let's do let's do it nicely. They
Speaker 1: thought they would have this humane way to do it.
Speaker 1: They would tie a rope around the woman's neck so
Speaker 1: that they could like strangle her before she's fully engulfed
Speaker 1: in flames. Oh god, because they thought that would be merciful.
Speaker 1: But the problem is that the rope would burn up
Speaker 1: before it totally choked them out. Did the Romans, they
Speaker 1: suffered even more justice zaren, but that didn't deter William
Speaker 1: hanging or making money, you know, willing to take the risk.
Speaker 1: And like I said, it was just so easy. So
Speaker 1: counterfeiters were still doing the thing where they clipped off
Speaker 1: the rough edges of the existing coins, cobbled together metals
Speaker 1: to make new janky looking coins. But change was afoot.
Speaker 1: The government was just starting to introduce milled edges to coins.
Speaker 1: And then there was also the market itself. These are
Speaker 1: silver coins, and so the silver itself was starting to
Speaker 1: have a greater value than the coin, especially over on
Speaker 1: the continent, So it made illegal sense to melt down
Speaker 1: the groats and then move the bullion to Europe a
Speaker 1: little something called deflationary arbitageh So this became more prevalent,
Speaker 1: so there were fewer coins in circulation. So William he
Speaker 1: gets to work making dummy coins to circulate in England.
Speaker 1: Let's hear some ads and let's think about what we've done,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we'll check in with William
Speaker 1: and his coin business. Zaren.
Speaker 2: That's mister dildo.
Speaker 1: Thank you, senior dildo. When we last spoke, William Chiller
Speaker 1: was making I don't know, I can't ask this dildo
Speaker 1: how to say it. He's melting down English coins and
Speaker 1: he's either selling the raw metal in Europe or actually
Speaker 1: minting European coins himself. I'm guessing with like substandard metal.
Speaker 1: He was getting paid some.
Speaker 2: Can like stamps to get the right press.
Speaker 1: Well he would. He's a counterfeiter. You have fake ones,
Speaker 1: and then what they'd do is they'd have these dyes
Speaker 1: and then you'd have to like smash it with a hammer.
Speaker 1: So he bought this fancy house in knights Bridge. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering where the abandoned wife and kids are, but whatever,
Speaker 1: he had this nice whip like this gilded out carriage,
Speaker 1: wore all these slick outfits, and he had totally mastered
Speaker 1: creating those dies for the coins, you know, those press models.
Speaker 1: So historians, sir John, he's actually very good.
Speaker 2: The gold silversmith who trained him really got him rest.
Speaker 1: He's very very good at this. There's this historian, Sir
Speaker 1: John Craig. He wrote in nineteen forty six that William
Speaker 1: was quote the most accomplished counterfeiter in the Kingdom. So
Speaker 1: nice an artist of dies that it galled him to
Speaker 1: spoil their perfection by use break them over. Didn want
Speaker 1: to break them. So in sixteen ninety two, one of
Speaker 1: William's buddies was arrested and he squealed. William knew the
Speaker 1: law would be on his doorstep soon, so he got
Speaker 1: to work for two days straight. He minted coins because
Speaker 1: he needed cash to be able to make a run
Speaker 1: for it, and run he did. He headed up to
Speaker 1: Scotland and he waited until his pal was hanged for
Speaker 1: his offenses. Oh and I told you he had no integrity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you didnt tell me the one person coming at me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So well that's no state.
Speaker 1: So while in Scotland he came up with a new plan.
Speaker 1: This was a couple of years after the Jacobite Rising
Speaker 1: of sixteen. Yeah, so that's when you know, the Jacobites,
Speaker 1: believing in the divine rights of kings and the Stuart
Speaker 1: claimed to the throne, rebell They tried to put James
Speaker 1: the Second aka James the Seventh back in power. He's
Speaker 1: James the Second in England and Ireland, James the Seventh
Speaker 1: in Scotland. In a larger sense, it was part of
Speaker 1: the Nine Years War France versus the Grand Alliance. So
Speaker 1: the Scottish Highlands hot bed of Jacobite activity and it
Speaker 1: was while in Scotland that William saw an opportunity. It
Speaker 1: was seen as seditious to support the Jacobites, which meant
Speaker 1: it was illegal to spread the message, like say, printing
Speaker 1: and distributing pamphlets.
Speaker 2: Ah, yes, I've seen outlander.
Speaker 1: So William he starts paying printers to run Jacobite pamphlets
Speaker 1: and that was in his true crime. He would then
Speaker 1: report the printers and get a reward from the state.
Speaker 2: Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: No, It's like basically entrapman.
Speaker 2: Wow, so in trapper Oh ye, I'll do this for you, don't.
Speaker 1: Worry one time, he pays these four Jacobite sympathizers to
Speaker 1: print copies of James's declaration denouncing King William. Dudes show
Speaker 1: up to deliver the pamphlets and they were like cops
Speaker 1: there waiting.
