A Forger's Tale

By Michael Saint

Michael Saint was convicted at an East London Court for printing the largest amount of foreign currency ever found in Britain. The currency was Spanish pesetas and he was sentenced to six years imprisonment. In the dock with him stood John Dean, Sylvia Smith and a Grass.

Born into a poor East London Family, Michael Saint became the most successful forger in British history. Michael manages to laugh at himself and you will laugh along with him. Humour has replaced mindless violence and foul language usually to be found in True Crime books. This is the story of his early life, the events leading up to the printing of the money, his arrest and subsequent life in prison.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329017948

Michael Saint

Michael Saint was born in Cardiff, South Wales, in 1939. His late father, at the age of fourteen (fifteen was the legal age) was employed as a cabin boy on a tramp ship out of Barry. During his three years at sea, he visited many countries. He didn’t have much leisure time; however, he spent much of it listening to the tales of the Arab stokers in the boiler room and sampling their strange meals. Obviously, they took advantage of his youthful innocence, taking artistic licence (with much bloodletting) to tell him stories from their varying lifestyles. These remained in Michael’s mind until he retired and became the inspiration for the dramatic prologue of The Djinn’s Retribution.

Book preview

A Forger's Tale

THE UNFORTUNATE FORGER

By Michael Saint

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Contents

Covering Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Covering Introduction

In January 2000, Michael Saint was convicted at Snaresbrook Crown Court, East London, for printing the largest amount of counterfeit foreign currency ever found in Britain. The currency was Spanish pesetas, and he was sentenced to six years imprisonment.  In the dock with him stood John Dean, Sylvia Smith and a grass.

Michael became the most successful forger in British History and this is the story of the events leading up to the printing of the money, his arrest and subsequent life in prison.

Chapter One

I stood in the dock at Snaresbrook Crown Court getting bored with legal arguments and a bit dreamy. I have been dragged out of my comfy bed in Pentonville prison at silly o’clock to be here and am starting to drift off. I know for a fact I am going to be re-united with my prison bed later in the day.

The dock is the loneliest place in you can be, no one can really help you, not your solicitor, your barrister or even the Samaritans. You are on your own.

Judge Fishcake is looking down his nose at me, peering at me through his glasses. He is sitting there with a wig and gown on and has the cheek to call me bent.

I start to drift off deeper as Judge Fishcake starts to speak and am not giving him the attention he no doubt thinks he deserves.

Michael Saint you have pleaded guilty to printing the largest amount of foreign currency ever found in Great Britain. The prosecution say these forgeries are the best they have ever seen and almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

‘Fuck me’ I think, ‘I’m gonna get the Queen’s award to Industry here and there was me all worried.’

Fishcake continues, I sentence you to sit on the naughty step for six hours and go to bed with no tea for six months. Take him down.

‘Bloody brilliant, six hours on the naughty step how hard can that be? I’ll take a dirty book to read. And my barrister is terrific; he’ll soon appeal against the going to bed with no tea and I’ll get that quashed. What a result, home in time for the tea I’m not going to get!" Better phone Pentonville and cancel my room for the night.

Sadly as I snapped back into the real world I realised I was a victim of selective hearing.

What old Fishcake had actually said was that I was going to give Her Majesty pleasure for the next six years. Oh well at least that’s my accommodation sorted out for a while.

He followed on with a commendation for the Old Bill who were sitting just in front of me basking in their own glory.

After quickly poking my tongue out at said Old Bill I was led out of the dock to the dungeons below the court to await my taxi to Pentonville.

Sitting in the cells I began to wonder how all this had started.

I was born in Barking, East London in July 1947. It had been the coldest winter since 1881 so I don’t suppose I was in any rush to be born but hey, it was summer now and I had to come out sometime, so there I was.

All the world was young, the Second World War had just finished after Hitler realised he couldn’t live with his soppy haircut and moustache anymore and shot himself. The rich wiped their bums on Izal toilet paper which doubled as sandpaper, and a chip was something you put salt and vinegar on.

