Henry Fauntleroy
Henry Fauntleroy | |
|---|---|
| Born | Template:Birth date England |
| Died | November 30, 1824 (aged 40) |
| Occupation | Banker |
| Known for | Involvement in forgery, last executions for forgery in England |
Henry Fauntleroy (12 October 1784 – 30 November 1824) was an English banker known for his involvement in forgery.
Fauntleroy began his career as a clerk at Marsh, Sibbald & Co., a London banking firm co-established by his father, where he spent seven years before becoming a partner and assuming complete control over the bank's management. In 1824, the institution halted payments, leading to Fauntleroy’s arrest on charges of forging trustees' signatures to divert trust funds unlawfully. It was rumored that he had misappropriated approximately £250,000, which he purportedly wasted on extravagant living. During his trial at the Old Bailey, he confessed to the forgeries but maintained that the money was used to settle his bank’s liabilities.
The court found him guilty and sentenced him to death by hanging. Throughout the trial, seventeen merchants and bankers attested to his overall honesty. Despite vigorous advocacy from prominent supporters and multiple legal appeals—including a proposal from an Italian named Edmund Angelini to assume Fauntleroy’s place on the gallows—the execution proceeded in November 1824. According to The Times, around 100,000 spectators witnessed the event. Samuel Warren later described observing the execution in his work Miscellanies.
Fauntleroy was buried in a family vault located at Bunhill Fields Burial Ground. A long-standing but unsubstantiated legend claimed that he evaded execution by means of a silver tube and subsequently lived overseas.
His execution was among the final instances of capital punishment for forgery before such offenses ceased to be punishable by death under the Forgery, Abolition of Punishment of Death Act 1832 and the Forgery Act 1837. This stands in contrast to the case of fraudster Lancelot Cooper, who was condemned to death but ultimately had his sentence commuted to transportation, likely due to aristocratic intervention.
Fauntleroy’s story has inspired cultural portrayals; he is featured prominently in Susan Grossey’s 2013 novel Fatal Forgery, while Nathaniel Hawthorne included a minor banker character named Fauntleroy in his 1852 work The Blithedale Romance.
Further reading
- Griffiths, Chronicles of Newgate, ii. 294–300
- Pierce Egan, Account of the Trial of Mr Fauntleroy, 1824
- Marsh family history website jjhc.info
- History of the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, with Some Principal Inscriptions (1902)