Stock Exchange forgery

The forged 1/- British definitive was part of a scheme to defraud the London Stock Exchange in 1872-73.

Since the telegraph system was part of the post office by this time, stamps, also used to pay postage and revenue fees, were also used to pay telegraph fees. The London Stock Exchange was a major user of telegrams, used to report prices and transactions. The basic charge at the time was 1/- (equivalent to £6 today), with additional stamps needed for longer messages by word count.

So, there were a lot of 1/- stamps sold, put on telegraph forms and cancelled with a STOCK EXCHANGE / E.C. CDS. Perhaps due to time pressure, forms were cancelled in large batches rather than one at a time. The forms were kept as records and after a time, were sent for destruction. But many just sat in storage.

A batch of forms was stolen from a warehouse and was sold to stamp dealers. In 1898, a young Charles Nissen examined used 1/- stamps he had bought and found that not only did they not have watermarks, there were some impossible check letter combinations also. He took his findings to the Stanley Gibbons company who published the discovery. It was soon determined these were high-quality forgeries and existed in two printings besides.

The belated investigation turned up suspects but no one was ever arrested. The forgeries clearly were substituted for genuine with the forgers within the telegraph office pocketing the difference. Telegraph forms could be audited with supposedly proper payment paid with no auditor being the wiser.

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