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CLASSIC: How far did Isaac Newton go to hunt down forgers? · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to our weekly classic episode Ridiculous Historians. Hey, nol
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: you remember Isaac Newton.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: He's the apple guy, right, figs or something. It's a
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: fruited cake, cake, fruited cake. But isn't This isn't the
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: old tale of Isaac Newton discovering gravity when the apple
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: fell not too far from the tree and conked him
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: on the knoggin.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: That's the anecdote for sure. And he also did a
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: lot of other stuff. We know him for his scientific pursuits,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: like you were saying, But before we did this episode
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, we were not aware that he spent
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: some time as the Master of the Royal Mint.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: He was an absolute salute when it came to spotting
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: fake currency.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and unlike some royal positions, this was not ceremonial.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: He took the job of bird dogging forgers seriously, and
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: he was getting a kind of Sherlock holmesy in about it.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: No, there's a bit of a Holmes Moriarty rival in
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: this story and the Moriart two. Newton's Holmes was a
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: fellow by the name of William Challoner, a counterfeiting kingpen
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: and super villain Big Bat of today's tale.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Oh Man, oh Man,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: oh Man. Friends and neighbors, Fellow Ridiculous historians, Welcome to
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the show. I for one, am excited because today's episode
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: concerns one of our favorite genres of historical individuals, the con.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: Artist flim flat a man, which our last episode did
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: as well.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: We have we have a preponderance of con artists in
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the show, and I have no regrets about it. Who
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: am I? I'm Ben.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: That's who you are. I'm Nol. This is Ridiculous History.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: And who's that handsome man outside of the booth? Why
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: that devil as I live and breathe. That's super producer
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Casey Pegram. Oh my goodness, gracious, I love it what
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: people say as I love it breathe. Well, it's funny too,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: because when you said that sound, yes, I do a
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: lot that expression. But when you said that and then
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: the sound happened, a beautiful glint on Casey's pearly white,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: very straight teeth lit up the room. It's true, It's true.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: We off air Nol and I spend a lot of
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: time just sort of staring at Casey when we think
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: he's not looking.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: You know, he always sees though.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sorry I had to find out on air casey.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fine. Though, it's fine. It's endearing, not creepy
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: at all.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Not creepy at all. Let's make that a T shirt.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: We have so many ways to begin today's story. I
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: guess one of the easiest ways to begin it would
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: be to give a brief shout out to the King
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: of Gravity, Isaac Newton.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Can we have an airhorn?
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: There we go?
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: Yes, a boy, Isaac Newton invented gravity.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: He did it beforehand. It was pandemonium and it was nuts.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, an astronomer, a theologian.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: He was described in his day as a natural philosopher,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: one of the predecessors to what we would call a
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: scientist today. He was born in December of sixteen forty two,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: the twenty fifth of December, and he lived until the
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: seventeen twenty seventeen twenty six, seventeen twenty seven. Today's episode
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: does not concern his many many innovations and his scientific pursuits.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: It concerns something much more noir.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: Can I also point out that in his day, he
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: was a dead sexy sob really asexual.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: No way, He's like a sort of a Morrissey figure,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: a less problematic Morrissey figure.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: It's it's not too controversial to say that a lot
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: of people are less problematic than.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Morrissey, Right, I think that's very fair.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: So he did. He did, by all accounts, die a virgin.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: So maybe it's unfair to give him that term asexual
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: or ace, but he did divergin.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: I put forth that he just didn't have time for
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: that kind of shenanigans. He was occupying his time with
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: more important pursuits, celestial pursuits and terrestrial pursuits.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Also true, Yeah, it's it's true. Maybe he was just busy,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: sort of a a Tesla figure. We often hear about
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Isaac Newton in relation to his many many scientific pursuits
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: as well as some of his more spiritual or esoteric pursuits.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: But what many of us may not know, I'll come
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: clean what I did not know before we began researching
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: this episode. He also he also worked as a lawman
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: of sorts.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, now not only a lawman, like a sleuth, like
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: a Batman level detective.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's put it. He took his scientific acumen
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: and his cognitive prowess and he applied it to the
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: problem of crime. Journey with us back to sixteen ninety five,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: England's Royal Mint found out that they had a very,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: very alarming problem. They had a bunch of currency in circulation, right,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: A large portion of that currency was fake. It was counterfeit,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: it was phony, and this is not a good look
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: for the Royal Mint, it's not a good look for
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: the economy at large. And the counterfeitting operations were growing
