August 18, 2021 • 42 mins
When Isaac Newton leaves his career as a renowned scientist to become the Warden of Royal Mint, he thinks it's going to be an easy gig. But with an economy teetering on the brink of collapse, and a entrepreneurial con man looking to win at all costs, the world's smartest man may be in over his head.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is an I Heart original. On March, the warden
of England's Royal Mint received a letter most merciful Sir,
I am going to be murdered. Perhaps you don't think so,
(00:27):
but it's true. I shall be murdered, and the worst
of all, I will be murdered in the face of
justice unless I am rescued by your merciful hearts. The
letter was an appeal to the warden's conscience. It went
on my offending you has brought this upon me. Nobody
(00:52):
can save me but you. I how God will move
your heart with mercy and pity to do this thing
for me. It was signed You're near murdered, Humble Servant. W. W.
(01:15):
Chaloner was one William Chaloner, a con man who at
one time had been the most successful counterfeit coinmaker London
had ever seen. But now he was awaiting execution at
Newgate Jail, the stinking hell hole of a prison built
into the ancient Roman wall of the city of London.
(01:39):
The warden, whose job it was to track down counterfeiters,
and who had hunted Challenger for years, never bothered to
right back. Two days after he wrote that letter, Chaloner
(02:02):
was dragged from the jail through more than two miles
of London's foul, mud filled streets to the Tyburn Tree.
This was not an actual tree, but rather the name
given to the wooden gallows erected at the site of
the Tyburn Brook that was now Marble Arch in London.
This would have been an open space, a field, and
(02:23):
on hanging days, behaving mass of humans, all clamoring to
watch the bad guys die. Challoner arrived at the gallows filthy,
splattered with mud and whatever else had been thrown at
him along the way. He was terrified, he was angry,
(02:43):
and he was sober. By now, after months of living
in Newgate, he didn't even have enough money to buy
a swallow of gin. In his hands, Chaloner clutched a
sheaf of papers fodder for a pamphlet, declaring that he
was the victim of a frame up. He yelled to
anyone who would listen to he was innocent. I am innocent,
That he was murdered by perjury and in justice and
(03:06):
pretense of law, and by the warden of the mint himself.
It didn't matter. In his last moments, Challenger went quiet.
He mounted the ladder. The cap was placed over his
weeping eyes, and the noose over his head and around
his neck, and as hundreds of people watched, Challenger dangled
(03:30):
and kicked until the blood vessels in his face popped,
until the breath was choked from his lungs. Gravity did
its thing. After his body was pulled down from the scaffold,
(03:50):
he was publicly disemboweled. His head might have ended up
on a spike on the London Bridge. We're not entirely sure,
but that's what happened to the people who were excuted
for counterfeiting. And it was all because of one man,
the doggedly determined, completely ruthless, utterly meticulous Warden of the
(04:11):
Royal Mint. The Warden of the Royal Mint was the
man charged with making the country's coin, the actual physical
silver and gold that fueled England's engine of commerce. The
warden was also charged with protecting it, with keeping it
safe from counterfeiters and clippers. And this warden was very
(04:33):
good at his job, putting dozens of people in jail,
shutting down coining operations left and right, and as in
the case of Mr Challoner, sending counterfeiters to the gallows
without a second thought. So who was this ruthless detective,
this hard bitten crook catcher, totally unmoved by the pleas
(04:54):
of a desperate man. It was Isaac Newton. Us that
Isaac Newton for I Heart Radio. I'm Linda Rodriguez mccrabbie,
and this is Newton's Law and I heart original podcast
(05:20):
you much so, Episode one, The Warden and the con
(05:56):
Man Cool. I'm standing outside the courtyard of the British Library,
just off of Houston Road. Normally this courtyard is full
of people. There's a coffee shop in there, and there's
loads of people usually out sitting on the benches enjoying
(06:19):
some sun on a coffee break in between researching. Now,
right now, because of coronavirus, it's only open to free
book visitors. But just over the wall, I can see
the giant statue of Isaac Newton. Now, this statue, I
must have passed it hundreds of times going to the
library to do research, and I've never really thought about it,
(06:43):
never really noticed it. The statue depicts Newton bent over
in a really rather uncomfortable looking position, and he's got
a compass and he's determining the geometry of the universe.
It's a testament to Newton's scientific yes, but it absolutely
leaves out the other half of his life, the half
(07:06):
of the life that most people don't really know about.
What do you know about Isaac discovered gravity? He was
good in physics, and he invented like the three principles
of gravity. That's much signs, to be honest with me,
(07:28):
very smart guy, smart than me, obviously. Do you know
anything else about the rest of his life? I have
no idea about him as personality. Did you know anything
about me? In his life? After he discovered gravity? Got rich?
(07:50):
Got rich? Well, he was making money, lots of it
literally as warden of the Royal Mint, and he did
get a big salary increase too. But this story is
about more than just Isaac Newton's lucrative second career. Everything
that Newton touched, everything that he was involved in, became
(08:12):
part of the fabric of our modern world, and not
just because we use his calculations every day to keep
satellites in orbit and our smartphones running. His story unfolds
at a time when the structures that we inhabit now
are just being built. We're talking about, and we will
be talking about in this podcast, what actually is money.
(08:33):
We're talking about the origins of print media and its
power to change political discourse and policy, and about the
meaning of criminal justice in a time when there are
courts but no police. But it's still a weird story.
Newton made this big career change after his most consequential
intellectual achievement, but arguably at a time when he still
(08:54):
had more to give. So I started with this question,
why would Isaac Newton leave the cozy confines of academia
and a career of remarkable success to go chase criminals?
(09:17):
Act one an object at rest, I keep the subject
constantly before me untill the first dawnings open, slowly, little
by little, into the full and clear light. Newton had
(09:38):
been in academic since sixteen sixty one, when he first
came to Trinity College at Cambridge University. At the time,
he was an intellectually adventurous nineteen year old fresh of
a Lincolnshire farm. Cambridge University academically did not have a
good reputation during the seventeenth and eighteen centuries. That's Dr
Patricia Farre, Cambridge historian and author of Life After Gravity.
(10:02):
So foreign visitors came and they looked at Oxford and Cambridge,
and they said it's just ridiculous, all the all the
books and drawing moldy and the libraries. A lot of
the professors scarcely gave any lectures of quite a few
of them lived down in London. There weren't any female students,
so the whole community was male. It was a very
(10:22):
sort of close community. Cambridge's limitations didn't bother Newton at first.
Newton was already brilliant. He'd taught himself higher order mathematics
in six months. By sixteen sixty five, he'd already formulated
his famous theory of gravity, although it would be years
before he published it, and he wasn't bothered by the
(10:44):
lack of social activities. If anything, he probably preferred avoiding
women and drinking and other people. Honestly, Nowton was a
bit of a prig. Here's what he wrote to a
fellow student in sixteen sixty one. It is commonly rep
WoT is that you are sick. Truly, I am sorry
for that, but I am much more sorry that you
(11:07):
got your sickness by drinking too much. I earnestly desire
you to first repent of your having been drunk and
then to seek to recover your health. Fun guy. What
Camerid really gave Newton was time to do the one
thing he wanted to do. Study to caught a glass.
(11:29):
Take a plain glass, hold it upside downward over a candle.
