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The Most Deceitful Events that Played Out In History

Khalid Elhassan March 27, 2022 37 min

16. Little Honor Among Thieves

A 1690s French pistole, of the kind forged by William Chaloner. Pinterest

William Chaloner’s Dover Castle scam did not pan out. So he hit upon another lucrative deceit: he would provide the authorities with a fake list of Jacobites, and then manage to get himself employed by the government to investigate them. In one of his scams in this period, he got an accomplice named Coppinger to write a treasonous Jacobite satire. The idea was to use the satire to ensnare a printer and get him to print it, and thus commit a highly illegal and treasonous act.

Chaloner would then make a beeline for the authorities, and turn in the printer in exchange for a generous reward. There is little honor among thieves, however, and the accomplice tried to hog the entire reward for himself by getting Chaloner out of the way. Coppinger denounced Chaloner for counterfeiting and had him sent to Newgate Prison. Somehow, Chaloner managed to talk his way out of it. He even turned the tables on his erstwhile accomplice, and paid Coppinger back for his deceit by getting him hanged for writing the Jacobite satire.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.