Speaker 1: Heart originals.
Speaker 2: This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 3: Isaac Newton had put dozens of people in the dock
Speaker 3: the defendant stand, but now he was sitting there himself.
Speaker 3: Metaphorically speaking, he was accused of trying to frame an innocent,
Speaker 3: law abiding man, a man who'd long been on the
Speaker 3: side of justice and the new Monarchy, who'd stood as
Speaker 3: witness against confirmed Jacobite traders, who'd been so helpful with
Speaker 3: the Bank of England's fraudulent notes, A man who'd blown
Speaker 3: the whistle on the minse corruption, but was now being
Speaker 3: repaid for that bravery with stints and Newgate jail and
Speaker 3: worse death threats. That, at least was the case that
Speaker 3: William Challoner had cooked up against doctor Isaac Newton. In
Speaker 3: late October of sixteen ninety seven, Newton's case against Challoner
Speaker 3: was dismissed before it could even come to trial.
Speaker 2: But Challner had.
Speaker 3: Already spent seven weeks in filthy Newgate. He felt he
Speaker 3: was entitled to something, an acknowledgment that he'd been wronged,
Speaker 3: maybe even some compensation. In February sixteen ninety eight, Challener
Speaker 3: took his case to the Court of Public Opinion. He
Speaker 3: wrote a letter to Parliament a letter that he also
Speaker 3: had made into pamphlets for public distribution.
Speaker 4: Your petitioner did, in the last sessions of Parliament discover
Speaker 4: several abuses committed in the Mint, and showed by what
Speaker 4: methods false money was coined. Then some of the Mint
Speaker 4: threatened to prosecute me and take away my life before
Speaker 4: the next session of Parliament, telling me that this Honorable
Speaker 4: House had no power to meddle with the affairs of
Speaker 4: the Mint. This committee promised your Petitioner that I should
Speaker 4: suffer no damage for these discoveries about the Mint. Yet
Speaker 4: they committed me to Newgate and kept me in irons
Speaker 4: for seven weeks, alleging that I had abused a Mint
Speaker 4: in Parliament, and they did falsely and illegally prefer a
Speaker 4: bill of indictment against me, but could bring no evidence.
Speaker 4: I am utterly ruined by my endeavors to serve the
Speaker 4: King and Kingdom, and by my discoveries against the Mint.
Speaker 4: To this Honorable House, I most humbly plead that this
Speaker 4: Honorable House will consider my great sufferings and ruined condition
Speaker 4: as being incapable of providing for myself and family by
Speaker 4: what I intended for the service of the public, and
Speaker 4: grant me such redress as shall seem best in your honors,
Speaker 4: great wisdom and justice.
Speaker 3: Challoner's accusations meant yet another investigation. This time it was
Speaker 3: Warden Isaac Newton at the center of it. Newton was
Speaker 3: forced to defend himself to a committee of senior government officials.
Speaker 5: Mister Challoner before a committee of the last Sessions of Parliament,
Speaker 5: labored to accuse and vilify the Mint, and prove himself
Speaker 5: a more skillful coiner than they, that he might be
Speaker 5: made their supervisor, and then supply Thomas Holloway with tools
Speaker 5: out of the tower to counter it his own milled money,
Speaker 5: which he then concealed from that honorable committee, boastink secretly
Speaker 5: that he would fund the Parliament as he had done
Speaker 5: the King and back before.
Speaker 3: Challoner was a liar and a counterfeiter, and it was
Speaker 3: for that, and not quote offending the Mint, that he
Speaker 3: was being prosecuted.
Speaker 5: If therefore he be ruined, it's by his endeavoring not
Speaker 5: to say of the King and Government as he pretends,
Speaker 5: but to coin false money. And if he would but
Speaker 5: let the money and government alone and return to his
Speaker 5: trade of japanning, he is not so far ruined that
Speaker 5: he may still live as well as he did seven
Speaker 5: years ago when he left off that trade and raised
Speaker 5: himself by coining.
Speaker 3: The committee believed Newton, it was, after all, stacked with
Speaker 3: a few of his maids, to be honest, and they
Speaker 3: dismissed Shalloner.
Speaker 2: But Newton was pissed.
Speaker 3: Newton is not a man to suffer insult lightly, and
Speaker 3: he most certainly felt insulted. And if we know anything
Speaker 3: about Newton, it's that he does not forgive and forget
Speaker 3: at all. For iHeartRadio, I'm Linda Rodriguez, McRobbie, and this
Speaker 3: is Newton's Law and I Heeart Original podcast episode seven,
Speaker 3: Funny Money.