Speaker 2: I got surprised for you.
Speaker 1: This was seditions. So they weren't in prison. They were
Speaker 1: had and William he collects one thousand pound reward. It's
Speaker 1: a huge amount. He had this guy, this protege named
Speaker 1: Aubrey Price, and the two of them they came up
Speaker 1: with another plan that would exploit the Jacobites. William and
Speaker 1: Aubrey went to some government officials and they told him
Speaker 1: they had a hot tip.
Speaker 2: Did you have an exploiter named Aubrey in the story?
Speaker 1: Isn't that an incredible cursed name. So the JAT they like,
Speaker 1: check it out. We have a hotline on this, a
Speaker 1: hotline blank. The Jacobites are fixing to attack Dover Castle.
Speaker 1: We have word and they tell the authorities look for
Speaker 1: a fee, we'll go undercover and like report back. We
Speaker 1: can foil the plot. I don't know what do you
Speaker 1: guys have in mind? And the authorities are like, no,
Speaker 1: get out of here. I don't think so Okay, this
Speaker 1: is William. Okay, what about this. I have here a
Speaker 1: list of Jacobite sympathizers. How about you hire me and
Speaker 1: old Aubrey here to go investigate these fools. This, by
Speaker 1: the way, was just a random made up list of names,
Speaker 1: and they're like, okay, fine, you know what you're hired.
Speaker 2: That's a long list.
Speaker 1: That sounds great. So now William's getting paid to go
Speaker 1: around to quote unquote investigate a fake list of enemies
Speaker 1: of the state. So this gives him like some credibility.
Speaker 1: He's not operating on the fringes anymore. He's part of
Speaker 1: the machine, of course. But then it got a little dicey.
Speaker 1: He and some bozone named Coppinger they wrote together this
Speaker 1: Jacobite pamphlet to get all printed up, and they planned
Speaker 1: to bust another printer and get the reward. When the
Speaker 1: time came to go to the cops to bust the printers,
Speaker 1: Coppinger tried to claim the full reward for himself.
Speaker 2: Partner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but not for like the pamphlet thing. He rats
Speaker 1: William out for his counterfeiting. But William had like established
Speaker 1: himself he's almost a law man, right, so he's able
Speaker 1: to talk his way out of the jam, and then
Speaker 1: gets Coppinger pinched for writing the pamphlet and soliciting it
Speaker 1: to be printed.
Speaker 2: So he actually flipped it back.
Speaker 1: Coppingers hanged car, and William skates away. So he's just
Speaker 1: leaving all these like you know, like co conspirators in
Speaker 1: his wake. Back to legal Tender, I told you that
Speaker 1: as people melted down the silver in the English groats
Speaker 1: to sell in Europe, England starts running low on coins.
Speaker 1: There just wasn't enough in circulation, and the Crown started
Speaker 1: to notice this. As I said, it's during the Nine
Speaker 1: Years War, William the Third needed cash and this is
Speaker 1: starting to be a big problem everything. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: so like milling the edges of the coins, and this
Speaker 1: is creating a before and after line. So there were
Speaker 1: hand forged coins made before all the way up to
Speaker 1: sixteen sixty two, and then after that it's machine minted ones,
Speaker 1: like on a serious press. And the machine minted coins
Speaker 1: had these milled edges to prevent the clipping. There was
Speaker 1: even the text decus et Tutemann, the ornament and a
Speaker 1: safeguard that was added around the coin rooms.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's like the certificate of authenticity, but they.
Speaker 1: Could still be melted down and like silver's worth more
Speaker 1: in France and the Netherlands than as a coin in England.
Speaker 2: So flames don't care.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people proposed ways to address this issue,
Speaker 1: and then William he chimes in, but he didn't do
Speaker 1: so in his like trademark sleazy, underhanded negative way. He
Speaker 1: didn't and he didn't really propose a solution. He had
Speaker 1: a bunch of pamphlets printed up, like I'm surprised that
Speaker 1: printers will still work with him. He accused, he does
Speaker 1: know a paper guy. Okay, so he accused the Royal
Speaker 1: Mint of incompetence, calls we don't have money, question as
Speaker 1: you're messing it up. Then he said that there should
Speaker 1: be this great recoinage, that is to say, old clip
Speaker 1: coins collected melted down machine meant it.
Speaker 2: He has a person in mind to run and all the.
Speaker 1: New coins, he said, should have this like deeper impressions
Speaker 1: that counterfeits can't counterfeiters can't mimic those lousy counterfeitters. What's
Speaker 1: cracked down on them too, So he's in order to
Speaker 1: crack down on them, he himself. He suggests a licensing
Speaker 1: system for coiners tools, and remember, counterfeiting is an active treasons.