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: increasingly sophisticated, sort of like in the Terminator franchise, when
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: the original robots are easily distinguishable from humans, but then
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: they get better and better and better and increasingly difficult
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: to identify, unless.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: We forget to mention that the man who discovered this
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: problem of counterfeit coin was Isaac Newton himself after he
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: was made the Warden of the Royal Mint. Not to
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: be confused with like Warden of the North or something,
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: but it really does carry quite a weighty aura the
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: term warden, you know, yeah, yeah.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, and we just got new business cards and I'm
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: kicking myself. We could have chosen some time. Do you
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: think they would have led.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: Us supervising Warden of Production. That sounds very Yeah.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: When I first got business guards here way way back
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: in the day, because I've been here forever, they allowed
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: me to choose my own job title. Casey, you remember
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: this because I was I was pulling everybody, and I
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: got very close to changing my job titled to a
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: life coach or the experience like the Edge? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: but good.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: This guitartoon is very influential.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: I just think meeting someone and having to call them
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the Edge, it's a preposterous expectation.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: He also seems like a pretty boring dude, does he
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: just he's got likes his whole look. He just doesn't
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: seem I could be wrong.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: I'm sure he's a great guy, but he seems like
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: the least edgy type of dude, especially when you go
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: by the name of the Edge.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: You know, nicknames are weird, and he's not hurting anyone.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: I'm glad he's happy. I hope he's happy with the name.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I hope he doesn't feel trapped in that Moniker.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you who wasn't happy.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: It was Warden of the Royal Mint, Sir Isaac Newton,
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: in the year of sixteen ninety six when he made
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: that shocking discovery that twenty percent of the coins that
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: the Mint was circulating were in fact counterfeits, and he
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: decided to set out on a fact finding expedition.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Dare we say an investigation?
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, we dare, because you see, Newton, it turns
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: out was quite talented as warden of the Mint, and
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: he was able to catch quite a few counterfeitters. Yet
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: there was one fellow very high in the world of
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: forgery and counterfeiting, a man named William Challoner, who kept
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: escaping Newton's grasp time after time. William Challoner is someone
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: who could be the subject of Gosh, a multiple episode
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: series all his own, and.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: Much like our friend mister Fritz duff Kine in the
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: previous episode, this gentleman was also something of a villainous figure,
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: a villainous renaissance man if you will.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, A grifter. William Challoner was born sometime in
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: sixteen fifty to a poor family in Warwickshire, but he
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: eventually attained a great financial success through his career in
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: counterfeiting and through his career in con artistry. He started
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: by forging Birmingham groats. That was a English and Irish
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: silver coin that was worth fourpence, or it could also
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: be a Scottish coin originally worth fourpence. And from that
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: point he moved on to creating counterfeit Guiney's crowns, half crowns, banknotes,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: even lottery tickets. There's one side note that we have
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: to get out of the way. He didn't just uh
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: make counterfeit currency for a time. Uh, he also made
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: and sold uh sexual aids.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, sexual coming in aids.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Can we say it on the show?
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Come a third time?
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Can we say it on the show?
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: You think surely we must? Dildosy dildos.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, see, that was such a funny word because to
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: too many it would be considered a swear.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: But it is such a silly, silly word. Yeah, it's you.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Know, it's still somehow sounds less dirty than the phrase dongle.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: Dongle's way worse. Oh it's so bad. But yeah, A.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: A false fallus, Yes there you go, Yes, a counterfeit fallus.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Oh my, you know we out there, we know we
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: talked about this off air, we did, and it's totally true.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: So he was counterf not only was he counterfeiting money,
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: he was also counterfeiting penises.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: So this is this is a a funny episode for
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: us because we had intended to record it earlier and
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: before we had to before I had to leave town
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: for a second, and when we got back together after
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: I came back, we had an extensive, I think what
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: over over an hour and a half kind of quest
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: to figure out if we had recorded this episode or not.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: And I think it was because of the false Fallis discussion,
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: because we talked about it so much off air that
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: we were like, I think we maybe did do it,
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: you know, oh yeah. And then Casey, you know, on
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: the Case to the Rescue, let us know, to our
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: delight in fact, that we had not recorded this yet.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: And this is what you hear before your very ears.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: It was. It was hilarious because, as we do so often,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: the two of us couldn't figure out what we were
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: supposed to be doing, and so we basically flamed Casey, say,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: please tell us what we have or have not done.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: In Casey, by the way, thank you so much for