Speaker 6: It's more.
Speaker 7: You are making you.
Speaker 2: Act one the Malt tickets.
Speaker 3: Jallaner's attempt to publicly discredit Isaac Newton and the Mint
Speaker 3: it was more or less a hail Mary. He had
Speaker 3: to know that they weren't giving out fistfuls of cash
Speaker 3: for wrongful imprisonment. That wasn't a thing back then. But
Speaker 3: he was desperate.
Speaker 2: When Challeener had gotten out of Newgate in the autumn
Speaker 2: of sixteen ninety seven, he was broke.
Speaker 3: While he'd been in Newgate, he not only had to
Speaker 3: pay off the witnesses who would have testified against him
Speaker 3: and get Holloway and his family plus made out of
Speaker 3: the country, but he also had to pay for everyday expenses,
Speaker 3: food and bedding. Newgate wardens also charged for every visitor
Speaker 3: who came in. So yeah, Challeener had spent pretty much
Speaker 3: every penny he had to keep afloat.
Speaker 2: Challener needed money.
Speaker 3: Big time, and as a lifelong career criminal, he really
Speaker 3: only knew a few ways of getting it. Challener first
Speaker 3: tried his hand at making some crude coins shillings over
Speaker 3: the fire.
Speaker 2: In his flat.
Speaker 3: He was living in a rented room above a pub
Speaker 3: near Covent Garden, which was then a noisy, formerly posh
Speaker 3: market district that was home to gambling dens and brothels.
Speaker 3: That big fancy house in nice Bridge that was long
Speaker 3: gone probably sold all of his silver plates and his
Speaker 3: gents clothing by now too, But not even as mates
Speaker 3: would try to pass his poorly made coins into the market.
Speaker 3: So Challener did some thinking making coins. Making good coins
Speaker 3: at the quality he had been producing took raw materials.
Speaker 3: It took well money to make money, even when your
Speaker 3: scam is literally making money. But then Challoner remembered the
Speaker 3: success that he'd had with those banknotes. By now, counterfeiting
Speaker 3: Bank of England notes had been bumped up to a
Speaker 3: treasonous offence, meaning you could hang for it. So trying
Speaker 3: that again was probably not a good idea. But there
Speaker 3: was another monetary innovation happening, and this one was tailor
Speaker 3: made for Challeener, largely because it was bonkers and utterly chaotic. Okay,
Speaker 3: so bear with me. Thomas Neil, you may remember as
Speaker 3: the feckless master of the mint.
Speaker 6: This recoinage is not work well atol. It must be
Speaker 6: somebody else's vault.
Speaker 3: He was a man who never turned down a chance
Speaker 3: to gamble with someone else's money. In sixteen ninety four,
Speaker 3: Neil set up a lottery to bring in some revenue
Speaker 3: for the government, called and this was a real thing,
Speaker 3: even though it sounds like a scratch off ticket, the
Speaker 3: Million Adventure. Each ten pound ticket had a chance of
Speaker 3: winning up to one thousand pounds, but when it came
Speaker 3: time to pay the winners, the treasury couldn't oops. So
Speaker 3: that worked out terribly, So terribly in fact, that Neil
Speaker 3: thought let's try it again, probably because he personally made
Speaker 3: a bunch of money out of the adventure, Let's be honest.
Speaker 3: In sixteen ninety seven, with angry adventure ticket holders still
Speaker 3: waiting to be paid, Neil set up the Malt lottery.
Speaker 2: And the Treasury led him seriously.
Speaker 3: Who thought it was a good idea to let Neil
Speaker 3: do literally anything at this point? But the Malt lottery
Speaker 3: was even weirder than the million Adventure. Here's Tom Levinson,
Speaker 3: author of Newton and the Counterfeiter, to explain.
Speaker 8: It was several things at once. First of all, it
Speaker 8: was basically an annuity product. People would buy it and
Speaker 8: they would be promised a given rate of interest for
Speaker 8: some number of years. They wouldn't get their principle back,
Speaker 8: but they'd get this return for a long time. And
Speaker 8: that interest payment was a secured payment, and it was
Speaker 8: secured on a specific source of revenue tax on malt,
Speaker 8: which is effectively a tax on beer. So that's, you know,
Speaker 8: in the English context, that's a pretty secure revenue stream.