Speaker 1: He's like, hello, killing these people, why is he going
Speaker 1: so hard on counterfeitters? Calling for his own demise. He
Speaker 1: wanted to rebrand himself as a coin expert, and as
Speaker 1: you said, like he figured that way he'd get access
Speaker 1: to the Royal Mint and fox.
Speaker 2: I'll take a stance, take a stamp, I'll take exactly.
Speaker 1: So the Earl of Monmouth, who just recently lost his
Speaker 1: gig as Lord of the Treasury, totally on board. He's like,
Speaker 1: this guy makes so much sense. I love it, mainly
Speaker 1: because his successor, the Earl of Halifax, he wanted him
Speaker 1: to look foolish because if they're like, oh, the mint
Speaker 1: is competent, he loses his job as Lord of the
Speaker 1: Earl of Halifax. Also heard William out politics was that
Speaker 1: he like, he hears what William has to say, but
Speaker 1: then he went and fixed the issues on his own.
Speaker 1: He's like, that's a great idea. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: I'm an expert.
Speaker 1: Am I going to bring this clown into the operation.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the suggestions, dude, who needs a you got?
Speaker 1: William's like, okay, cool, cool, huh. Well, he tries another
Speaker 1: tack paper money. So this is a new thing. The
Speaker 1: Bank of England was printing one hundred pound bills on
Speaker 1: specially pattern paper, and William, of course, he gets his
Speaker 1: hands on some of this paper and prints his own bills.
Speaker 1: You know, he knows printers, but he wasn't as good
Speaker 1: at that as he was with like crude coins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are new counterfeit skills.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the phony bills get traced back to him
Speaker 1: when the paper plug grasses him out. Oh, so he
Speaker 1: gets picked up by authorities. But here's the thing. There
Speaker 1: were no actual laws on the books about counterfeiting paper
Speaker 1: money for the law. Too new for the law. So
Speaker 1: they had to let him go. And they even let
Speaker 1: him hang on to the cash that he laundered. Like
Speaker 1: you know anyway, so.
Speaker 2: I liked it. He didn't have a paper guy, and
Speaker 2: the paper guy tried to screw him.
Speaker 1: But then on top of it, he gets in he
Speaker 1: makes another two hundred pounds a reward. Zaren remember his
Speaker 1: old pal Aubrey Price.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: While in custody, William ratted him out for forging checks.
Speaker 1: And see William had come up with a perfect way
Speaker 1: to forge checks. He terrible, and he passed that technique
Speaker 1: onto Aubrey and he needed a little juice with the authorities,
Speaker 1: so he said he'd been told of a check. Counterfeitter
Speaker 1: leads him to Aubrey's busted, eventually hanged, and William is
Speaker 1: praised for his fraud busting, like, you are so good,
Speaker 1: you are such a good citizen hacker. Yeah, so he
Speaker 1: got accolades. But now people, people have their eyes on him,
Speaker 1: i'd hope. So one very important person in particular the
Speaker 1: Warden of the Mint, none other than Sir Isaac Newton,
Speaker 1: Deep the applehead gravity him.
Speaker 2: Newton.
Speaker 1: There was that great recoining that William came up with.
Speaker 1: Charles Montague, Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, got
Speaker 1: Newton the gig as Warden of the Mint. And at
Speaker 1: this point the Mint is controlled by Parliament, not the Crown,
Speaker 1: and Parliament wanted Newton. He was the one who was
Speaker 1: going to oversee the whole process of this recoining. He
Speaker 1: moved from Cambridge to London.
Speaker 2: To do just that. Really, they got him out of
Speaker 2: Cambridge for this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, zaren my goodness, yes, I want you to picture it.
Speaker 1: It's March of sixteen ninety six. I remember it like
Speaker 1: it was yesterday. You are a worker at the Royal Mint,
Speaker 1: located within the Tower of London. The mid buildings form
Speaker 1: a narrow horseshoe shape around the three sides of the
Speaker 1: tower that aren't along the Thames. It's a ramshackle place
Speaker 1: and it's miserable. It's hot and dark. Your job is
Speaker 1: to help turn a screw operated press that stamps the coins.
Speaker 1: You are very restricted in being able to get in
Speaker 1: and out of the place. This is a secure facility
Speaker 1: and you have an important job. There's also a lot
Speaker 1: of room for theft, which is why you've been totally
Speaker 1: vetted and are watched like a hawk. You and another
Speaker 1: man take turns pulling on a lever that turns round
Speaker 1: and round, stamping out tuppets. Your dad worked here when
Speaker 1: there were no machines. He was missing two fingers on
Speaker 1: his left hand from accidentally leaving his hand too close
Speaker 1: to the die as the hammer was slammed down by
Speaker 1: his coworker. The wood of your press creaks. A horse
Speaker 1: outside the windows snorts and winnies. You are stripped down
Speaker 1: to what are basically your underthings, thin cotton shirt and
Speaker 1: thin cotton long underwhere a man in the corner adds
Speaker 1: coal to the furnace that melts down the precious metals.
