CRAGG VALE COINERS
In the 18th century, before canals, railways and roads, the Calder Valley was remote and inaccessible: a place where a notorious gang could mastermind a counterfeiting operation without arousing suspicions.
“David Hartley had worked as an ironworker in Birmingham,” explains Lynn Grady, visitor services manager at Calderdale Museums Service. “It’s likely he picked up the skills there before moving back to the Calder Valley, where his father rented Bell House in Cragg Vale.” Here, he convinced local publicans to hand over coins, with the promise of paying them back with interest. He then set about clipping off the edges so the coins were slightly, but imperceptibly, smaller. The accumulated clippings were melted down to make new blank coins, which were stamped with metal dies and put back into circulation.
“Hartley became the leader of the local coiners, organised them into a gang, and took the moniker ‘King David’,” says Lynn. It was the scale and organisation of the Cragg Vale Coiners that made them such a threat to the economy. “Law enforcement was often lax, stretched or non-existent, and the coining gang used intimidation and even murder to maintain control. To secure a prosecution, they had to be caught in the act of clipping, in possession of a casting die, or with the reliable testimony of a witness.”
Rumours eventually alerted the authorities, and an excise man, named William Deighton, was sent to investigate. In October 1769, Hartley was arrested, based on the testimony of James Broadbent. Hartley’s brother, Isaac, offered a reward to anyone who would kill Deighton, and on 10 November 1769, Deighton was shot in Halifax.
“A reward of £100 was offered in return for evidence that would lead to the killers, as well as amnesty to those turning King’s evidence. The gang began to turn on each other, and many arrests followed,” says Lynn.
Hartley was hanged at York’s Tyburn gallows on 28 April 1770 and is now buried in the graveyard at Heptonstall church. “Robert Thomas and Matthew Normanton were executed for Deighton’s murder,” says Lynn. “They had been arrested once before, but the case had collapsed. They were later convicted on the testimony of another coiner and, because they could not be tried again for murder, they were executed for stealing Deighton’s money as he lay dying. Both were hanged in York and their bodies brought to hang in chains on the hill above Halifax as a warning to others.”