Newton had questions, hundreds thousands of questions about everything. Take
such meat as they love as wet, and he explored
those questions of notebooks and sprinkle it were birds in
(11:52):
the manner of the extraction of roots acted powers is
very much alike, especially when the attempts that let me
no ambiguity all fractions. Newton was also fearless when it
came to experimentation. This is a man who stuck a
bodkin basically a large needle into his own eye to
observe changes in his perception of color. He also spent
(12:13):
a bit of time literally staring at the sun. I
saw only the sun before me, so that I could
neither write nor read, but to recover the use of
my eyes, shut myself up in my chamber, made dark
for three days together, and used all means to direct
my imagination from the sun. Ironically, one of his notebook
(12:34):
entries concerns things hurtful for the eyes, garlic onions, leaks,
all the much lettuce, going to sudden aftermat lot wise,
cold air, much sleep after meat fire, much weeping, and
watching Newton's assistant during his later Cambridge years, knew him
(12:56):
as a near recluse, as the original model of the
absent minded but super focused professor. I never knew him
take any recreational pastime, either in riding out to take
the air, walking, bowling, or any other exercise whatever, thinking
all hours lost that were not spent, any studies to
which he kept so close that he seldom left his chamber.
(13:20):
Newton's intellect set him apart. It made it difficult for
him to connect with his peers or anyone else, but
if he was lonely, he didn't let on. At the
age of seven, he'd taken over the Lucaezian Professorship of Mathematics.
These days this is one of the most prestigious professorships
in the world, Like Stephen Hawking, Charles Babbage, and well
(13:45):
Isaac Newton prostigious. He was only the second person to
hold the positions, so it didn't yet have the reputation
that it has now, but still it was a pretty
good gig, not least because it gave him room board
and a hundred twenty pounds a year in exchange for
teaching one course of lectures every three terms, regardless of
(14:06):
whether anyone showed up to hear them. By all reports,
he was an absolutely appalling lecturer. There's a joke that
two undergraduates saw him in the street and they nudged
each other, and one of them said, there goes the
man who lectures to the walls. And what they meant
by that was that that he had to keep a lecture.
It was compulsory, but no students bothered to attend, and
(14:28):
so he just spoke to the empty room when he
wasn't lecturing too empty rooms. Newton, among other things, designed
and crafted his own telescope. This was a major accomplishment
at a time when instruments like that were at the
very bleeding edge of new technology. They were complicated to
(14:51):
make and very valuable, but Newton was impatient. If I'd
have waited for other people to make my tools and things,
I should never have made anything of it. It was
this telescope that, in six seventy two got Newton into
the Royal Society, the foremost club of natural philosophers, and
scientists in the country. This was a big deal. Newton
(15:13):
was now an acknowledged genius, at least among people who
knew what that looked like. If I have seen further,
it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. Now
Newton might not have been this humble really. I mean,
he did think he was smarter than everyone else, because
he was. But he was also frequently plagued by self doubt,
(15:37):
which was one of the reasons he hated publishing his work.
Newton was, like most other actual human beings, complicated. Newton's
appointment to the Royal Society began wrenching him out of
the isolation of Cambridge, corresponding with other scholars and scientists,
(15:57):
many in London, people who understood what he was talking about,
at least most of the time, planted a seed. I
do not only esteem it a duty to concur with
them in the promotion of real knowledge, but a great privilege.
Instead of exposing discourses to a prejudiced and censorious multitude,
(16:18):
by which means many truths have been baffled and lost,
I may, with freedom apply myself to so judicious and
impartial an assembly meaning people get him. Finally, if becoming
a fellow made him a genius. Then his magnum opus,
(16:39):
Principium Mathematica made him a rock star. Why should that
apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground? Why should not
go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earth center.
Principia was published in six when Newton was forty four.
It described his laws of motion and theory of gravity,
(17:00):
and was as close as anyone had gotten at this
point to glimpsing the inner workings of the universe. Assuredly,
the reason is that the Earth draws it. There must
be a drawing power in matter, and the sum of
the drawing power in the matter of the Earth must
be in the Earth center. After the book was published,
(17:25):
he became well known amongst the Marrow group of elite mathematicians,
who became known all over Europe for the brilliance of
his work, but only amongst people who were mathematically powerful
enough to understand the import of what he's written. The
publication of Principias thrust Newton into the intellectual limelight, but
(17:50):
back in Cambridge he was still barely understood. Newton once
wrote to his knees, I overheard a student say there
goes the man that has writ a book that neither
he nor anybody else understands. They were talking about me. Me.
Then in Newton was elected Cambridge's Member of Parliament, so
(18:12):
he lived in London for the better part of a year.
How this happened and why, well, that's another story. But
when he returned to the university it was even more
apparent there was nothing in Cambridge for him, not intellectually,
not socially. Nothing. So by the early sixteen nineties, after
(18:32):
thirty five years, Newton wanted out of Cambridge. I fear
no one understands me. Here the books grow malty in
their libraries. It is too small, too mean. But London, London,
that's where everything was happening, and that's where Newton wanted
(18:55):
to be. So Newton started looking around for a new job,
or rather he got some of his powerful friends to
look for him. Frankly, nobody's getting high paying jobs in
the seventeenth century because they were qualified for them. Newton's
first love of motion states that an object will stay
at rest unless acted upon by an external force. And
(19:16):
it was only when the Earl of Halifax wrote to
him and said, I found you this wonderful job as
warden of the Mint. It pays five hundred pounds a year.
This new job came with a much better salary, and
the Earl of Halifax promised the mint practically ran itself.
(19:37):
And you went down to London the next day and said, yes,
I would love to be warden with the Mint. He
went back to Cambridge, packed up all his bags. A
few weeks later he was stamped in London and hardly
went back to Cambridge again. On May second, Newton left Cambridge.
(19:59):
He never looked back. Really. Reams of letters between him
and his friends and family and professional contacts still exist,
but there are exactly zero from him to anyone at
Cambridge after he left for London. It would have taken
Isaac Newton two days maybe three to reach London by
(20:20):
horse or stagecoach. It had been a wet winter followed
by a wet spring, and the roads would have been
plugged with mud. As he inched towards the city, he
may have imagined his new life there. He could work
a few days a week if that, devote the rest
of his time to research, to spending time in coffee
shops and in conversation with other brilliant people to being
(20:42):
a universally acknowledged genius in the greatest city in the world.
When he arrived, he'd no longer be a dusty Cambridge scholar.
He'd emerged into the filthy, crowded air of the city,
a new van, a london Man. M Act two the
(21:18):
center of gravity. The road Newton was traveling would have
become more crowded and busier the closer he got to London.
From the top of one of the hills outside the city,
if it had been a clear day, he might have
been able to see the Tower of London, the home
of the Royal Mint. London was only sixty five miles
(21:44):
away from Cambridge, but it might as well have been
in a completely different universe. London had started as a
Roman settlement on the banks of the Thames in the
first century, a roughly square mile planted behind defensive walls,
the remains of which still gave its shape. By the
time Newton arrived, however, it was already swallowing up the
(22:04):
farms and villages outside the original walls. The fields were
quickly being replaced by homes and streets and markets. Newton
would have entered the old Roman city what's called the
City of London with a capital C through one of
the northern gates, and then he would have made his
way through the winding streets to the tower. Now, the
(22:25):
Tower of London is not a single tower. It's actually
a fortified complex of stone buildings that were built on
the banks of the Thames in the eleventh century. The
Royal Mint had been located at the tower since twelve
seventy nine, Sandwiched between the inner and outer curtain walls
on the west side of the complex. The tower was
a busy place. It was home to a garrison, an armory,
(22:46):
and of course a prison for important criminals. There was
even a zoo there with lions and pomas. The Mint's
location at the tower meant that it could be heavily guarded.