Speaker 1: You are sweaty, but you know it's an honest day's work.
Speaker 1: You've been told the new big boss will be coming
Speaker 1: by today. Look alive. They said. He's an important bloke.
Speaker 1: You glance up and see a figure standing on the
Speaker 1: wooden walkway above you. He's glorious. It's Isaac Newton. He's
Speaker 1: not a sur yet, but you wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 1: he is one day. He's a famous scientist, you know
Speaker 1: that much, A real genius, with long, wavy gray locks
Speaker 1: down to his shoulders and a distinguished aquiline nose. He
Speaker 1: looks down at the workroom. He's holding a sheaf of
Speaker 1: paper and scribbles notes while talking to the foreman next
Speaker 1: to him. You and your press partner take a break.
Speaker 1: You lift the dyes and sweep the completed coins into
Speaker 1: a bucket. The noise of the room settles a little,
Speaker 1: and you listen in as Newton quizzes your boss. He
Speaker 1: asks the foreman exactly how much coal the furnace burns
Speaker 1: each day, how much ore can each melting pot hold?
Speaker 1: And does that decrease over time. How long can these
Speaker 1: men and these horses work before they're spent? How long
Speaker 1: of a break do you give them? What's the output
Speaker 1: each day? Where did you get those fabulous pants? Newton
Speaker 1: scribbles on the answers on his paper, pausing occasionally to
Speaker 1: scratch his chin, and thought, he looks down at you
Speaker 1: in nods and thanks for your hard work. You nod
Speaker 1: back and then return to the press. These shillings ain't
Speaker 1: gonna mint themselves. Boys. So Newton visited the mint, got
Speaker 1: all the data he needed, and then use that data
Speaker 1: to calculate maximum efficiency for the operation. He figured out
Speaker 1: how to best utilize the workforce both man and beast,
Speaker 1: to get maximum work without overtaxing them, and he established
Speaker 1: a peak working pace. So he analyzed the infrastructure, the building,
Speaker 1: the workrooms. He also noted like improvements. But then he
Speaker 1: saw it all through he came up. He just crunched numbers,
Speaker 1: and before it looks so like here's the thing. Before
Speaker 1: he came on board, the mint was like barely producing
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand pounds a week in pretty unsafe environs. After
Speaker 1: his overhaul, the place ran smoothly and put out more
Speaker 1: than fifty thousand pounds a week.
Speaker 2: No problem, He's an efficiency expert. Henry Ford. Eat your
Speaker 2: heart out.
Speaker 1: Exactly, Isaac Newton, O g badass. Let's take a break.
Speaker 1: Upon our return. I will tell you what happens when
Speaker 1: you cross a virtuous genius like Isaac Newton with a
Speaker 1: craven criminal like William chillowner.
Speaker 5: I love that apple attractor, Sir Isaac Newton.
Speaker 2: Would you call me?
Speaker 1: I called you, Sir, Isaac, your new name Newton. I
Speaker 1: love the figs, big fig fan. So perhaps the greatest
Speaker 1: genius to ever live.
Speaker 2: Definitely in the top three.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Please indulge me by allowing me to read his
Speaker 1: epitaph from Westminster.
Speaker 2: Please.
Speaker 1: Here is buried Isaac Newton Knight, who, by a strength
Speaker 1: of mind almost divine and mathematical principles, particularly his own,
Speaker 1: explored the course and figures of the planets, the path
Speaker 1: of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in
Speaker 1: rays of light, and what no other scholar has previously
Speaker 1: imagined the properties of the colors. Thus produced diligent, sagacious
Speaker 1: and faithful in his expositions of nature, antiquity, and the
Speaker 1: holy scriptures. He vindicated by his philosophy, the majesty of
Speaker 1: God Mighty and Good, and expressed the simplicity of the
Speaker 1: Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed
Speaker 1: such and so great an ornament of the human race.
Speaker 1: He was born twenty fifth December sixteen forty two and
Speaker 1: died on twenty five March seventeen twenty six.
Speaker 2: Dope.
Speaker 1: Now, of course it's actually engraved in Latin. But you
Speaker 1: don't want to hear me butcher that my butchering would
Speaker 1: not surprise my college Latin proposals. But the way, anyway, Newton,
Speaker 1: he's amazing.
Speaker 4: I forget how it goes, but I'm fairly certain that
Speaker 4: it's like Galileo Newton and Stephen Hawking all have like
Speaker 4: the same birthday or same death day or overlaps it.
Speaker 2: To them.
Speaker 4: Either way, Newton, I'm telling you more than just an alchemist.
Speaker 4: That guy, he was amazing.
Speaker 2: Most people are like, oh, a little bit, kind of weird,
Speaker 2: kind of quiet, stuck to himself. But what he did
Speaker 2: with light and gravity, I'm telling.