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: keeping the ship on course my pleasure.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Casey always on the case, always perpetually on the case.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: So here we are William Challoner. He is described as
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: a wilful youth with dishonest tendencies. He is originally apprenticed
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: as a nail maker before he begins working in the
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: thriving counterfeit industry of London. In the sixteen seventies, he
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: purchased a largest state in the country so he could
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: move his minting process away from the heat, away from
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: the heat of London's law enforcement, and he had a
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: pretty good workflow set down. He would hire middlemen who
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: would pass the fake coins into circulation, and those guys
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: had the tough gig in his operation because the middlemen
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: were the ones who were often caught, and when they
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: were caught, they were hanged. Yikes, yikes indeed, and because
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: this was such a risky business, he garnered a reputation
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: sort of a Moriarty of finance, you know, a shadowy kingpin.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: Holy crap, no, you're dead on, because there is like
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: this kind of Batman and Joker or Sherlock and Moriarty
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: relationship between these two men. He's sort of like the
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: one that got away the white whale, you know, for
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: our buddy Isaac Newton, who this guy was a thorn
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: in his side, because, like you said, he did a
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: pretty good job of cleaning up the counterfeit scene, but
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: this gentleman.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Continued to slip through his fingers.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and a big part of this comes about because
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: in the sixteen nineties English currency was moving away from
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: purely coin based stuff enough to note banknotes and paper money,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: and Chaloner, although he had a lot of close calls
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: for a long time, he avoided the law or the
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: punishment for his crimes because the development of paper money
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: was in advance of the laws created to ban forging
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: paper money. Which sounds a little bit word salady. A
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: better way to say it is that technology will typically
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: outpace legislation, where running into it in twenty nineteen will
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: be running into it in the year three thousand, totally
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: sixteen nineties no different, because the wheels of justice grind
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: ever so slowly, while the wheels of commerce and progress
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: tend to be a little more lightning quick. Yeah, and
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: his success became as undoing because he got squarely in
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: the crosshairs of Sir Isaac the Warden himself and Chaloner.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Although he had escaped jail for numerous years and had
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: never had to serve time he had not escaped unscathed.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: He had a long paper trail of arrest and accusations,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: and this helped paint a picture of a guy who
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: spent a lot of time on the wrong side of
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the law, and he was also a rat. Did you
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: hear about this?
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: No? No, I didn't, but nobody likes a rat.
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: He managed to get out of legal trouble multiple times
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: by selling out other counterfeitters, and so of the counterfeitters
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: that he had sold out who had been imprisoned or
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: punished and not killed or not executed, Sir Isaac was
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: able to question these guys and gather many people who
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: would say, yeah, I'll go to court. I will point
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: out that dirty rat Billy Challoner because I want my revenge,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: to which Isaac's all right, let's make it, let's make
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: it official.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Let's do it. Let's make a deal.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: He may have slipped the news spend, but he did
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: not slip the clink because Newton was able to amass
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: enough evidence and these witness testimonies to get him locked up.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: But it didn't really take did it.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: No, No, he bribed the prosecution star witness, paid the
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: witness enough money to flee to Scotland, and then Chaloner
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: was released and he accused Newton of framing an innocent man.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: We should step back for a second and say that
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Newton knows and despise his challenger at this point, because
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: earlier Chaloner had appeared before Parliamentary Committee and he said
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: that Newton was incompetent, terrible at his job and that
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the Mint employees were the ones responsible for the epidemic
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: of counterfeit currency. So this is two strikes against the
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: guy in Newton's mind, and this attack on his integra
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: enrages him. So he decides that he is going to
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: play dirty as well as you will call it an
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: old dirty pool. He began bribing crooks for information, He
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: started making threats. He found not only Challoner's associates, but
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: the wives and mistresses of his associates and started intimidating
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: and threatening them. In short, as Judy Dutton says in
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: an excellent article of Mental Floss, Newton became the dirty
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Harry of his time.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: I don't understand that reference.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Dirty Harry. Are you serious?
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: What is he like? Is he a cop? I don't
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: know what dirty Harry is, Casey, He's.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: A cop that doesn't follow the rules, doesn't like a
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: lot of red.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Tape, so he's sort of like a Surpaco type figure.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: He asks punks if they're feeling lucky.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Clint Eastwood, did he have to be at a big
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: giant gun? Didn't he a big old magnum?
