Robert Spring, a 19th century forger (伪造者), was so good at his profession that he was able to make his living for 15 years by selling false signatures of famous Americans. Spring was horn in England in 1813 and arrived in Philadelphia in 1858 to open a book store. At first he prospered by selling his small but genuine collection of early U. S. auto graphs. Discovering his ability at copying handwriting, he began imitating signatures of George Washington and Ben Franklin and writing them on the title pages of Old books. To lessen the chance of detection, he sent his forgeries to England and Canada for sale and circulation.
Forgers have a hard time selling their products. A forger can′t approach a respectable buyer but must deal with people who don′t have much knowledge in the aged paper of the title-page, and who can′t treat paper and ink with chemicals.
In Spring′s time, right after the Civil War, Britain was still fond of the Southern states, so Spring invented a respectable maiden lady known as Miss Fanny Jackson, the only daughter of General “Stonewall” Jackson. For several years Miss Fanny′s financial problems forced her to sell a great number of letters and manuscripts belonging to her famous father. Spring had to work very hard to satisfy the demand. All this activity did not prevent Spring from dying in poverty, leaving sharp-eyed experts the difficult task of separating his forgeries from the originals.
