The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-04-04 00:00:00

CHARGE OF BEING IN POSSESSION
OF COUNTERFEIT COIN.

At the Liverpool assizes, James Hanis was placed at the
bar charged with being in ikossession of a great quantity of
counterfeit coin, at Live i pool, on the 31st of December
last.

It appeared that a detective in the Liverpool force,
stationed himself in the top room of a house opposite
to that occupied by the prisoner, in Boater-street,
Liverpool, in order to observe what was going on
within the latter. He did so because at eight o'clock
on the same morning he had looked through the win-
dow of the prisoner's room from the street and seen a
.man standing over a fire in a position which excited his
suspicions ' buthe said he did not think the man he then
saw was the prisoner. On the second occasion, looking
through the interstices of a Venetian blind, which he
let down, he saw the prisoner seated at a table,
apparently polishing some small article in his hand re-
sembling a coin. He sent three officers to watch the
house at the back, and himself knocked at the front
door and then looked in at the window. The prisoner
had started up and rushed towards the back of the
house, and the detective burst open the front door and
seized him. The officers found in the parlour where
the prisoner had Ipeen seated 12 crowns, 42 half-crowns,
and four florins, all counterfeit, some f them covered
with some black substance and others rubbed clean. In
the kitchen were found five packages of counterfeit
florins wrapped separately in paper, and numbering 77
in all. There were also found in the kitchen a quantity
of plaster of Paris, including plaster of Paris moulds
for Prussian and Bavarian thalera and half-thalers,
crucibles, and electric battery and the complete ap-
paratus of a ooiner'e art. When the prisoner was first
seized he said, "I know who has given you the tip and
sent you in," and he afterwards took a bag containing
£5O of good money from a flue over the kitchen oven
and offered it, together with £l6 found on the chimney
piece of the parlour, to the deteative if he would
" square the case." The detective admitted that his
first impression upon entering the house was that a
second man had shortly before escaped from it, al-
though he said he had seen reasons to alter that im-
pression since, and he also said that the sleeping ac-
commodation and arrangements in the house seemed
to show that it was only tenanted by one person.
The defence set up for the prisoner therefore was,
remembering also that the detective's impression that
the man seen at eight e'clock in the house was not the
prisoner, that a mistake had been made in supposing
that the prisoner was the person who was seen polish-
ing the coin, and that the really guilty man had
escaped from the house. It was contended, therefore,
that although the prisoner was found in the house he
was not in possession of the counterfeit coin within the
meaning of the indictment; but the prisoner was Can-
ride', and having been previously convicted of a
similar offence against the Coinage Acts, he was sen-
tenced to fifteen years' penal servitude.