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: Okay, all right, Casey on the case.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Can we get a do you feel like he punk?
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: I know what you're thinking, Bunker, You're thinking did he
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: fire six?
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Shots?
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: Are only five?
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: Now?
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: I tell you the truth?
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: Ever, haud myself and all this excitement, but being this
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: as a forty four bag in the most powerful handgun
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: in the world and will blow your head clean off,
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: you could ask yourself question, do I feel lucky? Well?
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Do you punk? Perfect?
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: So yes, the comparison does hold because he was operating
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: outside of the law, and he spent two more years
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: chasing down Challenger, and eventually his ethically questionable methods give
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: him enough evidence to put Challenger away for good.
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: I picture Isaac Newton with his you know, very expertly
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: quaffed ringlets, you know, and his kind of a ruffel shirt,
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: you know, in some sort of velvet. Would you call
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: that a doublet or something like that like waterboarding dudes
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: and back room you know, dunking their heads and toilets
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: and stuff like that, just to get to this guy, Chaloner,
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: you know, and who knows.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: It could have happened just like that.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: This is sterio. But for some reason, I see I
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: see a dildo with the intimidation tactics. Can we we
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: should probably cut that?
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, okay, let's let's let's get your mind
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: out of the of the gutter. He clearly would have
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: used it as more of a blackjack kind of thing.
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: That's what I'm thinking, because I could probably beat somebody
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: with a dildo and it wouldn't leave a mark.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: I'm not like a sack of oranges. Yeah, I'm not.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not thinking of something sexual. I'm thinking
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: of just an intimidation.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: I know I was helping you out to thank you, thanks.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: For the safe. On March third, sixteen ninety nine, Challoner
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: is found guilty of high treason, and he is sentenced
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: to hang the very next day. Before his sentence is
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: carried out, several days before, Challoner has written Newton a
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: long letter proclaiming his innocence, And we have a little
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: bit we can read an excerpt, but we're not going
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: to read the whole letter, because he writes them a
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: series of letters that go on. And here's one example.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: I have been close prisoner eleven weeks, and no friends
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: suffered to come near me but my little child. And
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: I am not guilty of any crime. And why am
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I so strictly confined? I do not know. I doubt sir,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: you are greatly displeased with me about the late business
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: in parliament. But if you knew that truth, you would
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: not be angry with me, for it was brought in
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: by some persons against my desire.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: My favorite line exert that was wonderful read Ben, is.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: I Am going to be method? It says m u
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: r t h e r ed, but then later spells
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: it correctly.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure this is a typo on this website,
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: the Newton Project dot ox dot AC dot UK, but
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: I like to believe that he chose to spell murdered mirthod.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: So he says I'm going to be method, although perhaps
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: you may think not, but tis true. I shall be
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: madered the worse of all murders, that is, in the
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: face of justice with an I. So it's like iftis
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: and unless I am rescued.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: By your merciful hands. Yes. Yeah.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: One of the very last lines he has is, bras
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: consider that these persons that those accuse me are those
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: formerly convicted for crimes, and hope your worship nor the
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: court will believe the suggestions of such evil persons against me.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: That's a very similar argument to what's going on right
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: now in the trial of drug kingpin El Chapo. Apparently,
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: you know, the prosecution had dozens and dozens of witnesses
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: and El Chapo's lawyer had I think no witnesses, and
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: El Chopo didn't even take the stand, and his lawyer's
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: whole defense was, all of these witnesses are scum and
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: they're just trying to, you know, get out of their
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: own problems.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Right, get their own plea deals.
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: And he signs this lettered y're near murdered, humble sevants
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: w challoner. It's quite pitiful because he's literally begging this
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: man for his life. He's been bested by his nemesis,
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: and now he's behind bars, awaiting the noose.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Yep, this did not work. No, Newton felt no pity.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: He even adding an insult to injury. Did the ultimate snub.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: He did not attend the hanging. He stayed home. I
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: guess he was busy. Maybe something was on the seventeenth
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: century netflix, maybe he was you know, it.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: Was probably the crown, it was probably the crowd. Maybe
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: he was at home nursing his ego. But everybody knew
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: he's guilty. Quick correction is said that he was supposed
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: to be hanging to the next day. He was sentenced
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: the day after the trial, and he had a fortnight
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: in which he wrote those letters.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: What is that two weeks time?
