Counterfeit coins could ruin economy

oday the use of cash has become so infrequent that counterfeit crime is negligible.

One hundred and fifty years ago, when coin and bill were the only legal tender, it had the potential to ruin the colonial economy.

In Ngā ruawā hia, in 1873, Catherine Gilmore, wife of George Gilmore, the owner of the town’s general store, came before the courts on a charge of ‘‘uttering counterfeit coin purporting to be a half sovereign’’. The case was unusual in that it pitted Mā ori plaintiffs against a bastion of the local capitalist establishment.

Neither the judiciary nor the print media were to prove up to the challenge.

As reported in the then fledgling Waikato Times and elsewhere, the case for the prosecution soon collapsed.

Plaintive Rehi and wife were said to have ‘‘evidently come to court with a very well prepared lesson, but in many particulars it did not stand crossexamination’’.

A third witness, Paopao, ‘‘tendered to contradict the evidence of the former on some of the material points’’.

By comparison, Charles Bell, the only Pakeha to give testimony, who had received the coin from Rehi, was implicitly believed.

Mr Hay, counsel for the defence, confined his contribution to an assertion that ‘‘there were a great many inconsistencies in evidence’’, concluding that ‘‘it was apparent that it had undergone the process of concoction’’.

Furthermore, Hay contended that ‘‘there was no evidence that the coin was counterfeit’’.

Exactly why the court could not itself ascertain the validity of the sovereign in question is unclear.

Ultimately, the point proved immaterial.

Embracing both prejudice and partiality, Resident Magistrate W. N. Searancke, stated that ‘‘he did not know how the native came by the half-sovereign but almost suspected it to have been stolen from Mr Gilmore’s store . . . [given] that it was a fact of general notoriety that a native could not resist the temptation of stealing’’.

Volunteering that he had ‘‘known Mr and Mrs Gilmore for a number of years’’, declaring them to be ‘‘respectable and industrious settlers’’, Searancke insisted that ‘‘Mrs Gilmore would leave the court without any stain or blemish upon her character’’.