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Born sometime between 1650 and 1665 in the English county of Warwickshire, William Chaloner was apparently a natural criminal, and used his amoral wiles and gift for persuasion to (briefly) live the life of a gentleman. In and out of prison several times, adept at playing two sides against one another, the man was finally brought to heel in 1699 by the then Master of the Royal Mint, a man who had also proven himself one of the greatest scientific minds of all time, Sir Isaac Newton.
Anatomy of a Counterfeiter
The adolescent William Chaloner was evidently as incorrigible as his adult counterpart would prove to be, and when his parents found they could not control him, they sent him away to Birmingham to apprentice to a nail-maker. At the time, Birmingham was known for more than making nails, however; it was also a hotbed of coin forging, particularly of the small silver "groat," worth about four pennies. Chaloner proved an apt pupil and was soon churning out "Birmingham groats” with the best of them.
Such small-time jobs didn't quite suit Chaloner's naked ambition, though, so around 1680 he struck out on foot for London. Once there he found it difficult to break into the insular criminal underworld, so he scraped by selling tin toy watches that evidently had sex toys attached. Around this time he might have married and fathered several children, though records are unclear. He also seems to have begun a slightly more lucrative scam of selling quack medicines to desperate tuberculosis, plague, and malaria sufferers. In addition, he started working with accomplices to rob people and then collect a reward from the unfortunate victims for the return of the stolen merchandise. It was robbery, in fact, that marked Chaloner's first appearance in the arrest record in 1690.
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