Kentish Chronicle, Saturday 3 June 1865.

The Adventures of Some Banknotes.

On Saturday last, a man named Richard Holness, a woodreeve, residing at Herne, went to Messrs. Hammond and Co's Bank, Canterbury and cashed a £60 check, for which she received £10 in gold and £50 in notes. In passing through St. Margaret's Street he manage somehow or other to drop the notes out of his pocket. He did not discover his loss until the following morning, when he found the gold in a bag in his pockets and the notes gone. He immediately went to Superintendent Davies, and who having ascertained the number of the notes, took prompt measures to recover the same. He had them cried and made all the necessary enquiries. On Sunday evening a boy in the employ of Mr. Prett, Palace Street, brought one £5 note to the Superintendent being one of those missing, and said he had received it off a boy named Nash, who was apprenticed to Mr. Swain of Wincheap. The Superintendent sent for Nash, who, said that he picked up the note in St. Margaret's, and that he did not know what it was. He had never seen one before, and he thought it was a paid bill, as he saw Mr. Furley's name at the bottom of the note, and he gave it to the little boy. He said that he also saw two labouring men, one short and the other tall pick up some more notes at the same time. From enquiries made by the Superintendent, he traced out that the two men in question were named respectively Sutton and Newing. Sutton the same evening went to the police station, having heard that the notes had been cried, and produced two £10 and five £5 notes, which he said he and Newing had picked up in St. Margaret's. The owner of the notes who is but a poor man, very liberally rewarded the finders with £4, which the Superintendent divided by giving Sutton £3, for picking up notes to the value of £40; Newing with 10s., for a £5 note; and the other two boys 5s. each, for the remaining £5 note. The division of the reward, however, caused a quarrel on Monday evening, between Newing and another man named Barber, who was with him at the time he picked up the note, and who thought he had some claim for a portion of the reward. The men quarrelled and fought in the "Black Boy" and afterwards in the Buttermarket. They were taken into custody, and brought before the magistrates on Tuesday morning, when the landlord of the "Black Boy" said he did not wish press the charged, and they were dismissed with a caution.