This large and varied series of pseudo antiquities takes its name from
the makers, William Smith and Charles Eaton. From a workshop in
Rosemary Lane / Royal Mint Street (exact location
now unknown), they produced, between 1857 and 1870, thousands of objects,
in lead and brass, intended to dupe a public eager to acquire examples of
the sorts of medieval antiquities being discovered in an ever growing London.
The first group were sold to a small time antiques dealer William
Edwards who resold then to established dealer Thomas Eastwood (premises
in City Road). They came to the notice of antiquarians when Eastwood offered
them, as “a remarkably curious and unique collection of leaden signs or
badges of the time of Richard II”, to Thomas Bateman, a wealthy Peak District
archaeologist and collector. As knowledge of these fabulous items spread,
their authenticity was queried and adverse comments made in learned journals.
A court case ensued between one of these journals and Thomas Eastwood which
did not resolve the matter, so leaving the principals to continue for so
long that one contemporary publication later described them as “those notorious
scamps”.
They have been the subject of numerous articles over more
than a century and we reproduce below the most thoroughly researched, as
we do not think it can be improved upon.
What these publication
lack, however, are details of the objects themselves and remedying this
will be the object of this web site. Initially drawn from our own collection
and supplemented by other collections both public and private, we will attempt
to show how wide ranging are the manufactures of these illiterate (apparently)
but ingenious men. Criminals certainly, dismissed as mud larks or riverside
labourers often, they also possessed sufficient skills and imagination to
fool many highly educated men, and nowadays their fabrications sometimes
fetch more than “the genuine article”.
Click the following button to view a comprehensive article, 'The Billy and Charley forgeries', written by Robert Halliday, published in the Winter 1986 edition of 'the London Archaeologist'. Reproduced here with the author's consent.