THOMAS CHALFONT
A Post-Office Sorter, executed before Newgate, 11th of November, 1800, for stealing a Bank-Note out of a Letter
THOMAS CHALFONT, aged seventeen, was indicted upon the capital charge, for that he, being a person employed in business relating to the Post Office, did feloniously steal out of a certain letter, containing three bills, a Banbury bank-bill, of the value of ten pounds, the property of Bernard Bedwell, John Yates, Bernard Bedwell, junior, and Philip Bedwell. This letter, instead of arriving on the 18th, in due course, was not received until the 19th, and then contained but two bills, the words "three" in the letter being altered to "two" and the "thirty" to "twenty."
The bill in the indictment (the one missing) was found to have been honoured at a banker's, for which a Bank of England note for ten pounds was given; and this individual note was proved to have passed through the hands of the prisoner, who wrote his own name upon the back of it, after several other endorsements, and paid it to the clerk of the Receiver-General of the Post Office.
The jury withdrew for nearly an hour, and on their return pronounced him guilty. He was executed.
About a year before he suffered, a letter-carrier, named John Williams, was executed at the same fatal place for stealing a Salisbury bank-note out of a letter entrusted to his charge; and yet this proved no warning to Chalfont.