Isaac Newton – Detective

Alpha M · 2017-04-24T18:25:16+00:00

Isaac Newton, yes, the one who wrote the Principia. It may come as a surprise to learn that after making his scientific discoveries, Newton ended up in charge of producing England's money as the Warden of the Royal Mint. One of the traditional duties that came with the position was hunting down counterfeiters. Not that Newton actually wanted to hunt down counterfeiters. He complained about it to the powers that be, but they told him to suck it up. So he was left with no choice. At that time, there was no police force, so his first step was to create his own law enforcement agency (quite a first step!) He gradually built up a web of informants and spies that extended throughout Europe. Newton also had to interrogate suspects himself, do all the work that would be necessary to put a case together for the jury, capture the suspects, and deposit them into the hands of the legal system for hopeful execution. (If a suspect was convicted, the punishment for counterfeiting was death.) Levenson (2009) describes Newton's approach toward law enforcement as "terrifyingly persistent." White (1997) notes that "Newton was feared and reviled in equal measure both by his prisoners as they awaited execution and by those he sought to monitor going about their illegal trade." But it was not even safe to criticize the Warden of the Mint in the comfort of one's own cell, because a prisoner's cellmates might very well be informants working for Newton in exchange for clemency. So Newton got to hear prisoners making complaints like, "Damn my blood, I had been out before now but for him," or accusing him of being a "rogue," or threatening to shoot him. Curse those meddlesome! Newton would go out into taverns to discuss matters with witnesses, but in some matters he remained a homebody. He preferred to interrogate suspects at his workplace, the Tower of London. The counterfeiters noted this tendency and started monitoring who came and left the Tower so that they would know who was singing. Newton preferred to follow a set interrogation procedure and accumulated boxes of detailed notes. Newton was interested in removing the root motivation for crime rather than endlessly catching and punishing criminals. He discerned how various monetary conditions were providing an economic incentive for crime, and put together some suggestions on how the incentives could be removed. Alas, his excellent ideas would have had the unfortunate side effect of making people who were currently rich less so, and were therefore ignored. Newton had an opponent by the name of William Chaloner. Chaloner was no average counterfeiter, nor was he content merely to coin money. An accomplished scam artist, he actually tried to worm his way into the Mint itself in a supervisory capacity. He wrote tracts about how to prevent counterfeiting, suggested there was corruption within the Mint, and offered his humble services to straighten things out. Newton hated him on a personal level. The Warden of the Mint proceeded to interview, bribe, and threaten anyone associated with Chaloner in an effort to accumulate the mound of evidence that would be necessary to hang him. (And even this might not have been enough, since Chaloner had already paid off members of the jury to find him innocent—but his scheme didn't pan out.) Finally Newton was successful; ignoring the pitiful letters in which Chaloner bewailed his innocence with guile, Newton dumped a massive pile of evidence on the jury. They had Chaloner prosecuted, convicted and put to death. Newton didn't even bother attending the execution. Next time you think of Sir Isaac Newton, imagine him sitting in the dark bowels of the Tower of London, fingers steepled as he stares off into space, pondering not universal forces, but how to undermine the tangled criminal web of London.

Thread starter Alpha M
Start date Apr 24, 2017

Alpha M

Senior Member

Apr 24, 2017

Alpha M

Senior Member

Apr 24, 2017

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