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.