Yorkshire Almanac The West Riding Sessions contemplates the potential consequences of a post-dated watermark

20 October 1836: The West Riding Sessions contemplates the potential consequences of a post-dated watermark

Halifax Express. 1836/10/29. The Water-mark on Paper. Times. London: Times. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

THE WATER-MARK ON PAPER
An extraordinary sensation was produced among the legal gentlemen at the West Riding Sessions at Leeds, last week, by the following singular circumstance. A Commissioner of the Insolvent Court had been sitting at Wakefield, and used a description of paper called foolscap furnished by the Government stationer: by a lucky accident the watermark was discovered to be “1837.” A sheet of the paper was produced in the Sessions Court by Messrs. Maude and Marshall, barristers, and the attention of the Court was called to the fact of paper being used in 1836 with 1837 marked upon it. The case was put of a disputed will comprising large possessions and great wealth, and affecting the interests of families, &c., very materially. What would be the consequence if the watermark of the paper were found to be subsequent to the date of the will? Or suppose the paper were stamped – a case not only possible, but extremely probable – and the instrument written on such paper were questioned, and the watermark ascertained as before, it is impossible to foresee the consequences. The character of the first attornies, whose reputation was perfectly unblemished, might thus become compromised, without their being at all to blame in the matter. Or, descending to humble life, we will suppose a case in the Court of Requests; a poor man is sued for a debt which he has paid, he produces his receipt, but the water-mark of the paper on which it is is examined, and being dated a year subsequent to the date of his receipt, not only is his reputation destroyed, but he has to pay over again a debt which he has already discharged, and he may be pauperized and disgraced for life. It would be easy to multiply instances where this paper might produce disastrous effects: the above will suffice; and we hope the public will be warned. The paper produced at the Leeds Sessions will be transmitted to Mr. Baron Parke. – Halifax Express.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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£7K was about £0.75m in May 2024 – chicken-feed for Covid-era embezzlers.

They were not the only beneficiaries:

When the functions of the late Corporation of Leeds were about to cease, by virtue of the Municipal Bill, the members voted to Mr. Adolphus jun., the son of the eminent barrister and Deputy Recorder of that Corporation, the sum of one hundred guineas, in testimony of their esteem, and as a small but grateful record of their estimation of his services. Mr. Adolphus refused to accept the tribute, excusing himself upon the plea that he could not ???? to himself the idea of allowing the last act of the corporation to be that of giving a sum of money to one of its legal advisers (Morning Post 1836/04/06)

The Spectator has a follow-up (Gale doesn’t have Leeds Mercury scans for 1836!):

The Solicitor-General has given his opinion, that the conduct of the old Leeds Corporation, in alienating their funds, was illegal and fraudulent, and that the seven thousand pounds may be recovered on an application to the Court of Chancery. We are sure the burgesses of Leeds will require their Council to institute proceedings for the recovery of the property without delay, if the old Corporation should have the audacity to persist in their wrongful act, and that the borough will support the Council in those proceedings.—Leeds Mercury.(Spectator 1836/04/09)

This was during the period of Whig rule nationally 1835-41 under Viscount Melbourne, and there is probably a Tory response to the Solicitor General somewhere. But what happened eventually? Were there sanctions for the guilty members of the Corporation? Who were they? For that at least John Mayhall has the answer:

LEEDS CORPORATE BODY, 1834-5.
MAYOR: Griffith Wright.
RECORDER: Charles Milner.
DEPUTY RECORDER: John Leycester Adolphus.
ALDERMEN:-Henry Hall, George Banks, Christopher Beckett, William Hey, Benjamin Sadler, Thomas Beckett, Thomas Blayds, Ralph Markland, Rt. William Dinsey Thorp, Richard Bramley, Joseph Robert Atkinson, William Perfect.
ASSISTANTS:-Jonathan Wilks, Joseph Ingham, John G. Uppleby, Fountain Brown, Michael Thomas Sadler, Joseph Henry Ridsdale, William Wilks, Joseph Mason Tennant, William Hey, junr., John Wilkinson, Charles Brown, William Waite, Benjamin Holroyd, William Osburn, junr., John Upton, William Gott, Thomas Motley, Francis Chorley, Robert Harrison, John Cawood, William Milnes, Thomas Charlesworth, George Hirst.
TOWN CLERK: James Nicholson.
CORONER: Robert Barr.
CHIEF CONSTABLE: Edward Read.
DEPUTY CONSTABLE: James Ingham.
SERJEANT AT MACE: George Hanson.
CLERK OF THE MARKETS, AND BILLET MASTER: James Fairclough.
BEADLE: J. Handley.
CAPTAIN OF THE WATCH. Benjamin Wool.
GAOLER: James Lancaster
TOWN’S CRIER: Benjamin Spencer.
(Mayhall 1860)