There was a general hatred of all things German, you couldn’t even catch German measles, you had to have English ones or go without. It was forbidden to speak German in our house, I rather unnecessary rule I thought, as the only German anyone around our way knew in those days was Heil Hitler and that’s not the sort of thing you drop into conversation at the dinner table. Any form of goose-stepping was out as well.

I had five brothers and sisters and we all shared a tiny ramshackle house in North Street, Barking. We slept six to a bed, three up one end and three the other, and in view of the fact that there was virtually no heating this was no bad thing.

Apart from only one coal fire we had no heating, no hot water, no bath except for the tin one hanging on the garden fence and an outside toilet.

A visit to the toilet was an awful experience, especially during the night. After clambering over the other people in the bed you had to fumble your way downstairs in the dark out to the toilet. You then had to find, in the dark again, the squares of newspaper torn up to use as toilet paper, nobody used real toilet paper in those days, except the afore mentioned rich of course.

As the newsprint used to rub off, I suppose thousands of people used to walk round with yesterday’s headlines printed on their arses.

None of that was as bad as the fact that the house was infested with rats. This being shortly after the war there were loads of bomb sites locally where the rats could live, but on their days off, nights out etc, being friendly neighbourhood rats, they would visit us.

I don’t know why they chose to visit us, it wasn’t to keep warm as the house was freezing and it certainly wasn’t for the food cos my mums’ cooking was terrible. Perhaps they just liked our company. I definitely didn’t like theirs and to this day am terrified of them, yet I seem to attract them, wherever I go a bastard rat jumps out to say hello.

Almost next door to our house was a Quaker cemetery, Elizabeth Fry, famous Quaker and prison reformer (God bless prison reformers) was buried there.

When I was about four years old I learned to climb over the cemetery wall when it was locked and empty and pinch the flowers left on the graves. I reshuffled them a bit and made them into small bouquets which I sold on the wall of the Working Mens club which was opposite our house.

Anyway, this was my first business venture and although I didn’t know it at the time, perhaps I was one of the first re-cyclers. I thought I was pretty safe selling to the old boys coming out of the club; most of them were too pissed to put their hat on the right way round let alone work out where the flowers were really coming from.

They were quite happy to take them home to convince their wives that despite appearances and after falling face first through the front door, in their drunken haze they had actually remembered them and loved them dearly.

And was there any chance of a leg over before I pass out pissed love!?

All went well until one day I forgot to take the memoriam card off one bunch of flowers and sod my luck if it wasn’t noticed by the bloke who had written it out previously before putting it on his wife’s grave.

I don’t know how I didn’t notice it, but I was only four.

Well all hell let loose, I was too young to talk my way out of it so decided on the next best form of defence – run away – very quickly.

When I was older I thought of all the clever things I could have said to him like Touch me and I’ll set my rats on you but I was only four so running away seemed the best option. He didn’t catch me but I was too scared to sell flowers outside the club again so my first business enterprise ended.

There is quite a bit of history to Barking, it was in fact a fishing village, strange for somewhere thirty miles from the sea. It does however sit on a tributary of the Thames and larger fishing vessels would put into Barking to break their loads down into smaller boats for delivery along the river. Our house was actually an old fisherman’s cottage and the local pubs still bear names associated with fishing, Fishing Smack, Barge Aground, Jolly Fisherman etc.

There is another pub called the Captain Cook and this reflects a piece of Barking history also. Cook was a famous sailor and explorer who discovered parts of Australia but was murdered by savages in Hawaii.

Just up the road to our house there were the remains of Barking Abbey. William the Conqueror lived there after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 whilst the Tower of London was being built. Of course you know what builders are like, not turning up on Monday because of a hangover, going early on Friday cos it’s Poets day (Piss Off Early, Tomorrows’ Saturday), bricks not being delivered on time etc. so it was to be many years before the Bill the Conk got his new house built.

(See, all that time spent reading in prison was not wasted).