No one could enter or leave without being up and
checked by armed guards. This was the image of the
Mint that the government wanted to broadcast, that it was
(23:06):
safe in the most impenetrable fortress in the country, under
guard and now run by the smartest man in the world.
Newton unpacked his bags and his new home inside the Mint.
The job came with lodgings, at least until they could
find somewhere nicer, less smelly, less noisy. But if Newton
(23:32):
stood on the tower walls, he could have seen the
murky River Thames lapping at the stone below him. Across
the river to the south, he would have seen Suffolk,
the pleasure district known for playhouses and prostitutes, and he
would very likely not have been a frequent visitor south
of the river. But take the river west further inland
and he would have been in Marshy Westminster, home to
(23:54):
Parliament and the seat of the country's political power. Go
east and he'd have been in the warehouses and docks.
The place is built to accommodate the country's increasingly global trade.
And just outside his walls London, big, bustling, messy, beautiful London,
(24:17):
a city where shacks hovels shared walls with palaces and mansions,
where the desperately poor walked the same streets that the
wealthy were carried on sedan chairs through. It was already
one of the largest cities in the world, home to
more than six hundred thousand people, and it was still growing.
(24:38):
Just too close and loud in here, I can't think
I must walk. If Newton left the tower and took
a walk he'd see a city in the throes of modernization.
(25:00):
London had been dealt too serious blows in the sixteen
sixties when Isaac Newton was still finding his feet in Cambridge.
First several bouts of the plague killed fifteen of the
City of London's population, and then the Great Fire in
sixteen sixty six burnt down eight percent of the city,
Medieval London within the walls. But London wasn't down for long.
(25:23):
In the years since it had rebuilt, was rebuilding. Just
up the street from Newton's new digs, London's print media
industry was taking root on Fleet Street. This area was
buoyed by rising demand for published words and pamphlets and
newspapers and broadsides, by cheaper printing technologies and increasing freedom
(25:43):
in what could be printed. The latest broadsides and plantets
redebouting here cheaper than stories. The Sussex Jacket the most
terrible see se b have but including, as we'll see,
attacks on the mint. I new proposal to address the
(26:07):
deplorable state of the coiner. None of you will fight
coolins good stays. But while Newton is getting to know
the streets of his new home, you really ought to
keep an eye on his purse. Because, of course the
old industries were still there. Among them, crime and all
its myriad forms. Crime had always existed in London, of course,
(26:30):
but as the city grew, crime rates did too. This
makes sense, right, more people, more opportunity, more crime. London
was also a city with incredible rates of poverty, which
made criminals out of people who probably wouldn't have been otherwise.
But and here's the thing. While there are courts and
(26:50):
severe punishments if you're caught, there's no agency trying to
stop people from committing crimes or actively trying to catch them.
So it's kind of a good time to be a criminal,
especially an entrepreneurial one, like our friend, the near murdered
humble servant William Chaloner. When Newton left Cambridge, craving intellectual
(27:20):
understanding and fellowship or literally anything that wasn't Cambridge, he
had no idea that the London he was moving to
was Chaloner's world, a world of cutthroats and quacks, of
Charlatan's and conmen and of course counterfeiters. London is the
city of opportunity, and it's not just an opportunity for
(27:42):
properly Cambridge or Oxford trained, professionally clever people. London was
this magnet for the entire countryside. That's Tom Levinson, science
historian and author of Newton and the Counterfeiter, the unknown
detective career of the world's grayist scientist. Kids who are
(28:02):
men and women who wanted to escape whatever whatever circumstances
they were in in the agricultural world that was most
of England would come to London and they would try
and find work. There were more opportunities, though many of
them were perhaps not viewed on with joy by the
actual authorities. You look at a man like William Challoner,
(28:25):
who would come to play quite a rolandizing. It was
like he came to London and started hustling. William Chaloner,
like Newton, was not a London native. He was from Warwickshire.
His family was working class poor. His father was a weaver.
Now we know some of what we know about William
Challoner thanks to this anonymous biography, The Short View of
(28:48):
the Life of William Challon, written about him shortly after
his execution. These kinds of biographies of notable criminals were
fairly common at the time. Just as they are now.
But this one does a really lovely job of being
simultaneously appalled and impressed by Chaloner. According to the biography,
(29:09):
although Chaloner was evidently a bright kid, he channeled that
intelligence and to quote some unlucky rogue streak or other,
from early on. His father couldn't take it anymore, so
he sent young William to learn a trade in Birmingham,
then a fast growing market town about a hundred miles
from London. Chaloner was apprenticed to a nail maker, but
(29:31):
nail making was deadly dull, and made even more so
by the increasing mechanization of the process, so a number
of these board nail makers, young William included, turned to
Birmingham's other versioning industry, making counterfeit coins. Birmingham makers specialized
in what were called groats, silverish coins with a face
(29:54):
value of fourpence. Groats weren't commonly made officially, that is,
but they were easy to counterfeit. You could do it
if you had access to blacksmithing tools and metals, usually
pewter or brass, and just a little bit of silver.
Chalder stayed in Birmingham long enough to pick up the
basics of metal working. Armed with a new skill, although
(30:15):
definitely not the one his father had in mind, Chaloner
left Birmingham for London in the late sixteen eighties. He
set out on quote St. Francis's mule, that is, on
foot and probably with nothing more than the clothes on
his back and his considerable capacity for robes tricks. It
would have taken William Challenger much more than two days
(30:37):
to reach London, but when he got there he was
ready to forge a new future. Act three, equal and opposite.
(31:05):
Can I interest you in a slide ruler, fousan pain,
quick silt wiping, pretty silk webbing, all colors? Fine? If
you can know stilk weaving him miss qui parte in
six nine. In Swinging London you could buy a lot
of exciting things and a ten watch somehow containing a
(31:28):
dildo in it was one of them dildog watches. Get
your tin dildo watches here. Now I have no idea
what to watch containing a dildo actually looked like, or
what service it was meant to provide, or who would
have bought it. All of that is totally lost of time.
(31:48):
But should you be looking for such an item, you
might have bought it from William Chaloner. Kind interest you
in a dildo watch, might of the fotieskin. This is
where young Challenger landed after he pitched up in London
looking for new opportunities. Chalder wasn't the only peddlers selling oddities,
but he was one of the smarter kids on the block.
(32:10):
Here's Tom Levinson again. He was basically a really smart
street kid who started trying to make money anyway he could,
and he really didn't care about legal niceties. Challender's metal
working scale with the tin dildo watches was enough to
get him noticed. He thereby picked up a few loose
(32:31):
pens and looser associates, according to his biography, but Chalder
had his sights set on bigger things. Not long after,
he and a new found friend decided to set themselves
up as his pot profits and quack doctors. Do you
have a pinting in your tommy and in your head?