Speaker 1: Incredible, incredible. So there he is later in life, leading
Speaker 1: the efforts of the Royal Mint to enter the modern age.
Speaker 1: He done the job.
Speaker 2: I bet he did the challenges.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'll except for one part. The warden was
Speaker 1: responsible for both the capturing and prosecuting of counterfeitters.
Speaker 2: Oh he was the UK Secret Service.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was not his jam.
Speaker 2: He's like, I'm not into this.
Speaker 1: He that part of the job was beneath him. I bet,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to argue with that. Isaac Newton
Speaker 1: bounty hunter. So it was in March that he stopped
Speaker 1: by the Mint to assess operations. A few months later,
Speaker 1: throw a punch.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think so. I don't. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think he had soft hands, very.
Speaker 2: Soft hands, like like fruit, so soft.
Speaker 1: We could bruise them. So end of July he catches
Speaker 1: his first cases. Ward okay, a set of dies had
Speaker 1: been stolen from the Mint, Sarah, did you steal this?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I sold them. I didn't steal them.
Speaker 1: Newton's told, like, you got to crack the case.
Speaker 2: Really, you asked the science. You're so good with efficiency.
Speaker 1: Can you ask the scientist to do something and the
Speaker 1: means will be scientific? Totally? So he went to work
Speaker 1: collecting data, nice number crunching. He went to Newgate Prison,
Speaker 1: made an offer to the people on death row. You
Speaker 1: tell me what you know, and I'll get you a
Speaker 1: stay of execution.
Speaker 2: That's smart.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 1: Then he goes under so it's efficient exactly. He's like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to mess around like you're dying soon,
Speaker 1: so what do you know? Right, he goes undercover. He
Speaker 1: puts on a bad boy costume.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, like I'm undercover Newton.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm imagining a costume that like the dude who
Speaker 1: played Huck on Scandal war for like how he looked
Speaker 1: before he joined.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the super Afroeddy k Unbomber, Rip van Winkle.
Speaker 1: Totally. Okay, that's how I imagine Sir Isaac Newton going around.
Speaker 1: He goes around all these like dives and dens of inequity,
Speaker 1: kidding where the criminals drink and corrouse, and he chats
Speaker 1: up the crowd and gets more intel. Are you he
Speaker 1: went undercover?
Speaker 2: Like mister like talking to people? Is out there having
Speaker 2: to chat it up and like divy bars like so,
Speaker 2: uh do you see the Ruggers game? So fellow bad person, yeah,
Speaker 2: do you also like to throw the die?
Speaker 1: So he just adds all that to his data set, right,
Speaker 1: He just like goes home, amazing, pulls out his excels.
Speaker 2: And then going on with the data.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In his quest. He also at one point he
Speaker 1: interviewed William what Yeah, And William took the opportunity to
Speaker 1: rail against the mint and he went on and on
Speaker 1: about how incompetent everyone was.
Speaker 2: Did he interviewed as a suspector as an.
Speaker 1: Expert, as like an expert, and he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: such a crappy operation over there. So it just like
Speaker 1: rolls his eyes and ignores him. He's like, okay, William
Speaker 1: child loser and so Newton like he gathers all this
Speaker 1: intel and it starts paying off. It would eventually lead
Speaker 1: him to William, just just not yet. So as he
Speaker 1: put together the Stuart Restoration period version of a corkboard
Speaker 1: with pins and red thread, he developed a picture of
Speaker 1: this large counterfeiting operation and so he had names and
Speaker 1: locations and the whatnot.
Speaker 2: He invents a camera we could put photos.
Speaker 1: Like photo realistic draw and.
Speaker 2: See what he's done.
Speaker 1: He needed to conduct cross examinations of the suspects and
Speaker 1: like serious interviews for these witnesses. So he goes out
Speaker 1: and he becomes a justice of the peace. Are you
Speaker 1: like he gets official? Wow, He's yeah, and in the
Speaker 1: process he successfully prosecuted twenty eight criminals that were involved
Speaker 1: in this ring Isaac Newton for the people, dude, I'm
Speaker 1: telling you. Like so he's still he hadn't been able
Speaker 1: to connect everything to the mastermind behind the operation, Like
Speaker 1: who was that? Yeah, and like so what's William the
Speaker 1: mastermind doing? He's just running his mouth.
Speaker 2: So he's not afraid of Newton. He's got to know
Speaker 2: that he's on his case a little right kind of.
Speaker 1: But like, okay, no one listens to his rants about
Speaker 1: incompetence at the Mint. So he starts saying that the
Speaker 1: die theft was an inside job, and he said that
Speaker 1: the chief engraver at the Mint had sold the missing
Speaker 1: dies to a fellow by the name of mister Chandler. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's like mister Chandler, you say, William William knew him.
Speaker 1: He knew him well because he was him. That was
Speaker 1: his alias.
Speaker 2: John Baron.