Speaker 8: It was also an actual, just plane ordinary lottery ticket.
Speaker 8: Every one of these small lottery tickets that were sold
Speaker 8: carried entry into a drawing for significant cash prizes, think
Speaker 8: up to one thousand pounds. I think one thousand pounds
Speaker 8: is Newton's annual salary as warden to the Mint was
Speaker 8: four hundred quid, so one thousand pounds is a lot
Speaker 8: of money.
Speaker 3: The Treasury issued one hundred and forty thousand of these
Speaker 3: ten pound malt lottery tickets. Just as with the adventure tickets,
Speaker 3: people group together to purchase shares in them, So again
Speaker 3: there's a bit of an equity market going something that
Speaker 3: had already been a part of the cultural landscape for
Speaker 3: decades now.
Speaker 2: So the mall lottery.
Speaker 3: Tickets were like a long term savings bond, and they
Speaker 3: were also a gambling instrument. But the mall lottery tickets
Speaker 3: had an extra feature, one that was pretty unusual.
Speaker 8: There was a third thing that they could do. It
Speaker 8: turned out that this particular lottery did not sell very well,
Speaker 8: so in order to try and get as much use
Speaker 8: out of having decided to issue these things. Problem is
Speaker 8: that these could be legal tender, or at least if
Speaker 8: not legal tender precisely, they could be treated as money.
Speaker 8: So for captive audiences like you know, sailors in the
Speaker 8: Royal Navy, those guys were paid in lottery tickets. All
Speaker 8: of a sudden you have this one piece of paper
Speaker 8: that is at least three things at once. It's paper money,
Speaker 8: it's a gambling device, it's a completely speculative device, and
Speaker 8: it's a stream of income.
Speaker 3: And it was a kind of continuation of the Bank
Speaker 3: of England's running cash notes, just on a much much
Speaker 3: larger scale. The Bank of England notes were issued in
Speaker 3: one hundred pounds denominations, huge amount of money for a
Speaker 3: lot of people.
Speaker 2: But the Malt tickets were.
Speaker 3: Only ten pounds, and there were potentially going to be
Speaker 3: a lot more of them in circulation.
Speaker 8: And you know what was great about this is as money,
Speaker 8: they had a face value ten pounds. You knew what
Speaker 8: you were getting when you got one, or if you
Speaker 8: were a challenger, if you made one.
Speaker 3: Challener cotton down pretty quickly. That the best thing about
Speaker 3: this Malt lottery was that it was going to be
Speaker 3: so so easy to exploit.
Speaker 8: The Great Battle between Isaac Newton and William Challoner Ross
Speaker 8: sixteen ninety six and sixteen ninety seven. By the end
Speaker 8: of it, Challenger was really quite in desperate stakes. But
Speaker 8: Challoner had one more great scheme in him.
Speaker 3: The problem was again money, though setting up a counterfeit
Speaker 3: lottery ticket operation was certainly less costly than trying to
Speaker 3: set up a fake mint. It still took supplies, the
Speaker 3: right paper, copper for creating the engraved plates, special ink.
Speaker 3: He needed a backer, someone who'd helped finance this operation
Speaker 3: for a cut of the profits. Challenger tapped into his
Speaker 3: dwindling network of contacts. He didn't have many people left
Speaker 3: who weren't in jail, or who he hadn't double crossed,
Speaker 3: or who hadn't tried to double cross him. He came
Speaker 3: up with a man called Thomas Carter. Carter was a
Speaker 3: mate from Challoner's early days as a coiner back during
Speaker 3: his first successful run in sixteen ninety two. In June
Speaker 3: sixteen ninety eight, asked Carter to procure him a malt ticket.
Speaker 7: Procure me one of those so called malt tickets.
Speaker 6: With what money, sir, I have but one chilling.
Speaker 2: Again, these weren't cheap.
Speaker 3: Ten pounds was more than a skilled tradesman earned in
Speaker 3: three months of work.
Speaker 2: So Carter was.
Speaker 3: Going to have to find someone who had enough capital
Speaker 3: to fund the scheme.
Speaker 7: Perhaps you can find a man of adequate means who
Speaker 7: desires to increase his fortune. Well, I suppose, But whatever
Speaker 7: you do keep my nime out of it.