(32:53):
I'll have a look at your piss and send you
to bid. His pot profits were itinerant or street corner
analysts for lack of a better word, who would look
at the contents of your chamber pot and tell you
what was wrong with you quack doctors meant then more
or less what it means now, although it largely applied
to people who sold what they claimed were medicines or solves.
(33:16):
The word came from the Dutch quack solver, which means
solive hawker, and it implied a lot of shouting. Challenger
nailed the shouting bit, but then he set himself up
as a master doctor, meaning someone who had actually studied
to be a physician. Given the state of medical practice
at the time, not much differentiated as Charlottean from a
(33:36):
real physician. However, Challenger was most definitely not qualified to
dispense medical advice. What Challenger did have, according to his biographer,
was a gift, the greatest stock of impudence and the
best neck a tongue petting. He was a talker, he
was a charmer, and this gift paid off so well
(34:00):
that he was able to get himself some fine lodgings.
Quite a feat in London at the time and now
for a little while, Challenger had a great side scam
going where he discovers stolen goods for people who had
been robbed, collecting a reward every time. He continued for
some time to being suspected to be concerned in the
robbery himself. He was forced to leave his fine lodgings
(34:24):
and that learned profession and seek some old Garrett to
repose his caucassin. After he had to leave his fancier days,
Challenger set up in Hatton Garden, just outside the London Wall.
This seems like a setback, but Challenger, according to his biographer,
was in possession of a quote working brain, and it
(34:45):
was here that Challenger learned the final skills he needed
to make it big time. In his drafty Garrett, Challenger
starts working as a Japanner. Asian lacquer work was all
the rage of the time, but it was really pensive
and rare. Japan Ing was a way of faking the
shiny furniture and cabinetry. This got Challenger into gilding, applying
(35:07):
a gold finished items, and that obviously led him straight
to counterfeiting money. He's not going back to build a
watch pedaling. He realized that there was this whole wonderful
area of money for actual coins that were after all,
just discs of metal. And if you could take a
chunk of cheap metal like lead or tin or something
and cover it with a skim of silver or what
(35:29):
have you. All of a sudden you have the shilling
that only cost you a penny or two. You know,
that's a nice way to return. Chaloner already knew the
basics after his apprenticeship in Birmingham, and he was comfortable
working with hot metal. But though Challenger was proficient in
making those Birmingham growths, the real money was in the
higher value coins that were a lot more difficult to fake,
(35:51):
and of course, our boy Chener is after the real money.
To do that, he needed a team. It turned out
that Chaloner was both good at the technical side of
counterfeiting coins, and he seems to have been a reasonably
successful leader of small groups. He built little gangs to
help him make and distribute coins. Certainly by the late
(36:16):
sixteen eighties and into the sixteen nineties he was a
clever boy. Are William Yeah? I mean, I think William
Chaloner he may be kind of like the George Clooney
character in Oceans eleven, except that you know, he has
no scruples whatsoever, Armed with street smarts and a charm
(36:36):
that would give Clooney a run for his money, Challenger
set up his first gang Challenger found a teacher and
partner in Patrick Coffee, a London goldsmith. It's Me and
Your Great Coffee taught Challenger how to prepare metal plates
that would then be used to punch blanks. He taught
him the art of guilding. He also taught him how
(36:57):
to make a coin press to stamp both sides of
the coin, and a mold that could produce a coin
with milled edges. Chaloner could now produce the plates in
the press, but he needed someone more skilled to make
the dies. A die is the engraved metal stamp that
presses the image into the coin, and in order for
the coin to pass muster, it needed to look authentic.
(37:19):
Challoner found his man in Thomas Taylor, Tyler yoman man.
If this were a heist movie, Taylor would be the
quiet guy in spectacles who looks like a librarian, but
this is a podcast, so use your imagination. In his
day job, Taylor was an engraver and a printmaker who
made high quality maps. But printmaking wasn't very profitable, it seems,
(37:42):
so he signed onto Challenger's crew. Taylor did the die engraving,
creating reproductions of gold English guineas and French pistols, a
gold coin worth about seventeen English shillings. Chaloner then tapped
coffee in his own brother in law, Jack Gravener, to
be the guilder's Jack, Honey you for some gilding. With
the team assembled, the operation kicked into high gear. They
(38:06):
made their first front of coins out of a silver alloy,
melting the metal in secret in Challenger's lodgings and stamping
them with the dies tailor Mads. Then Coffee and Gravener
coated them in a thin layer of gold, and while
a gold coins heavy enough and precise enough to pass.
(38:29):
So now Challenger had thousands, thousands of pistols and guineas,
all high quality and all looking as close to the
real deal as possible. He now needed people to pass
the coins into the market, an act called uttering. He
turned to his friend Thomas Holloway and Holloway's wife Elizabeth
to unload the goods on local petty criminals, setting a
price of eleven shillings on each coin. Yeah, eleven shillings
(38:54):
eight how many will you take, sir? Then he sat
back and watched as the money, real, actual not fake money,
poured in or as his biographer but it, and now
he seemed to have found the so much thought after
Philosopher's Stone, or like Dannay from Jove, had showers of
(39:16):
gold daily falling into his lap. Everything seemed to favor
his undertakings. Practically overnight, Challenger was rich, really really rich,
like moved to a fancy house in a wealthy neighborhood
by all new clothes. Rich life. For William Challenger and
his gang, it's going very well. Indeed, now all he
(39:40):
needs to do is keep his head down, stay ahead
of the law, and keep churning out coins. And that
can't be too hard. Right this season on new in
his law, Newson was absolutely particulous in everything that he did.
(40:07):
I swear that I will not reveal or discover to
any person or persons whatsoever the new invention of rounding
the money, So help me God. Money still continuing exceeding scarce.
So the nun was paid or received, but all was
untrust the mint not supplying for common necessities. So it's
(40:29):
very ramshackle institution by this point in history. Now England
have been more grieved with clipton counterfeit money than any
other country. Everybody was degrading the coinage because it was
in such a poor state anyway, I saw in William
Challoner's brother in law's house cutters and tools instruments proper
for coining. Nora might provide it with any competent assistance
(40:51):
to enable me to grapple with an undertaking sore, vexatious
and dangerous as this that despite low thing, this actual
work is doing an awful lot of it in a
way that you might expect from a police inspector and
a judge and prosecution today. In many ways, damn my
(41:12):
blood might have been out by now of the word
for him, He's a rogue. Newton's Law is a production
of I Heart Radio. It's written and hosted by Me,
Linda Rodriguez McRobie. Our senior producer is Ryan Murdoch. Our
producer is Emily Marina. Our executive producer is Jason English.
(41:34):
Original music by Alice McCoy with editing help from Mary Do,
Sound design and mixing by Jeremy Thal, Research in fact
checking by me and Jocelyn Sears. Voice acting by Keith Flemming,
Mark McDonald, Robert Jack and Austin Rodriguez mcgrabi. Special thanks
to Chris Barker, Dr Patricia Ferre and Tom Levinson. Special
(41:55):
thanks to mangest Hat to Kudur and Fineflex Sound Studios
are show logo is designed by Lucy Condonia Thanks for listening.