Speaker 1: He's totally went around sold it to John Baron. It's
Speaker 1: totally legal, totally cool. In sixteen ninety seven, William goes
Speaker 1: to the House of Commons, and not to the House
Speaker 1: of Common the.
Speaker 2: Rapper, but the House of Commons in Chicago.
Speaker 1: No, and he accuses the Mint of this inside job. Okay,
Speaker 1: Like so he's not just like the Whisper campaign. He
Speaker 1: elevates it. He goes right in there and this proof.
Speaker 1: He brings one of the coins that he himself had minted,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't say that I minted them. He's like,
Speaker 1: you know it's that no good, mister Chandler.
Speaker 2: This is on the streets.
Speaker 1: Mister Chandler keeps getting away. He's a handsome guy.
Speaker 2: By the way, charming man, beautiful.
Speaker 1: Dancer brings out the coin, gasps ring out.
Speaker 2: I like to see him coming. I like to see
Speaker 2: him going. I love the guy.
Speaker 1: They're like, this man has cracked the case that Newton
Speaker 1: could not. William's like, look, I just need to get
Speaker 1: into the mint and fix the dies. Like I'll make
Speaker 1: the impressions deeper. That would fix everything. So the house
Speaker 1: they go to Newton. They're like, you have to let
Speaker 1: William access the mint. He'll get to the bottom.
Speaker 2: Newton said, no, I just got this running.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: He was like, legally I can't, because he had taken
Speaker 1: an oath to forbid outsiders from having access to the
Speaker 1: tools in the mint. He's like, I'm good with my word.
Speaker 1: I can't go back on an oath. He also said
Speaker 1: that William's thing about making the impressions deeper was total bulk,
Speaker 1: and like they're like, I don't know, it sounds like
Speaker 1: it's pretty logical. He's like, hold up. He does a
Speaker 1: demonstration for them, and it's obvious that Newton's.
Speaker 2: Right, He's got more patients than they.
Speaker 1: So the House of Comments is like, okay, yeah, never mind,
Speaker 1: as you were.
Speaker 2: Brilliant.
Speaker 1: Frustrated William, he goes back to his old ways. He
Speaker 1: tries to set up a counterfeiting operation in Surrey, and
Speaker 1: that fell apart when everyone else got bus did. He
Speaker 1: tried to fire up another Jacobite conspiracy and he took
Speaker 1: that ruse to court. Newton had his number. He had
Speaker 1: finally pieced everything together, and he determined it was William
Speaker 1: that he needed to catch. Like he's at the top
Speaker 1: of the pyramids, so he keeps his eye on William.
Speaker 1: Newton had all the other pieces of the counterfeiting operation
Speaker 1: in place, had arrested and convicted pretty much all the
Speaker 1: other players in this except for William Parliament. Newton sees William,
Speaker 1: like this is his chance. William, what is he doing
Speaker 1: just swanning around Parliament. Who knows. So Newton has William
Speaker 1: arrested for that Surrey counterfeiting operation Parliament, Yeah, and sent
Speaker 1: to Newgate Prison. And the problem is that William still
Speaker 1: had connections, so there were those in power who bought
Speaker 1: his act and there were those who could be bought.
Speaker 1: William had someone else pay off witnesses for him and
Speaker 1: like telling him to scram up to Scotland, like run
Speaker 1: up to Scotland. The charges are drop, Williams released. So
Speaker 1: but William needs money because like all of his operations
Speaker 1: are shut down, he had to spend a lot of
Speaker 1: money getting out of the jam with So he goes
Speaker 1: back to accusing the Royal Mint of Malfeasan's contents. So
Speaker 1: then he goes back to Parliament and he's like launch
Speaker 1: an investigation. He said that he'd been arrested and imprisoned
Speaker 1: because he knew too much. They're trying to shut him up.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, flips.
Speaker 1: Newton gets called in front of Parliament and is made
Speaker 1: to answer for these accusations.
Speaker 2: Why are you deep state muses?
Speaker 1: Right? So they of course believe Newton and William's claims
Speaker 1: are dismissed, but the whole affair only served to make
Speaker 1: Newton white hot with rage. Like he's like me, now
Speaker 1: he's just perpetually angry. So Newton, he's now on this
Speaker 1: mission to destroy William Good He's like, that's it. He
Speaker 1: goes out, he interviews every associate of Williams that he
Speaker 1: could find, and they're all up against Syria charges. Don't
Speaker 1: forget counterfeiting his treason. You can get hanged. The thing is,
Speaker 1: that's why there were so few convictions, because juries didn't
Speaker 1: want to take a life for something like that. So
Speaker 1: like guilty verdicts were few and far between.
Speaker 2: They just let them languish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they just be like, well no, they just let
Speaker 1: him off and just don't do it again.
Speaker 2: I was kind of like, oh, I didn't know he
Speaker 2: was still in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No.