Speaker 3: Carter came up with a man called David Davis, which
Speaker 3: sounds like a made up name, but not more so
Speaker 3: than the unlucky Daniel Decoiner, who in sixteen eighty four
Speaker 3: was executed for coining. Carter met Davis on Piccadilly, then
Speaker 3: a major thoroughfare through Westminster.
Speaker 9: Please do explain this secretive and most urgent business.
Speaker 6: I am acquainted with a man which could engrave very
Speaker 6: dexterously and had a strong inclination to grave a plate
Speaker 6: for malt tickets. The copper is not yet bought, and
Speaker 6: for my own part I have not been master of
Speaker 6: one shilling this month, and my friend is very indigent. Besides,
Speaker 6: this business requires a good stock for lodgings, provisions and
Speaker 6: other necessities to complete the work. You are not to
Speaker 6: see my workman all shall he be concerned with you.
Speaker 6: But if you confide in me, the work shall go
Speaker 6: on with all speed.
Speaker 9: Suppose that your friend, after a great deal of money
Speaker 9: is laid out and expended, cannot perform the plate. It's
Speaker 9: a very curious thing, and no person that I ever
Speaker 9: heard of did understands taking the reverse of a fine
Speaker 9: bill upon copper.
Speaker 6: Besides, Challoner ask no questions, Bud. If you knew who
Speaker 6: my friend was, now he was as great a master
Speaker 6: as Challoner.
Speaker 3: Davis agreed to back the enterprise. He provided three legitimate
Speaker 3: malt tickets and a bit of working money to Carter,
Speaker 3: who then passed them on to Challoner. It took Challoner
Speaker 3: the better part of two weeks to engrave the copper plates,
Speaker 3: laboriously etching the ticket in reverse, hunched over a tabletop
Speaker 3: in his rented lodgings above the Golden Lion in.
Speaker 2: Wilde Street near kevent Garden.
Speaker 3: Carter kept Davis in the loop, updating him on progress
Speaker 3: almost daily. When the plates were ready, Chaloner did a
Speaker 3: test run. Six score that's one hundred and twenty malt
Speaker 3: lottery tickets, so finely wrought as to be indistinguishable from
Speaker 3: the real thing. Challoner and Carter sold Davis about one
Speaker 3: hundred tickets, the first of many more they promised. Challoner
Speaker 3: stood to make hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds off
Speaker 3: the scheme. It was like printing money, because it was
Speaker 3: printing money. Easypasy lemon squeeze at two the silver tungued man.
Speaker 3: By the time Davis was handed that big stack of
Speaker 3: mat lottery tickets. He was sure that Challoner was the
Speaker 3: man who'd engraved the plate. But David Davis had a secret,
Speaker 3: a big one. Davis was an undercover agent, and he
Speaker 3: was after Challoner, but he wasn't working for Newton. He
Speaker 3: was working for the Secretary of State, James Vernon. The
Speaker 3: Secretary of State was a cabinet ministerial position, but it
Speaker 3: was just at this moment shifting from being like an
Speaker 3: actual secretary to dealing with bigger domestic and civil issues.
Speaker 3: When Davis made that deal with Carter, it was Vernon's money,
Speaker 3: the State's money, that he paid him with, And when
Speaker 3: Carter brought him news that the plates were finished, Davis
Speaker 3: went straight back to Vernon.
Speaker 9: I addressed myself to the right Honorable Secretary Vernon, and
Speaker 9: did acquaintum that a malt ticket plate was counterfeited, and
Speaker 9: that to prevent the distributions of several false tickets, there
Speaker 9: was a necessity to secure some that were done and
Speaker 9: to subsist the persons that had done them till I
Speaker 9: could obtain the advantage of seizing Challoner and of securing
Speaker 9: the plate.
Speaker 3: Davis and Vernon worked out the next part of their
Speaker 3: plan to catch Challenge.
Speaker 9: I returned to Carter, telling him I had a friend
Speaker 9: that would take two thousand pounds worth of false tickets,
Speaker 9: desiring him to let me have all the counterfeits that
Speaker 9: were taken off the plate, upon which Carter gave me
Speaker 9: a considerable parcel. Having thus secured all which I understood
Speaker 9: were printed.
Speaker 3: Davis and Vernon believed that they had the situation contained.