Captain Cook was not from Barking, but before one of his voyages he visited Barking and met a local girl who was very ill. He promised that if she recovered, on his return he would marry her. I don’t know exactly what year that was cos that page was missing from the prison book, but I suppose it would have been about 1760.

Anyway, whilst Captain Cook was out discovering exciting new lands and pinching them for the British, the girl did indeed recover. True to his word, on his return he married the girl.

Isn’t that a lovely story?

Barking Abbey, having been virtually destroyed by Henry 8th left only the church within the old abbey walls standing. This was St. Margaret’s church and it was down the aisle of this church that Captain Cook walked with his bride from Barking.

A couple of hundred years later I was to follow in the footsteps of Captain Cook. I don’t mean I discovered Australia and got my head bashed in on Hawaii, I mean I got married in St. Margaret’s church, Barking.

By the time I was five I had learnt how to sneak into cinemas without paying, I was so little I could walk under the cashiers window without her noticing whilst my elder brother Billy paid.

The films all seemed to be mainly Tarzan and cowboy films, with a bit of Dick Barton thrown in. The films would constantly break and all the kids would shout, stamp their feet and slash the seats whilst the projectionist stuck the film back together. It was more fun than watching the film really.

Roy Rogers was a big star in those days and although I was too young to realise it at the time, when I got older and watched the old cowboy films, I realised that Roy Rogers can’t sound his Rs. If you ever see an old cowboy film, listen out for it.

Well I ask you, what a name to give to a man who can’t sound his Rs, not Bill Best, oh no Woy Wogers! If that’s wasn’t bad enough, what do they call his horse - bloody Trigger, not Dobbin or Thunderbolt, no, Twigger.

Still not satisfied they gave him songs to sing like Widing on the Wange, I tell you,

those old film makers got away with murder.

A rare day out was on an excursion to Southend on Sea, a coastal resort about thirty miles away. All the kids would wait on the platform at Barking station clutching their buckets and spades until a great steam engine pulling the train would come in. The engine arrived at the station hissing, snorting and blowing out steam from its pistons and funnel like some great prehistoric monster. After lots of pushing and shoving the kids would all be aboard the train and off we would set, the trains had corridors then and separate little compartments so a seat by the window was much coveted if you could get one. Occupied window seats could always be acquired from other kids by bribery, corruption or a good old punch in the eye till they moved.

On leaving Southend station the first thing you would see was Southend pier, the longest pleasure pier in the world, still so today. The pier stretched out into the sea as far as we could see and at the very end were amusement arcades and a pub. It was a long walk to the end, one and a third miles, but to help the weary the pier had its own electric railway running back and forth along its length. Surprisingly, despite being run over by a passing ship once or twice all this has survived to this day. You would think the driver of a ship would spot something over a mile long wouldn’t you?

We had a baker who used to deliver our bread on a horse and cart. Every morning he would trot down the street (the horse, not the baker) and leave us a warm fresh loaf on the window sill. The horse used to leave something warm and fresh in the street as well.

One day the bakery must have decided to move into the 20th century and bought him a van. Whether he ever had a driving licence to go with it I don’t know, but on the first day he had it he careered down the street, bounced off the working mans’ club wall and ran over our little dog. I don’t remember his name but I hope it wasn’t Hovis or anything to do with bread. That’s the dog of course.

I hated both the baker and his bread after that, but the dog was still dead so it didn’t make much difference really.

When I was about seven we moved to another house, still in Barking, a couple of miles away. My eldest brother Tony was doing National service in Germany at the time and I don’t think my dad bothered to tell him we had moved. I think it took the poor sod ages to find us when he came home on leave.

About this time my mum decided she had had enough of my dad and the rats and left to live with someone else. I can’t say I really blame her although I loved my mum and dad equally.

The new house was great, it still didn’t have any heating or hot water but it did have the magic of an indoor toilet and even a bathroom. There was a copper gas boiler in the bathroom for heating water and boiling the washing in, a scrubbing board for getting stains out and a mangle to dry the washing, that’s when it wasn’t squashing your fingers!

