Faking It

Hiram C. Whitley. Counterfeiting. Letter to the People. [New York, 1872].

Hiram Whitely was tasked with cleaning up the tarnished reputation of the Secret Service after its first Chief, William Wood, was forced to resign due to allegations of corruption. Here, Whitely explains the “new system adopted by him,” which included standardizing procedures for arrests and gathering evidence, and firing the many counterfeiters and crooks on Wood’s payroll. (“Under the old system of detection,” he wrote, “it was thought no one but a thief could catch a thief.”) Among other criminals, he mentions “shrewd counterfeiter” and “wily old dog” Bill Gurney, whose portrait appears in American Counterfeits (to the right).