Speaker 3: They believed that they had all the fake tickets that
Speaker 3: had been printed. Davis's next job was to find those plates,
Speaker 3: but Davis couldn't get a straight answer about where the
Speaker 3: plates were. He proposed that the engraver, actually Challener, print
Speaker 3: as many tickets as the plates could handle, and then
Speaker 3: break the plate in two so that no one could
Speaker 3: copy his work. Challener didn't know, obviously that Davis wanted
Speaker 3: to use the broken plates as evidence against him, but
Speaker 3: Carter kept putting him off, and Vernon was getting pissed.
Speaker 9: The right Honorable Secretary Vernon seemed very much dissatisfied at
Speaker 9: these delays, which I hoped to bring to a period
Speaker 9: every day.
Speaker 3: And here's where things start to get really complicated. As
Speaker 3: it turns out what was keeping Challeener from printing those
Speaker 3: last tickets was that he was being pursued by Elizabeth Halla.
Speaker 3: That's right, Thomas Holloway's wife and the gang's former utterer.
Speaker 3: Hell hath no fury like a woman shorted out of
Speaker 3: her fair share. When Challoner bribed her husband to light
Speaker 3: out for Scotland. He'd stiffed them, didn't give them what
Speaker 3: he promised. Elizabeth, back from Scotland, was now using what
Speaker 3: she knew to threaten Challoner. She'd turn him over to
Speaker 3: the warden of the Royal Mint if he didn't pay up.
Speaker 3: So Davis waited and waited, and Vernon got more irritated,
Speaker 3: and the whole thing was starting to look like an
Speaker 3: expensive mess, thousands of pounds lost and nothing to show
Speaker 3: for it except some bits of colorful paper.
Speaker 6: At this rate, the nation may be imposed upon. While
Speaker 6: you're talking to.
Speaker 9: Me, I will either find Challoner a printing with the
Speaker 9: plates in a week's time, or otherwise it will be
Speaker 9: in your honest discretion.
Speaker 3: Carter then had more bad news for Davis, because, as
Speaker 3: of the heat Elizabeth was applying, Challoner had stashed the
Speaker 3: plates with a lady friend, a midwife by the name
Speaker 3: of Samson from over Clare Market Way, near Drooling, and
Speaker 3: she'd gone into the country, no idea when she'd be back.
Speaker 3: Things got worse for Davis. He learned that Carter had
Speaker 3: sold some of the fake tickets to someone other than him,
Speaker 3: meaning that there were fake lottery tickets out in the streets,
Speaker 3: precisely the situation that the Secretary of State was trying
Speaker 3: to avoid. Vernon had had enough. He told Davis to
Speaker 3: arrest Carter, and then Blates or no Plates put out
Speaker 3: a reward for the capture of William Challoner, fifty pounds
Speaker 3: of real, actual money. In October sixteen ninety eight, Challoner
Speaker 3: was arrested again and again remanded to Newgate Jail. Disappointingly,
Speaker 3: there was no dramatic scene in the Lord's Justices.
Speaker 2: Isaac Newton didn't get to yell arrest that man down
Speaker 2: a hall.
Speaker 3: In fact, we don't even know how Challoner was found,
Speaker 3: just that a thief taker called Robert Morris became fifty
Speaker 3: pounds richer for bringing him in.
Speaker 2: But at no point.
Speaker 3: During the search for William Challoner did anyone in the
Speaker 3: Secretary of State's office communicate with the mint. I mean,
Speaker 3: why would they This isn't modern policing we're talking about. Technically,
Speaker 3: Challenger's arrest was Secretary of State James Vernon's big catch
Speaker 3: that made Challener his problem. Moreover, the crime of counterfeiting
Speaker 3: the mat lottery tickets was an actuality, not a mint problem,
Speaker 3: because it wasn't coin whose problem, wasn't whoa that was
Speaker 3: an open question.
Speaker 2: Isaac Newton, however, was ready and eager.
Speaker 3: To make it his problem once he found out about
Speaker 3: Challenger's arrest.
Speaker 2: That is, we don't know how he found out.
Speaker 3: It was either through his own agents or through his
Speaker 3: other contacts, but we do know that he was not
Speaker 3: going to let William Challoner wriggle off.
Speaker 2: The hook this time.
Speaker 3: Act three, the case against mister William Challoner.
Speaker 8: The defeat in that first court case really stung Newton.
Speaker 3: That's Tom Levinson, author of Newton and the Counterfeiter.