Exotic Parrots, Exotic Birds, Exotic Birds ads, Half Fries PlayStation
(42:19):
for miss just spell off a truck
This is an I Heart original. On March, the warden
of England's Royal Mint received a letter most merciful Sir,
I am going to be murdered. Perhaps you don't think so,
(00:27):
but it's true. I shall be murdered, and the worst
of all, I will be murdered in the face of
justice unless I am rescued by your merciful hearts. The
letter was an appeal to the warden's conscience. It went
on my offending you has brought this upon me. Nobody
(00:52):
can save me but you. I how God will move
your heart with mercy and pity to do this thing
for me. It was signed You're near murdered, Humble Servant. W. W.
(01:15):
Chaloner was one William Chaloner, a con man who at
one time had been the most successful counterfeit coinmaker London
had ever seen. But now he was awaiting execution at
Newgate Jail, the stinking hell hole of a prison built
into the ancient Roman wall of the city of London.
(01:39):
The warden, whose job it was to track down counterfeiters,
and who had hunted Challenger for years, never bothered to
right back. Two days after he wrote that letter, Chaloner
(02:02):
was dragged from the jail through more than two miles
of London's foul, mud filled streets to the Tyburn Tree.
This was not an actual tree, but rather the name
given to the wooden gallows erected at the site of
the Tyburn Brook that was now Marble Arch in London.
This would have been an open space, a field, and
(02:23):
on hanging days, behaving mass of humans, all clamoring to
watch the bad guys die. Challoner arrived at the gallows filthy,
splattered with mud and whatever else had been thrown at
him along the way. He was terrified, he was angry,
(02:43):
and he was sober. By now, after months of living
in Newgate, he didn't even have enough money to buy
a swallow of gin. In his hands, Chaloner clutched a
sheaf of papers fodder for a pamphlet, declaring that he
was the victim of a frame up. He yelled to
anyone who would listen to he was innocent. I am innocent,
That he was murdered by perjury and in justice and
(03:06):
pretense of law, and by the warden of the mint himself.
It didn't matter. In his last moments, Challenger went quiet.
He mounted the ladder. The cap was placed over his
weeping eyes, and the noose over his head and around
his neck, and as hundreds of people watched, Challenger dangled
(03:30):
and kicked until the blood vessels in his face popped,
until the breath was choked from his lungs. Gravity did
its thing. After his body was pulled down from the scaffold,
(03:50):
he was publicly disemboweled. His head might have ended up
on a spike on the London Bridge. We're not entirely sure,
but that's what happened to the people who were excuted
for counterfeiting. And it was all because of one man,
the doggedly determined, completely ruthless, utterly meticulous Warden of the
(04:11):
Royal Mint. The Warden of the Royal Mint was the
man charged with making the country's coin, the actual physical
silver and gold that fueled England's engine of commerce. The
warden was also charged with protecting it, with keeping it
safe from counterfeiters and clippers. And this warden was very
(04:33):
good at his job, putting dozens of people in jail,
shutting down coining operations left and right, and as in
the case of Mr Challoner, sending counterfeiters to the gallows
without a second thought. So who was this ruthless detective,
this hard bitten crook catcher, totally unmoved by the pleas
(04:54):
of a desperate man. It was Isaac Newton. Us that
Isaac Newton for I Heart Radio. I'm Linda Rodriguez mccrabbie,
and this is Newton's Law and I heart original podcast
(05:20):
you much so, Episode one, The Warden and the con
(05:56):
Man Cool. I'm standing outside the courtyard of the British Library,
just off of Houston Road. Normally this courtyard is full
of people. There's a coffee shop in there, and there's
loads of people usually out sitting on the benches enjoying
(06:19):
some sun on a coffee break in between researching. Now,
right now, because of coronavirus, it's only open to free
book visitors. But just over the wall, I can see
the giant statue of Isaac Newton. Now, this statue, I
must have passed it hundreds of times going to the
library to do research, and I've never really thought about it,
(06:43):
never really noticed it. The statue depicts Newton bent over
in a really rather uncomfortable looking position, and he's got
a compass and he's determining the geometry of the universe.
It's a testament to Newton's scientific yes, but it absolutely
leaves out the other half of his life, the half
(07:06):
of the life that most people don't really know about.
What do you know about Isaac discovered gravity? He was
good in physics, and he invented like the three principles
of gravity. That's much signs, to be honest with me,
(07:28):
very smart guy, smart than me, obviously. Do you know
anything else about the rest of his life? I have
no idea about him as personality. Did you know anything
about me? In his life? After he discovered gravity? Got rich?
(07:50):
Got rich? Well, he was making money, lots of it
literally as warden of the Royal Mint, and he did
get a big salary increase too. But this story is
about more than just Isaac Newton's lucrative second career. Everything
that Newton touched, everything that he was involved in, became
(08:12):
part of the fabric of our modern world, and not
just because we use his calculations every day to keep
satellites in orbit and our smartphones running. His story unfolds
at a time when the structures that we inhabit now
are just being built. We're talking about, and we will
be talking about in this podcast, what actually is money.
(08:33):
We're talking about the origins of print media and its
power to change political discourse and policy, and about the
meaning of criminal justice in a time when there are
courts but no police. But it's still a weird story.
Newton made this big career change after his most consequential
intellectual achievement, but arguably at a time when he still
(08:54):
had more to give. So I started with this question,
why would Isaac Newton leave the cozy confines of academia
and a career of remarkable success to go chase criminals?
(09:17):
Act one an object at rest, I keep the subject
constantly before me untill the first dawnings open, slowly, little
by little, into the full and clear light. Newton had
(09:38):
been in academic since sixteen sixty one, when he first
came to Trinity College at Cambridge University. At the time,
he was an intellectually adventurous nineteen year old fresh of
a Lincolnshire farm. Cambridge University academically did not have a
good reputation during the seventeenth and eighteen centuries. That's Dr
Patricia Farre, Cambridge historian and author of Life After Gravity.
(10:02):
So foreign visitors came and they looked at Oxford and Cambridge,
and they said it's just ridiculous, all the all the
books and drawing moldy and the libraries. A lot of
the professors scarcely gave any lectures of quite a few
of them lived down in London. There weren't any female students,
so the whole community was male. It was a very
(10:22):
sort of close community. Cambridge's limitations didn't bother Newton at first.
Newton was already brilliant. He'd taught himself higher order mathematics
in six months. By sixteen sixty five, he'd already formulated
his famous theory of gravity, although it would be years
before he published it, and he wasn't bothered by the
(10:44):
lack of social activities. If anything, he probably preferred avoiding
women and drinking and other people. Honestly, Nowton was a
bit of a prig. Here's what he wrote to a
fellow student in sixteen sixty one. It is commonly rep
WoT is that you are sick. Truly, I am sorry
for that, but I am much more sorry that you
(11:07):
got your sickness by drinking too much. I earnestly desire
you to first repent of your having been drunk and
then to seek to recover your health. Fun guy. What
Camerid really gave Newton was time to do the one
thing he wanted to do. Study to caught a glass.
(11:29):
Take a plain glass, hold it upside downward over a candle.