Speaker 1: So Newton he wasn't going for a high conviction rate
Speaker 1: with these criminal associates. He wanted to gather an insane
Speaker 1: amount of charges against William, just rack them all up
Speaker 1: until a jury would have no choice but to convict.
Speaker 1: So there was there had to be something in all
Speaker 1: that he would have done that would come back as guilty.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't just put before the one charge
Speaker 1: and have that risk. Newton dedicated his life at this
Speaker 1: point to the pursuit. He's determined to take him down.
Speaker 2: He set aside all math, all physics, everything, forget gravity.
Speaker 2: He gets taken this guy down.
Speaker 1: One hundred and forty witness statements, he gathered troves of evidence,
Speaker 1: and then he waited and he knew that William was
Speaker 1: going to mess up. He's going to step out of line,
Speaker 1: and that's when Newton's going to strike. In sixteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: William dun goofed. So he gets this new scheme going.
Speaker 1: He's forging malt lottery tickets. So the malt lottery was
Speaker 1: this like early English state lottery, and the benefits were
Speaker 1: going to be paid out of excise duties on malt.
Speaker 1: And the government like they came up with this because
Speaker 1: the nine years of War was not going well. Coin
Speaker 1: supplies dweling economic crisis for.
Speaker 2: Our latest bad joys they had a lot.
Speaker 1: Of which was a disaster. By the I'm sure it
Speaker 1: wasn't whole other story. I mean, like the tickets, they
Speaker 1: tried to use them as legal tender after the lotto.
Speaker 2: Anyway, so selling children for these tickets.
Speaker 1: So William he here's about the Malt lottery, and he
Speaker 1: engraved a copper plate of tickets for it, and he
Speaker 1: thought he'd get away with it and like hide the plates,
Speaker 1: but he got busted coming from two different sides. So
Speaker 1: another counterfeiter ratted him out to the office of Charles Talbot,
Speaker 1: first Duke of Shrewsbury, Secretary of State. That's the same
Speaker 1: guy that William had tried to blackmail the year before,
Speaker 1: so he's especially excited to get At the same time,
Speaker 1: a pawnbroker to whom William had sold a ticket got
Speaker 1: busted with the faky and he.
Speaker 2: Rats with it where I got it? Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: March third, sixteen ninety nine, William's case goes to trial.
Speaker 1: Newton figured out a way to get a very specific judge,
Speaker 1: assigned Judge Silathiel Lovel. What yeah s A L A
Speaker 1: T H I E L Silathiel Lovel interesting a hanging
Speaker 1: judge like known known to just like everyone's guilty, everyone's
Speaker 1: hanging old fat Yeah, do mess with them. So I
Speaker 1: told you Newton wants to die of course. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: William rope too. Yeah. William thought the whole thing was
Speaker 1: just about the lot of tickets, like no big deal,
Speaker 1: and then Newton said, welcome to the show, son like
Speaker 1: brings him in the court. He proceeds to bring out
Speaker 1: witness after witness after witness to testify to crimes committed
Speaker 1: by William. He brings out all these former associates, all
Speaker 1: the ones that he's like has you know, they're basically
Speaker 1: they're they're cooperating with the state.
Speaker 2: He brings out everybody but senior Dildo.
Speaker 1: Well, then he brings out all these widows of guys
Speaker 1: that William had double crossed and who'd been said to hang.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and so they're like, all these women are
Speaker 1: just lining up telling these.
Speaker 2: They got notes and everything, like I can give you
Speaker 2: the documentation.
Speaker 1: William's freaking out right, he gets desperate. First he starts
Speaker 1: acting like he's mentally ill and then mentally incompetent, like
Speaker 1: just drooling. Then he says that absolutely everyone's lying, every
Speaker 1: last one, right, and then his last move was just
Speaker 1: to beg so he said if they found him guilty, please,
Speaker 1: Well they're like, if you find me guilty, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be sentenced to death. And that means you're basically
Speaker 1: murdering me. So you're a murderer, now, can you live
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 5: I save you.
Speaker 1: The judge and the jury shrugged and we're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could be a murderer the rope. I can live
Speaker 1: with that. So, after like no real deliberation at all,
Speaker 1: william Is fund guilty. Was like yeah, I mean they
Speaker 1: look over at all the widows and they're like all right.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: Williams found guilty of high treason, sentenced to death by hanging.
Speaker 1: Just a couple of weeks later, he's like awaiting his
Speaker 1: fate and he's trying everything. He writes to Isaac Newton,
Speaker 1: he said, quote, oh, dear sir, nobody can save me
Speaker 1: but you. I shall be murdered unless you save me. Oh,
Speaker 1: I hope God will move your heart with mercy and
Speaker 1: pity to do this thing for me. Newton, the cold
Speaker 1: blooded g that he has been forced to become through
Speaker 1: this gig, didn't answer him.
Speaker 2: That's his move.
Speaker 1: Yeah, William told anyone who would listen that he was framed.