Speaker 8: From the point that Challeoner gets off that first time,
Speaker 8: Newton really spends a lot of effort tracking Challenger's movements,
Speaker 8: trying to identify the different schemes he's in, trying to
Speaker 8: put the bite on his associates.
Speaker 3: Newton convinced Vernon to let him be the one to
Speaker 3: prosecute Challoner once again.
Speaker 2: However, the evidence was thin.
Speaker 3: Challoner had been smart to ditch the plates when he did,
Speaker 3: and when he was arrested, he didn't have any of
Speaker 3: the counterfeit tickets on him. The best evidence that Newton
Speaker 3: had was Carter's testimony. Carter, who was one of the
Speaker 3: gang who'd actually been caught passing the counterfeit notes. Newton
Speaker 3: realized that while the plates remained at large, convincing a
Speaker 3: jury that Challeener was guilty of that specific crime was
Speaker 3: going to be much more difficult than convincing a jury
Speaker 3: that Challeener was guilty of a whole bunch of counterfeiting
Speaker 3: related crimes.
Speaker 10: But the prosecution, they're the agent who would to devise
Speaker 10: what the charge would be.
Speaker 3: That's legal historian Harry Potter.
Speaker 10: What was neaded to a Javid conviction was to present
Speaker 10: everages of guilt.
Speaker 2: What Newton needed.
Speaker 3: What he was looking for was evidence in the form
Speaker 3: of eyewitnesses, people who would be willing to swear before
Speaker 3: the jury and judge that they saw Challenger counterfeiting.
Speaker 10: Some of the rules of law were not yet established,
Speaker 10: so we didn't really have a presumption.
Speaker 3: Of innuss by modern standards, the evidence of eyewitnesses who
Speaker 3: maybe saw something in the distant past would likely be contestable.
Speaker 3: But this is the late seventeenth century, so as.
Speaker 10: Long as the jury were convinced that they were sufficient
Speaker 10: debutence to convict, they would do so.
Speaker 3: Newton decided to just find as many people as possible
Speaker 3: willing to testify that they had seen Challoner doing something anything,
Speaker 3: at some point, So he started in on everyone who'd
Speaker 3: ever been associated with Challoner.
Speaker 1: Oh, Missus Matthews's maid Mary Ball. In June or July
Speaker 1: last mister Challoner and mister Davis came to my mistress's lodgings,
Speaker 1: and mister Challoner locked himself in a room upstairs.
Speaker 2: Or I was curious, so well through the keol I.
Speaker 1: Saw mister Challoner sitting with his back to me and
Speaker 1: his face towards the window. As he turned his head aside,
Speaker 1: I could save something very bright lying before him, which
Speaker 1: looked like a plate. I am satisfied it was a
Speaker 1: copper plate. It looked like a thing that was scratched.
Speaker 1: Newton seemed to hit upon a good seam of evidence.
Speaker 1: Ask the wives, ask the servants, ask the people on
Speaker 1: the edges of the operation the people who'd have been involved,
Speaker 1: but not so directly that their participation couldn't be pardoned.
Speaker 2: In exchange for information.
Speaker 3: Ask people named Catherine, evidently because he had like three
Speaker 3: of those.
Speaker 11: I saw that he was making bills, and I told
Speaker 11: him he would come to be hanged for it as
Speaker 11: price was.
Speaker 1: Gave me some of those shillings and said they were dangerous,
Speaker 1: or else you could make them as well as they
Speaker 1: were in the tower. He told me that he was
Speaker 1: to make a one hundred pounds in Dutch money for
Speaker 1: a merchant, and for that purpose he borrowed a room
Speaker 1: off of me to work in.
Speaker 11: I saw Will Challoner often coined French pistoles with stamps
Speaker 11: and a hammer.
Speaker 2: His brother in law Gravina.
Speaker 11: He said that Will used to make the silver blanks
Speaker 11: they used for Guineas.
Speaker 2: Newton was relentless.
Speaker 3: The same fixation that had him sleeping in his kitchen
Speaker 3: lab in Cambridge had him pulling in witness after witness
Speaker 3: in the hopes of men enough damning testimony to finally
Speaker 3: sink Chaloner.
Speaker 11: I keep the subject constantly before me till the first
Speaker 11: dawnings opened slowly, little by little into the full and
Speaker 11: clear light.