Newton had questions, hundreds thousands of questions about everything. Take
such meat as they love as wet, and he explored
those questions of notebooks and sprinkle it were birds in
(11:52):
the manner of the extraction of roots acted powers is
very much alike, especially when the attempts that let me
no ambiguity all fractions. Newton was also fearless when it
came to experimentation. This is a man who stuck a
bodkin basically a large needle into his own eye to
observe changes in his perception of color. He also spent
(12:13):
a bit of time literally staring at the sun. I
saw only the sun before me, so that I could
neither write nor read, but to recover the use of
my eyes, shut myself up in my chamber, made dark
for three days together, and used all means to direct
my imagination from the sun. Ironically, one of his notebook
(12:34):
entries concerns things hurtful for the eyes, garlic onions, leaks,
all the much lettuce, going to sudden aftermat lot wise,
cold air, much sleep after meat fire, much weeping, and
watching Newton's assistant during his later Cambridge years, knew him
(12:56):
as a near recluse, as the original model of the
absent minded but super focused professor. I never knew him
take any recreational pastime, either in riding out to take
the air, walking, bowling, or any other exercise whatever, thinking
all hours lost that were not spent, any studies to
which he kept so close that he seldom left his chamber.
(13:20):
Newton's intellect set him apart. It made it difficult for
him to connect with his peers or anyone else, but
if he was lonely, he didn't let on. At the
age of seven, he'd taken over the Lucaezian Professorship of Mathematics.
These days this is one of the most prestigious professorships
in the world, Like Stephen Hawking, Charles Babbage, and well
(13:45):
Isaac Newton prostigious. He was only the second person to
hold the positions, so it didn't yet have the reputation
that it has now, but still it was a pretty
good gig, not least because it gave him room board
and a hundred twenty pounds a year in exchange for
teaching one course of lectures every three terms, regardless of
(14:06):
whether anyone showed up to hear them. By all reports,
he was an absolutely appalling lecturer. There's a joke that
two undergraduates saw him in the street and they nudged
each other, and one of them said, there goes the
man who lectures to the walls. And what they meant
by that was that that he had to keep a lecture.
It was compulsory, but no students bothered to attend, and
(14:28):
so he just spoke to the empty room when he
wasn't lecturing too empty rooms. Newton, among other things, designed
and crafted his own telescope. This was a major accomplishment
at a time when instruments like that were at the
very bleeding edge of new technology. They were complicated to
(14:51):
make and very valuable, but Newton was impatient. If I'd
have waited for other people to make my tools and things,
I should never have made anything of it. It was
this telescope that, in six seventy two got Newton into
the Royal Society, the foremost club of natural philosophers, and
scientists in the country. This was a big deal. Newton
(15:13):
was now an acknowledged genius, at least among people who
knew what that looked like. If I have seen further,
it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. Now
Newton might not have been this humble really. I mean,
he did think he was smarter than everyone else, because
he was. But he was also frequently plagued by self doubt,
(15:37):
which was one of the reasons he hated publishing his work.
Newton was, like most other actual human beings, complicated. Newton's
appointment to the Royal Society began wrenching him out of
the isolation of Cambridge, corresponding with other scholars and scientists,
(15:57):
many in London, people who understood what he was talking about,
at least most of the time, planted a seed. I
do not only esteem it a duty to concur with
them in the promotion of real knowledge, but a great privilege.
Instead of exposing discourses to a prejudiced and censorious multitude,
(16:18):
by which means many truths have been baffled and lost,
I may, with freedom apply myself to so judicious and
impartial an assembly meaning people get him. Finally, if becoming
a fellow made him a genius. Then his magnum opus,
(16:39):
Principium Mathematica made him a rock star. Why should that
apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground? Why should not
go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earth center.
Principia was published in six when Newton was forty four.
It described his laws of motion and theory of gravity,
(17:00):
and was as close as anyone had gotten at this
point to glimpsing the inner workings of the universe. Assuredly,
the reason is that the Earth draws it. There must
be a drawing power in matter, and the sum of
the drawing power in the matter of the Earth must
be in the Earth center. After the book was published,
(17:25):
he became well known amongst the Marrow group of elite mathematicians,
who became known all over Europe for the brilliance of
his work, but only amongst people who were mathematically powerful
enough to understand the import of what he's written. The
publication of Principias thrust Newton into the intellectual limelight, but
(17:50):
back in Cambridge he was still barely understood. Newton once
wrote to his knees, I overheard a student say there
goes the man that has writ a book that neither
he nor anybody else understands. They were talking about me. Me.
Then in Newton was elected Cambridge's Member of Parliament, so
(18:12):
he lived in London for the better part of a year.
How this happened and why, well, that's another story. But
when he returned to the university it was even more
apparent there was nothing in Cambridge for him, not intellectually,
not socially. Nothing. So by the early sixteen nineties, after
(18:32):
thirty five years, Newton wanted out of Cambridge. I fear
no one understands me. Here the books grow malty in
their libraries. It is too small, too mean. But London, London,
that's where everything was happening, and that's where Newton wanted
(18:55):
to be. So Newton started looking around for a new job,
or rather he got some of his powerful friends to
look for him. Frankly, nobody's getting high paying jobs in
the seventeenth century because they were qualified for them. Newton's
first love of motion states that an object will stay
at rest unless acted upon by an external force. And
(19:16):
it was only when the Earl of Halifax wrote to
him and said, I found you this wonderful job as
warden of the Mint. It pays five hundred pounds a year.
This new job came with a much better salary, and
the Earl of Halifax promised the mint practically ran itself.
(19:37):
And you went down to London the next day and said, yes,
I would love to be warden with the Mint. He
went back to Cambridge, packed up all his bags. A
few weeks later he was stamped in London and hardly
went back to Cambridge again. On May second, Newton left Cambridge.
(19:59):
He never looked back. Really. Reams of letters between him
and his friends and family and professional contacts still exist,
but there are exactly zero from him to anyone at
Cambridge after he left for London. It would have taken
Isaac Newton two days maybe three to reach London by
(20:20):
horse or stagecoach. It had been a wet winter followed
by a wet spring, and the roads would have been
plugged with mud. As he inched towards the city, he
may have imagined his new life there. He could work
a few days a week if that, devote the rest
of his time to research, to spending time in coffee
shops and in conversation with other brilliant people to being
(20:42):
a universally acknowledged genius in the greatest city in the world.
When he arrived, he'd no longer be a dusty Cambridge scholar.
He'd emerged into the filthy, crowded air of the city,
a new van, a london Man. M Act two the
(21:18):
center of gravity. The road Newton was traveling would have
become more crowded and busier the closer he got to London.
From the top of one of the hills outside the city,
if it had been a clear day, he might have
been able to see the Tower of London, the home
of the Royal Mint. London was only sixty five miles
(21:44):
away from Cambridge, but it might as well have been
in a completely different universe. London had started as a
Roman settlement on the banks of the Thames in the
first century, a roughly square mile planted behind defensive walls,
the remains of which still gave its shape. By the
time Newton arrived, however, it was already swallowing up the
(22:04):
farms and villages outside the original walls. The fields were
quickly being replaced by homes and streets and markets. Newton
would have entered the old Roman city what's called the
City of London with a capital C through one of
the northern gates, and then he would have made his
way through the winding streets to the tower. Now, the
(22:25):
Tower of London is not a single tower. It's actually
a fortified complex of stone buildings that were built on
the banks of the Thames in the eleventh century. The
Royal Mint had been located at the tower since twelve
seventy nine, Sandwiched between the inner and outer curtain walls
on the west side of the complex. The tower was
a busy place. It was home to a garrison, an armory,
(22:46):
and of course a prison for important criminals. There was
even a zoo there with lions and pomas. The Mint's
location at the tower meant that it could be heavily guarded.