But the best of it all, you’ve probably guessed it, there were no rats! Mind you I think that was only because the mice scared them off, big bastards they were; even our cat was scared of them.

By the way I used to hide our cat when the baker came round; he had found our address so I kept the cat indoors whilst the baker was driving down the street hunting for stray pets to murder. I couldn’t bear another death in the family so soon after the dog. A couple of years later, next door’s dog dragged the cat through the fence and killed it so I might as well have let the baker run it over in the first place.

With the move I started a new school, Westbury in Barking, famously attended by Bobby Moore of 1966 World Cup fame. Unfortunately none of his football skills rubbed off on me and I was to be crap at sports all my life except for running. Running turned out to be quite useful later on in life when the old bill were chasing me.

With mum gone dad did his best to look after us with my sister Shirley, but the cooking was really army style and clean clothes seemed to be a rarity. I learnt to wear a shirt the right way round on one day, and then turn it inside out on the following day so the dirt didn’t show. Unfortunately the shirt label did show, which was the subject of much teasing.

I learnt to sew and repair tears in my clothes, these skills came in handy in later years when I was sewing mailbags in Wandsworth prison. You see, everything you learn in life comes in handy sometime.

Every morning when we getting ready for school, always late, a religious program called Lift up your hearts used to come on the radio. My dad, who was never good with words, thought they were saying Lift up your arse in other words hurry up and sod off to school. Dad always got the word lesbian muddled up and called them Lebanese. I often wondered if he thought the war in Beirut consisted of gangs of gay women running up and down the road shooting each other.

In around 1955 my dad and brother Tony bought their first car between them, a black Hillman Minx. I still remember the number NKD 925. Funny that as these days I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning. Every weekend it was my job to lovingly wash and polish it, whilst Tony would jack it up and service it. I’m not quite sure why it needed servicing every week as they hardly ever went far in it, but serviced it was.

Cars were rare in those days, it was the only one in the street, any other cars you did see were almost invariably black.

Some remember these as the halcyon days of motoring, before crowded roads, traffic wardens and breathalysers, but I remember struggling to start the car with a starting handle, draining the water in winter before antifreeze became common and putting blankets, old coats and paraffin heaters under the bonnet overnight to warm the engine, things you would never do today. On several occasions my dad forgot to remove the coat from over the engine and a few miles down the road we would be reminded by the distinct smell of burning overcoat wafting through the car.

Dad married again and with my new stepmother came her three children, and then more were born. The house was still only two bed roomed so how we fitted in I’ll never know. I don’t know how many kids were living there cos every time I tried to count them some git moved but I know there were loads. The only compensation was even the mice were beginning to get fed up with the overcrowding and were slowly moving on to pastures new.

Southend once again loomed as  a one day holiday  destination only this time there were so many of us we had a mini bus to get there. Lunch times were an event on their own. All the kids would have to line up outside one of the many cafes on Southend sea front whilst my dad would go in and haggle over a group discount. Not ever being satisfied with the first offer, we would all troop off to the next one and the one after that until he got the deal he was holding out for. I always felt like one of a group of out of work Oliver Twists while we peered in the café windows watching the people eating and my dad waving his arms at the owner and explaining to him that if a mob the size of ours ate in his establishment his financial problems would be over.

After a few visits both the café owners and my dad got fed up with the whole business and much to my relief we took sandwiches.

School days dragged on, I didn’t like school but liked living at home even less. Some kids used to cry when their mums left them at school in the mornings, I cried when it was time to come home!

I can’t remember my teachers name, it was Mrs. Arseface or something but she didn’t like me and never missed an opportunity to tell me I was the scruffiest boy in the school. Going to a poor school in Barking I was up against some pretty stiff competition for that title I can tell you.

When I was ten years old I won a scholarship to go to a grammar school, the eleven plus it was called in those days. If I thought this was a way out of the rut I was very much mistaken. I was awarded a place at Ilford County High School, a very good school but miles from my home and friends. I had to catch three buses to get there and I hated it from day one.

My family were all very proud of me and thought they might at last have someone famous in the family. That