The Sun.
London, England, 1856-01-03 00:00:00

CAPTURE OF TWO FORGERS.

Two notorious forgers, named William Stranges and
Thomas Bew, were captured at Eton on Saturday last,
charged with having forged the name of the Earl of
Digby to two cheques on his lordship's bankers, Messrs.
Hoare, of Fleet-street, for the respective sums of fifty
pounds and one hundred pounds. It appears that on the
27th November last Messrs. Hoare received a cheque by
post, enclosed in a letter signed Mrs. Mary Harris, pur-
porting to be drawn by the Earl of Digby. The writer
of the letter requested the money might be remitted in
Bank of England notes to Mrs. Mary Harris, Marrow,
near Guildford, Surrey, and Messrs. Hoare having no
suspicion of the forgery sent the money accordingly.
On Friday last, Dec. 23th, Messrs. Hoare received
a second letter, dated 12, High-street, Eton, Bucks, and
bearing the post mark of that town, enclosing a cheque
for 1001., signed Digby, payable to Octavius Wingfield,
Esq., and requesting that the cheque might be honoured
by two 501. Bank of England notes. This letter aroused
the suspicion of the corresponding clerk, to whom the
letter was handed, and the firm at once instructed their
solicitors, Messrs. Blake and Co., Essex-street, Strand,
to investigate the matter. Accordingly a gentleman
connected with the solicitors' office immediately pro-
ceeded to Windsor, and put himself in communication
with a Mr. Mason, who has the management of the
justice business in that part of the county. The
result was that through the active exertions of that
gentleman the prisoner and a confederate were appre-
hended on the morning of Saturday last, and brought
before the Rev. Thomas Carter, of Eton College, one
of the Bucks justices, on Tuesday.
It appeared from the evidence that the house No. 12,
High-street, Eton, was a beer•shop kept by a man
named Allen, and the prisoners had requested permis-
sion to have a letter directed there in the name of Wing-
field. Mason was in the tap-room, in the disguise of a
brioklayer, and when the prisoners applied for the let-
ter which had been posted in London he took them
into custody.
Hereford, an officer of the Mendicity S ociety, de-
posed tbat one of the prisoners (Thomas Bew) was well
acquainted with Lord Digby's handwriting, easing ob-
tained several cheques from his lordship under false pre-
tences. On the last occasion, r t the end of the year 1851,
the prisoner obtained from his lordship a cheque for
251., by representing that he was a Captain Newton, for
which offence he was tried and convicted at the Old
Bailey in December of that year, and sentenced to seven
years' transportation. He was now a ticket-of-leave
man. When the prisoner was apprehended in 1851 by
Horeford's father, he inflicted such serious injuries upon
that officer that the latter had never recovered from the
attack, and his dissolution was daily expected in con-
sequence of the prisoner's brutality. Both prisoners
were well-known swindlers and begging-letter writers,
and have both been repeatedly convicted.
The prisoners, who were respectably dressed, were
fully committed to Aylesbury for trial at the Lent as-
sizes for Bucks.

CRICKET.—The tenth annual ball of the St. James's
Cricket Club takes place at Willis's Rooms, on Tuesday,
the 15th inst. The band of the Grenadier Guards will
attend,