No one could enter or leave without being up and
checked by armed guards. This was the image of the
Mint that the government wanted to broadcast, that it was
(23:06):
safe in the most impenetrable fortress in the country, under
guard and now run by the smartest man in the world.
Newton unpacked his bags and his new home inside the Mint.
The job came with lodgings, at least until they could
find somewhere nicer, less smelly, less noisy. But if Newton
(23:32):
stood on the tower walls, he could have seen the
murky River Thames lapping at the stone below him. Across
the river to the south, he would have seen Suffolk,
the pleasure district known for playhouses and prostitutes, and he
would very likely not have been a frequent visitor south
of the river. But take the river west further inland
and he would have been in Marshy Westminster, home to
(23:54):
Parliament and the seat of the country's political power. Go
east and he'd have been in the warehouses and docks.
The place is built to accommodate the country's increasingly global trade.
And just outside his walls London, big, bustling, messy, beautiful London,
(24:17):
a city where shacks hovels shared walls with palaces and mansions,
where the desperately poor walked the same streets that the
wealthy were carried on sedan chairs through. It was already
one of the largest cities in the world, home to
more than six hundred thousand people, and it was still growing.
(24:38):
Just too close and loud in here, I can't think
I must walk. If Newton left the tower and took
a walk he'd see a city in the throes of modernization.
(25:00):
London had been dealt too serious blows in the sixteen
sixties when Isaac Newton was still finding his feet in Cambridge.
First several bouts of the plague killed fifteen of the
City of London's population, and then the Great Fire in
sixteen sixty six burnt down eight percent of the city,
Medieval London within the walls. But London wasn't down for long.
(25:23):
In the years since it had rebuilt, was rebuilding. Just
up the street from Newton's new digs, London's print media
industry was taking root on Fleet Street. This area was
buoyed by rising demand for published words and pamphlets and
newspapers and broadsides, by cheaper printing technologies and increasing freedom
(25:43):
in what could be printed. The latest broadsides and plantets
redebouting here cheaper than stories. The Sussex Jacket the most
terrible see se b have but including, as we'll see,
attacks on the mint. I new proposal to address the
(26:07):
deplorable state of the coiner. None of you will fight
coolins good stays. But while Newton is getting to know
the streets of his new home, you really ought to
keep an eye on his purse. Because, of course the
old industries were still there. Among them, crime and all
its myriad forms. Crime had always existed in London, of course,
(26:30):
but as the city grew, crime rates did too. This
makes sense, right, more people, more opportunity, more crime. London
was also a city with incredible rates of poverty, which
made criminals out of people who probably wouldn't have been otherwise.
But and here's the thing. While there are courts and
(26:50):
severe punishments if you're caught, there's no agency trying to
stop people from committing crimes or actively trying to catch them.
So it's kind of a good time to be a criminal,
especially an entrepreneurial one, like our friend, the near murdered
humble servant William Chaloner. When Newton left Cambridge, craving intellectual
(27:20):
understanding and fellowship or literally anything that wasn't Cambridge, he
had no idea that the London he was moving to
was Chaloner's world, a world of cutthroats and quacks, of
Charlatan's and conmen and of course counterfeiters. London is the
city of opportunity, and it's not just an opportunity for
(27:42):
properly Cambridge or Oxford trained, professionally clever people. London was
this magnet for the entire countryside. That's Tom Levinson, science
historian and author of Newton and the Counterfeiter, the unknown
detective career of the world's grayist scientist. Kids who are
(28:02):
men and women who wanted to escape whatever whatever circumstances
they were in in the agricultural world that was most
of England would come to London and they would try
and find work. There were more opportunities, though many of
them were perhaps not viewed on with joy by the
actual authorities. You look at a man like William Challoner,
(28:25):
who would come to play quite a rolandizing. It was
like he came to London and started hustling. William Chaloner,
like Newton, was not a London native. He was from Warwickshire.
His family was working class poor. His father was a weaver.
Now we know some of what we know about William
Challoner thanks to this anonymous biography, The Short View of
(28:48):
the Life of William Challon, written about him shortly after
his execution. These kinds of biographies of notable criminals were
fairly common at the time. Just as they are now.
But this one does a really lovely job of being
simultaneously appalled and impressed by Chaloner. According to the biography,
(29:09):
although Chaloner was evidently a bright kid, he channeled that
intelligence and to quote some unlucky rogue streak or other,
from early on. His father couldn't take it anymore, so
he sent young William to learn a trade in Birmingham,
then a fast growing market town about a hundred miles
from London. Chaloner was apprenticed to a nail maker, but
(29:31):
nail making was deadly dull, and made even more so
by the increasing mechanization of the process, so a number
of these board nail makers, young William included, turned to
Birmingham's other versioning industry, making counterfeit coins. Birmingham makers specialized
in what were called groats, silverish coins with a face
(29:54):
value of fourpence. Groats weren't commonly made officially, that is,
but they were easy to counterfeit. You could do it
if you had access to blacksmithing tools and metals, usually
pewter or brass, and just a little bit of silver.
Chalder stayed in Birmingham long enough to pick up the
basics of metal working. Armed with a new skill, although
(30:15):
definitely not the one his father had in mind, Chaloner
left Birmingham for London in the late sixteen eighties. He
set out on quote St. Francis's mule, that is, on
foot and probably with nothing more than the clothes on
his back and his considerable capacity for robes tricks. It
would have taken William Challenger much more than two days
(30:37):
to reach London, but when he got there he was
ready to forge a new future. Act three, equal and opposite.
(31:05):
Can I interest you in a slide ruler, fousan pain,
quick silt wiping, pretty silk webbing, all colors? Fine? If
you can know stilk weaving him miss qui parte in
six nine. In Swinging London you could buy a lot
of exciting things and a ten watch somehow containing a
(31:28):
dildo in it was one of them dildog watches. Get
your tin dildo watches here. Now I have no idea
what to watch containing a dildo actually looked like, or
what service it was meant to provide, or who would
have bought it. All of that is totally lost of time.
(31:48):
But should you be looking for such an item, you
might have bought it from William Chaloner. Kind interest you
in a dildo watch, might of the fotieskin. This is
where young Challenger landed after he pitched up in London
looking for new opportunities. Chalder wasn't the only peddlers selling oddities,
but he was one of the smarter kids on the block.
(32:10):
Here's Tom Levinson again. He was basically a really smart
street kid who started trying to make money anyway he could,
and he really didn't care about legal niceties. Challender's metal
working scale with the tin dildo watches was enough to
get him noticed. He thereby picked up a few loose
(32:31):
pens and looser associates, according to his biography, but Chalder
had his sights set on bigger things. Not long after,
he and a new found friend decided to set themselves
up as his pot profits and quack doctors. Do you
have a pinting in your tommy and in your head?
