Revealed, secret of the £50m prankster
I T was pri nted more t han 50million times, each impression never differing from the last.
Which makes a little piece of vandalism by a Scottish apprentice engraver all the more audacious.
The Edinburgh print worker subtly carved his name, WH Egan, on the master printing plate for the £1 note in tiny lettering without anyone realising.
Millions of the notes were run off over the next 11 years with his name on the back.
It wasn’t until 34 years later, when Mr Egan walked into a bank and confessed, that his stunt was revealed.
Using a magnifying glass and turning the Royal Bank of Scotland £1 note upside down, he showed a chief cashier his name hidden in cobblestones in front of an image of the Bank of Glasgow building.
Two examples of the note will be exhibited at the forthcoming World Paper Money Fair held in London by the International Bank Note Society.
The notes are described as ‘curiosity items’ but are not very valuable as so many were printed between 1956 and 1967.
Mr Egan worked for printer W & AK Johnston in the capital, which had the contract to print the Bank of Scotland notes at the time. He was given the job of redrawing the worn- out metal plate for the £1 note that was first issued in 1927.
The front depicted an image of King George I and the back had two decorative designs of the Bank of Edinburgh and the Bank of Glasgow.
Mr Egan left his mark among the hundreds of cobbles in the street outside the Glasgow building. Jonathan Callaway, a director of the International Bank Note Society, said: ‘You can’t see his name very easily – you would have to know it was there – and nobody realised what he had done.
‘He must have thought somebody would spot his personal addition before the printing process but, maybe to his horror, it got through the quality control process.
‘I suppose by that stage he felt he had no choice but to keep quiet and hope nobody would realise.
‘The company would have had to re-engrave the plate again, which would have been a fairly expensive business and he probably would have been sacked.
‘At least 50million of the notes with his name on were printed and distributed around Scotland and England.
‘Quite why he chose to admit to it so many years later, I don’t know. Maybe it was something he wanted to get off his chest before he died.’
The World Paper Money Fair is being held at the Bloomsbury Hotel in London on October 2-3.