| markets. In 1867 they toured the Windsor area selling their
creations until a clergyman recognised the objects and alerted
the police. Billy and Charley were taken to court, but there
were insufficient grounds for prosecution and they fled back to
London28
(strangely Billy gave his name as George Henry Smith in court). By 1869 Billy and Charley were finding it so difficult to sell their forgeries that Henry Syer Cuming could buy them for a penny29. Charley Eaton died on January 4th 1870, aged 35. His death certificate gave the cause of his death as consumption and the place of his death as a tenement in Tower Hamlets. There is no evidence that he died a wealthy man. Later that year Billy Smith (who had taken the name William Monk) tried to sell a badge bearing a picture of the Lamb of God (Fig. 6). He was unable to find a buyer and eventually confessed to having
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copied the design from a butter mould30. In 1871
he met with a similar lack of success when he tried to sell a
lead copy of a 13th century jug31. After this he
disappears from history and his fate is unknown. There is no record of Billy and Charley’s output, but evidence presented in court at Guildford in 1858 suggested that they manufactured between 1000 and 2000 objects in a year. This indicates that they produced four or five a day (which sounds reasonable considering their working conditions). Between then and 1861 they could have produced three or four times as many forgeries. Even if they reduced production after 1861 they could have manufactured between 5000 and 10,000 items during their careers. Billy and Charley forgeries continue to circulate. One was mistaken for a Vampire Talisman and featured prominently in a work on the paranormal!32. Examples can be seen in several London museums, and there is a particularly interesting display in the Cuming Museum.
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