Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson Page B

rotating each coin blank over a pair of steel plates. As a Mint moneyer turned a hand crank connected to a toothed cog, the plates engraved an inscription into the rim of each coin—on the larger denominations, the phrase that still figures the edge of the British one-pound coin:
decus et tutamen,
"a decoration and a safeguard." This was the Mint's secret weapon, for edged or "milled" currency could not be clipped without the crime revealing itself in a gouge in the milled rim.
    The final step in the process—striking the coin faces with the appropriate image—was newly mechanized as well. A Mint worker sitting in a pit below floor level would place a coin blank into the striking chamber. Four men pulled on the ropes at either end of a huge capstan, causing its arms to spin and the press to drive two steel dies into the faces of the coin, producing an impression deeper and sharper than a man with a hammer could hope to match. As the dies retracted, the moneyer sitting in the pit would flip the newly struck coin out of the chamber and replace it with a new blank.
    When driven hard, the teams at the presses could produce a coin every two seconds. Even at somewhat slower speeds and with every trick of mechanical advantage brought to bear, however, the machines consumed men. Those at the capstan bars exhausted themselves within fifteen minutes, and losing fingers was reckoned to be an ordinary hazard for those who fed blanks into the striking chambers. Perversely, the brutality was part of the appeal of mechanizing the Mint. If a trained crew found it so draining to produce the new coins, then would-be criminals should find it nearly impossible to copy them. As Pepys approvingly concluded, the new machines yielded a currency that was "freer from clipping or counterfeiting" than ever before. No mere London ne'er-do-well could copy coins "without an engine of the charge and noise that no counterfeit will be at or venture upon."

    Pepys drastically underestimated the ingenuity of England's underworld. William Chaloner, for one, was already comfortable working with hot metal. And in a goldsmith named Patrick Coffee he found one last master, who taught him the essential techniques of counterfeiting over a period of several months, probably extending into early 1691. Neither Coffee nor Chaloner left notes describing exactly what was learned in this final apprenticeship, but surviving trial records of coiners prosecuted at London's criminal court, the Old Bailey, in the late seventeenth century provide a clue.
    Those cases show that it was as important to learn what not to attempt as what to do; inept counterfeiters attempting to exploit the currency crisis supplied the Old Bailey with a constant diet of rapidly dispatched defendants. Perhaps the most spectacular display of incompetence came from an unnamed "inhabitant of the parish of St. Andrews Holbourn," brought to trial accused of copying French coins. His work was astonishingly awful, and he was acquitted, the jury accepting his rather bold argument that the poor quality of his work confirmed that "he had tryed to Coin with Pewter as afore-said for Diversion, or the like, but never was concerned in Coining any manner of Money." Few others tried this defense.
    Mary Corbet was more typical. She faced the court on April 9, 1684, charged with transforming "twelve Pieces of Copper, Tinn, and other false Metals, into the Likeness and Similitude of the currant Coin of this Kingdom, called Queen Elizabeth's Shillings, and twelve other pieces of like counterfeit Metal, into the Likeness, &c. of Queen Elizabeth's Six-Pences." Corbet had taken the prudent course: the pre-1662 hand-hammered money was so debased, as early as 1684, that making facsimiles of the irregular coins presented fewer challenges than trying to mix up a batch of the new, milled coins. Two witnesses testified that Corbet melted "a certain Quantiy of Pewter, Copper, and such like Metals, (as much at a time as