Speaker 3: In one ten day stretch in February sixteen ninety nine,
Speaker 3: he took a deposition every single day. It was probably
Speaker 3: more than that, but Newton later had many of his
Speaker 3: depositions burned. The more Newton dug, the more he uncovered
Speaker 3: people like blacksmith Nathaniel Peck, who bought some fake coins
Speaker 3: off of Chaloner back when he'd been calling himself Chandler Chandler.
Speaker 6: Hath several times owned to me that he made those
Speaker 6: pistoles himself. He used to boast how well they were done,
Speaker 6: and that they were better than ever were made, and
Speaker 6: no man in England could do the like besides himself.
Speaker 2: Or Humphrey Hanwell. Thomas Carter's meat from prison.
Speaker 9: I saw Challoner coin French pistols in line in shape,
Speaker 9: saw it with a hammer in stamps.
Speaker 3: John Abbott, who might have solved the mystery of the
Speaker 3: missing tower dies. Challoner, it seems, had gotten them from
Speaker 3: a man inside the mint.
Speaker 6: William Challoner, now prisoner in Newgate, showed me three or
Speaker 6: four blank stamps for guineas.
Speaker 9: Which he said he could get to be struck with
Speaker 9: the tower dies.
Speaker 3: And then there were the Holloways. Thomas Holloway had once
Speaker 3: been Chaloner's right hand man, his protege in the art
Speaker 3: of coining, but that was before Challoner had swindled him
Speaker 3: in that Scotland deal.
Speaker 9: I heard Challoner own that hey struck some of them
Speaker 9: and boast his workmanship, and have seen the guinea dies
Speaker 9: in Challoner's hands.
Speaker 3: His wife Elizabeth, told Newton that she'd seen Challoner making
Speaker 3: fake guineas and pistols down in Egham just a year before,
Speaker 3: and that he definitely bought her husband off. During his
Speaker 3: last day in Newgate, Michael.
Speaker 1: Gillingham came to the set tom Ali to the baltantn
Speaker 1: Inn in Fleet Street and said Challona, who was then
Speaker 1: a prisonery Newgate, had sent him to tell him Challona
Speaker 1: would give Thomas twenty quid if he would not appear
Speaker 1: as a witness against him in the following sessions.
Speaker 3: The portrait of Chalner that emerged from the testimony of
Speaker 3: the witnesses arrayed against him was damning. He routinely boasted
Speaker 3: of his own skill in counterfeiting. He had a recipe
Speaker 3: for a water that could erase the printing on any bill.
Speaker 3: He threatened people who got in his way. He once
Speaker 3: locked a woman in a room and refused to let
Speaker 3: her out until she gilded the number of guineas he
Speaker 3: told her to. He bribed others to get out of jail,
Speaker 3: informed on anyone he could, and he most definitely absolutely
Speaker 3: had been seen counterfeiting a lot, just not the Mault tickets.
Speaker 2: But it didn't matter. All that testimony added up to
Speaker 2: one thing.
Speaker 3: Newton had a case, and this time, as sure as
Speaker 3: that apple rotten or not always falls to the earth, he.
Speaker 2: Was going to get that conviction.
Speaker 3: Coming up on the final episode of Newton's Law.
Speaker 6: When he arrived there, he made very light of the matter,
Speaker 6: bragging he had a trick left yet. But when he
Speaker 6: heard how many witnesses came in against him, he began
Speaker 6: to droop.
Speaker 9: All you that in the condemned hold do lie, prepare you,
Speaker 9: but tomorrow you shall die.
Speaker 3: Newton's Law is a production of iHeartRadio. It's written and
Speaker 3: hosted by me Linda Rodriguez McRobbie. Our senior producer is
Speaker 3: Ryan Murdoch. Our producer is Emily Meronoff. Our executive producer
Speaker 3: is Jason English. Original music by Elise McCoy, with editing
Speaker 3: help from Mary Do Sound design and mixing by Jeremy Thal,
Speaker 3: Research and fact checking by Me and Jocelyn Sears. Voice
Speaker 3: acting by Keith Fleming, Mark McDonald, Robert Jack, Paul Tinto,
Speaker 3: Emma Fulkins and Ruthie Stevens. Special thanks to Tom Levinson
Speaker 3: and Harry Potter. Special thanks to Mangesh Hatikudur and Finaflet Studios.
Speaker 3: Our show logo is designed by Lucy Quintania. Thanks so
Speaker 3: much for listening.
Speaker 9: It's a very curious thing.