The last day of the 1820s marked the last hanging for forgery in Great Britain: that of Thomas Maynard, at London’s Newgate Prison.

Maynard was charged with two other men* for forging an order of His Majesty’s Customs to pay them £1,973. They got the money and for a few months had that blessed relief from the weight of penury and debt; one of the numerous witnesses in their case described how one of Maynard’s confederates “was in difficulties in the year 1828 … I saw him in June last, when he told me his wife had 700l.”

It must have been nice, but they weren’t quite quick enough about executing their plan to sail for America.

Although the sovereign himself was the victim in this instance, British juries had grown ever more reluctant in the early 19th century to impose capital punishment for faking a document to non-violently steal some money — although there were still 218 such executions over the first 30 years of the century.

The availability of the death penalty for such a deed was repealed in 1832.

* Joseph West, who was acquitted, and Richard Jones, who was convicted only as an accessory and transported to Australia.

On this day..

• 1666: James Blackwood and John M'Coul, two Covenanter martyrs
• 1793: Armand Louis de Gontaut
• 2006: Gong Runbo, serial killer
• 1819: John Booth and Thomas Wildish, minor crooks
• 1460: Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury
• 1502: Vitellozzo Vitelli and Oliverotto da Fermo, Borgia casualties
• 1987: Seven Suriname Maroons
• 1942: Three Bialystok Jews
• 1905: Rebellious workers of the Red Presnia district
• 1960: The assassins of Hazza Majali
• 1900: En Hai, the murderer of von Ketteler
• 1898: Joseph Vacher