(32:53):
I'll have a look at your piss and send you
to bid. His pot profits were itinerant or street corner
analysts for lack of a better word, who would look
at the contents of your chamber pot and tell you
what was wrong with you quack doctors meant then more
or less what it means now, although it largely applied
to people who sold what they claimed were medicines or solves.
(33:16):
The word came from the Dutch quack solver, which means
solive hawker, and it implied a lot of shouting. Challenger
nailed the shouting bit, but then he set himself up
as a master doctor, meaning someone who had actually studied
to be a physician. Given the state of medical practice
at the time, not much differentiated as Charlottean from a
(33:36):
real physician. However, Challenger was most definitely not qualified to
dispense medical advice. What Challenger did have, according to his biographer,
was a gift, the greatest stock of impudence and the
best neck a tongue petting. He was a talker, he
was a charmer, and this gift paid off so well
(34:00):
that he was able to get himself some fine lodgings.
Quite a feat in London at the time and now
for a little while, Challenger had a great side scam
going where he discovers stolen goods for people who had
been robbed, collecting a reward every time. He continued for
some time to being suspected to be concerned in the
robbery himself. He was forced to leave his fine lodgings
(34:24):
and that learned profession and seek some old Garrett to
repose his caucassin. After he had to leave his fancier days,
Challenger set up in Hatton Garden, just outside the London Wall.
This seems like a setback, but Challenger, according to his biographer,
was in possession of a quote working brain, and it
(34:45):
was here that Challenger learned the final skills he needed
to make it big time. In his drafty Garrett, Challenger
starts working as a Japanner. Asian lacquer work was all
the rage of the time, but it was really pensive
and rare. Japan Ing was a way of faking the
shiny furniture and cabinetry. This got Challenger into gilding, applying
(35:07):
a gold finished items, and that obviously led him straight
to counterfeiting money. He's not going back to build a
watch pedaling. He realized that there was this whole wonderful
area of money for actual coins that were after all,
just discs of metal. And if you could take a
chunk of cheap metal like lead or tin or something
and cover it with a skim of silver or what
(35:29):
have you. All of a sudden you have the shilling
that only cost you a penny or two. You know,
that's a nice way to return. Chaloner already knew the
basics after his apprenticeship in Birmingham, and he was comfortable
working with hot metal. But though Challenger was proficient in
making those Birmingham growths, the real money was in the
higher value coins that were a lot more difficult to fake,
(35:51):
and of course, our boy Chener is after the real money.
To do that, he needed a team. It turned out
that Chaloner was both good at the technical side of
counterfeiting coins, and he seems to have been a reasonably
successful leader of small groups. He built little gangs to
help him make and distribute coins. Certainly by the late
(36:16):
sixteen eighties and into the sixteen nineties he was a
clever boy. Are William Yeah? I mean, I think William
Chaloner he may be kind of like the George Clooney
character in Oceans eleven, except that you know, he has
no scruples whatsoever, Armed with street smarts and a charm
(36:36):
that would give Clooney a run for his money, Challenger
set up his first gang Challenger found a teacher and
partner in Patrick Coffee, a London goldsmith. It's Me and
Your Great Coffee taught Challenger how to prepare metal plates
that would then be used to punch blanks. He taught
him the art of guilding. He also taught him how
(36:57):
to make a coin press to stamp both sides of
the coin, and a mold that could produce a coin
with milled edges. Chaloner could now produce the plates in
the press, but he needed someone more skilled to make
the dies. A die is the engraved metal stamp that
presses the image into the coin, and in order for
the coin to pass muster, it needed to look authentic.
(37:19):
Challoner found his man in Thomas Taylor, Tyler yoman man.
If this were a heist movie, Taylor would be the
quiet guy in spectacles who looks like a librarian, but
this is a podcast, so use your imagination. In his
day job, Taylor was an engraver and a printmaker who
made high quality maps. But printmaking wasn't very profitable, it seems,
(37:42):
so he signed onto Challenger's crew. Taylor did the die engraving,
creating reproductions of gold English guineas and French pistols, a
gold coin worth about seventeen English shillings. Chaloner then tapped
coffee in his own brother in law, Jack Gravener, to
be the guilder's Jack, Honey you for some gilding. With
the team assembled, the operation kicked into high gear. They
(38:06):
made their first front of coins out of a silver alloy,
melting the metal in secret in Challenger's lodgings and stamping
them with the dies tailor Mads. Then Coffee and Gravener
coated them in a thin layer of gold, and while
a gold coins heavy enough and precise enough to pass.
(38:29):
So now Challenger had thousands, thousands of pistols and guineas,
all high quality and all looking as close to the
real deal as possible. He now needed people to pass
the coins into the market, an act called uttering. He
turned to his friend Thomas Holloway and Holloway's wife Elizabeth
to unload the goods on local petty criminals, setting a
price of eleven shillings on each coin. Yeah, eleven shillings
(38:54):
eight how many will you take, sir? Then he sat
back and watched as the money, real, actual not fake money,
poured in or as his biographer but it, and now
he seemed to have found the so much thought after
Philosopher's Stone, or like Dannay from Jove, had showers of
(39:16):
gold daily falling into his lap. Everything seemed to favor
his undertakings. Practically overnight, Challenger was rich, really really rich,
like moved to a fancy house in a wealthy neighborhood
by all new clothes. Rich life. For William Challenger and
his gang, it's going very well. Indeed, now all he
(39:40):
needs to do is keep his head down, stay ahead
of the law, and keep churning out coins. And that
can't be too hard. Right this season on new in
his law, Newson was absolutely particulous in everything that he did.
(40:07):
I swear that I will not reveal or discover to
any person or persons whatsoever the new invention of rounding
the money, So help me God. Money still continuing exceeding scarce.
So the nun was paid or received, but all was
untrust the mint not supplying for common necessities. So it's
(40:29):
very ramshackle institution by this point in history. Now England
have been more grieved with clipton counterfeit money than any
other country. Everybody was degrading the coinage because it was
in such a poor state anyway, I saw in William
Challoner's brother in law's house cutters and tools instruments proper
for coining. Nora might provide it with any competent assistance
(40:51):
to enable me to grapple with an undertaking sore, vexatious
and dangerous as this that despite low thing, this actual
work is doing an awful lot of it in a
way that you might expect from a police inspector and
a judge and prosecution today. In many ways, damn my
(41:12):
blood might have been out by now of the word
for him, He's a rogue. Newton's Law is a production
of I Heart Radio. It's written and hosted by Me,
Linda Rodriguez McRobie. Our senior producer is Ryan Murdoch. Our
producer is Emily Marina. Our executive producer is Jason English.
(41:34):
Original music by Alice McCoy with editing help from Mary Do,
Sound design and mixing by Jeremy Thal, Research in fact
checking by me and Jocelyn Sears. Voice acting by Keith Flemming,
Mark McDonald, Robert Jack and Austin Rodriguez mcgrabi. Special thanks
to Chris Barker, Dr Patricia Ferre and Tom Levinson. Special
(41:55):
thanks to mangest Hat to Kudur and Fineflex Sound Studios
are show logo is designed by Lucy Condonia Thanks for listening.
Exotic Parrots, Exotic Birds, Exotic Birds ads, Half Fries PlayStation
(42:19):
for miss just spell off a truck
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