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a period of two weeks. And over these
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: two weeks, that's when he writes these series of increasingly
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: desperate letters, not just in Newton, but to Justin Railton,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: who was the supervising magistrate. And you can see the
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: stages of grief. They are apparent in these letters.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Let's go through them.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Of course, there are five stages. The first is denial,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: which he was obviously doing. Then there's anger, he was
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: aggressive in these letters. Then there's bargaining, which he had
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: dubbed before by saying he would name other people. Then
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: there's depression, which was probably a personal thing for him,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: and acceptance, which I don't think he really reached. So
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Newton had written during Chaloner's first trial, the one where
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: he got away, that the counterfeiter had formed a quote
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: confederacy against the Wold and Chaloner could have lived a long,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: honest life had he let the money and the government alone.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: After this is very interesting, and this is kind of sketchy.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: After Chaloner is executed, Newton takes all the records of
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: his investigation and burns them. He destroys all records of
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: his involvement in the investigation, and nowadays scholars believe that
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: is solely to cover up the ways that he broke
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: the law in pursuit of this counterfeiter. Jeez, so he
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: definitely did some dirty cop tactics. He continues working in
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: law enforcement until seventeen o three, when he turns in
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: his badge figuratively speaking, and becomes President of the Royal Society,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: returning to the world of academia.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, to live out his twilight years. But man, he
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: had a stretch there for a while. He was something
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: of a bad cop. Badass, wasn't it.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Absolutely And there ends the story of the counterfeit Kingpin
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: William Challoner, who was hanged on the twenty second March
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: sixteen ninety nine, The Physicist and the Forger, The Physicist
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: and the Forger. That's wonderful. This also reminds me I
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: have a great book I would like to recommend, called
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: The Professor and the Madman. Did we ever talk about
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: this on air? We had to. We did an episode
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: related to this guy, The Oxford English Dictionary.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, it doesn't ring about Ben. It's all a
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: blur for me.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: It's The Professor and the Madman, a tale of murder,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: insanity and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Reminds
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: me of the strange pairing we have here with Newton
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: and Challoner. And what, you know, what it inspires me
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: to think about would be other stories of these great rivalries,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like the Untouchables and organized crime.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: I wonder what other stories are out there. There's something
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: so compelling, so there's a high drama to it, you know.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Big time. I'd love to see a film adaptation of
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: this rivalry.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Who would play Newton?
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: I'm going to say, I don't know, maybe Benedict Cumberbatch.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Are you are you? Are you getting a Sherlock? I
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: would be interested to see Steve Buscemi play either of
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: these characters. I think he would make a fantastic Newton.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: I think you're right, but I honestly think he might
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: do better as the weird, twitchy villain guy.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Because of his eyes.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Yep, those eyes.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Let us know what stories of personal crime rivalries have
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: captured your attention, and don't just let us know. You
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: can also let your fellow listeners know by finding us
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: on Instagram, by finding us on Twitter, or by finding
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: us on our Facebook community page, Ridiculous Historians.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: Big thanks to super producer Casey Pegram, to Alex Williams,
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: who composed our theme, to Gabe, our delightful and talented
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: research associate, and to you Ridiculous Historians for checking out
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: the show.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Speaking of checking out, if you want to see our
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: off air, sometimes non ridiculous history related adventures, you can
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: follow us on our very own instagrams. I am in
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: a burst of creativity at Ben Bullen.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: And I am at Embryonic Insider.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Which I don't think I've ever said this on air.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: I don't think i've said this to you in person ever.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: We've known each other for years, but I think that's
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: a cool name.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: Oh thanks, man, it's actually it was a name of
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: a song in a band that I was in, a
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: kind of a little bit embarrassing, tidbit for my youth,
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: kind of like a new metal type band that you
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: cannot find anywhere, so don't even look around for it.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: We had a song called Embryonic inside and changed it.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: It goes It's the inside scoop.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Peep Peek behind the Curtain for more inside scoops on
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the ridiculous, bizarre and hilarious tales of human History. Stay
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: tuned for our upcoming episodes, and swing by our website,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous Hisstoryshow dot com. We're in the t shirt business,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: as I think we've mentioned before, and you know it's
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: probably time for us to add some new t shirts.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: Noll.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: My favorite and our newest is Casey on the Case.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: Does it exists?
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's there. It's really cool. Casey. I don't
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: think I didn't hear you slip in that other Casey
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: on the Case sound cute. No, seriously, man, you don't
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: have to do it every time.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: We say the phrase, but it's fine when he does.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: It's so good. See you next time, folks.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.