Speaker 1: So now he's going on that tack. They send a
Speaker 1: priest out to read him his last He sends the
Speaker 1: guy away like I wouldn't have wasted that chance, brother,
Speaker 1: I would have had that chat. So he goes when
Speaker 1: he goes to the gallows of Tyburn Tree in London.
Speaker 1: He yells out to the crowd that he was about
Speaker 1: to be quote murdered under pretense of law.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we all agree on that one.
Speaker 1: And he was yeah, and that that was curtains for him.
Speaker 4: So wait, the Tyburn Tree was an actual tree, like
Speaker 4: that was their old hanging tree he turned into like
Speaker 4: the place of justice, this wide branch tree being hanged
Speaker 4: like three four at a.
Speaker 1: Time, right, exactly, that's wild. So the Great Recoinage was
Speaker 1: completed later that year, and with that and William out
Speaker 1: of his way, Newton focused more of his time on science.
Speaker 1: Seventeen oh four, he published Optics, foundational text on the
Speaker 1: nature and behavior of light. He worked for the Mint
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life.
Speaker 4: Whoa, because optics is it's probably my favorite thing he does.
Speaker 4: And I was like, wait, I know that that happens
Speaker 4: in seventeen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he wrote, he's a size Yeah, he's just all.
Speaker 4: That work asides. If he could deal with all this,
Speaker 4: go be undercover Newton. And then he gets back He's like, okay,
Speaker 4: now about the sun.
Speaker 1: I'm ready. Yeah, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2: I love Undercovered Newton.
Speaker 4: Oh, I want to see Newton in a bar trying
Speaker 4: to turn to someone savory character back from the colonies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, when was the last time you stabbed
Speaker 1: a guy?
Speaker 2: I did like four hours ago. Nice cud piece, buddy,
Speaker 2: So what's yours on Elizabeth?
Speaker 1: My ridiculous takeaway is that I, you know, just out
Speaker 1: of principle, and it's my own personal philosophy. I'm not
Speaker 1: a supporter of the death penalty, but I'm not sad.
Speaker 1: It's terrible the number of people that he's set up
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 4: If you think of that as murder, like knowing that
Speaker 4: he knew that they were inno center that he was
Speaker 4: not innocent, but that he was basically fingering them for
Speaker 4: the guilt, then he basically, yeah, murked a bunch of people.
Speaker 4: So yeah, he's not just a counterfeiter. He's a multiple figure.
Speaker 4: Not serial murder. I don't want to say that, but
Speaker 4: it was a multiple murder.
Speaker 1: I just when you when I start reading about him,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, this is kind of funny, and then
Speaker 1: you're just like, he's horrible. He's a horrible human being.
Speaker 1: He doesn't deserve one. But Newton led a bad ass. Uh,
Speaker 1: Daves after that, I think I need a talk back.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, did you do Seper?
Speaker 3: I love you. I'm behind on episodes, but I just
Speaker 3: listened to the furry episode. Zaren. You can get a
Speaker 3: tail also ears, but a tail that attaches to your
Speaker 3: belt instead of other ways. I know this because I
Speaker 3: have a fox ear and tail set that I got
Speaker 3: from Etsy for Spirit Animal Night at Adult Summer Camp,
Speaker 3: which is a whole other story, but it comes in
Speaker 3: handy if you forget that, you have a costume party
Speaker 3: to go to.
Speaker 4: Dude, I'm getting to tell Elizabeth, you're gonna look at me.
Speaker 4: You're gonna laugh on a show up here to record.
Speaker 4: I got the ears, I got my nose, my tail on,
Speaker 4: got some furry slippers.
Speaker 1: No, you know, it's the summer of dark Elizabeth and
Speaker 1: yet all, if you all, if you get your giggles
Speaker 1: at it.
Speaker 2: Show up here in a fur bikini. I'm gonna go
Speaker 2: with a tale. You're right, how is that attached?
Speaker 1: Just don't come with a tin watch. That's it for today.
Speaker 1: You can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com.
Speaker 1: We're also at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com,
Speaker 1: Leave It Talkback, most importantly on the iHeart app, which
Speaker 1: is free to download reach Out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted
Speaker 1: by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette, produced and edited by
Speaker 1: Mintmaster Dave Cousten, starring Annals Rutger as Judith. Research is
Speaker 1: by Dildo watchdealers Marissa Brown and Andre Song Sharpened Tear.
Speaker 1: The theme song is by Birmingham Nail Salon owner Thomas
Speaker 1: Lee and costume Friendly Criminal Dive Bar proprietor Travis Dutton.
Speaker 1: Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair
Speaker 1: and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are
Speaker 1: Malt Lottery Scapegoat Ben Bolan and Chancellor of the ex
Speaker 1: Checkerboard Van's Noel Brown.
Speaker 3: Dis Crime Say It One More Times Cry.
Speaker 4: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four More Podcasts.
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