Gareth Edwards: Fakes' own place in literary history

IT was a startling find - a few pieces of broken glass covered with what appeared to be an engraving of a lost poem by Robert Burns.

The five glass panels, unearthed in an Edinburgh kitchen by owners Carol and Alan Paterson, even bore the distinctive signature of Burns. There was only one problem - they appeared to have been made when Burns was dead.

The works were later identified as fakes, and the story has once again thrown the spotlight on the strange case of one of Scotland's most famous - and perhaps worst - forgers.

The career of Alexander "Antique" Howland Smith is believed to have started in Edinburgh in the 1880s, and his path into the ranks of history's most memorable forgers is an odd one, to say the least.

At his trial in June 1893, he stood accused not of forgery, but of "obtaining money by pretending that certain documents were genuine and what they purported to be".

When arrested, he had revealed to police that he had been employed as a chief clerk of the lawyer Thomas Henry Ferrier and, as part of his duties, had been asked to clear out some old documents from the cellars of the office.

Smith discovered some of the papers were valuable and began selling them to local bookshops, and when he ran out of genuine ones, he simply decided to make some more.

Over the next five years, he produced books, poems, letters and also signatures of notable figures, such as Lord Nelson, David Hume and even royalty.

Over a century later, his forgeries are still turning up around the world, and ironically have actually been given their own value thanks to their connection with him.

The fact that his works have endured, that he managed to fool so many people and that he is now collectible in his own right mean that in some ways he could be considered a master forger. But is that actually the case?

He was certainly prolific - working from a summer house at the back of Hope Crescent, he created huge amounts of papers, letters, manuscripts, documents and even forged etched glass, something Burns used to create using his diamond ring.

His starting points were the same bookshops he would later sell his work to, though at first he was noted as an eager customer, snapping up all manner of old books - especially those with blank pages - and carting them home by hand.

Once home he set about forging manuscripts by Mary Queen of Scots, Oliver Cromwell and Sir Walter Scott.

Robert Burns was his main focus, and Smith forged poems, songs and letters by Burns. He generally took an existing Burns letter, did a bit of homework about what he would have been writing about, and kept it all short and dull, trusting the signature to sell the work.

Prolific he may have been, but the fact that he was caught within five years of first selling his work would suggest that he was not exactly a perfectionist.

Experts at his trial said his fakes were "clumsy" and shouldn't actually have deceived anyone, and it also emerged that while he had initially used authentic paper from the period, he soon resorted to notepads of the day, dipped in tea to give them that aged look. So documents by Mary Queen of Scots and Rob Roy were written on the same make of paper.

That was the tip of the iceberg when it came to problems with his craft however. Documents supposed to date from the 17th century were written in modern ink, and he also rather foolishly dated some of his forgeries to times after their supposed authors were dead.

Given all this, it was hardly a surprise when he was caught. Booksellers and pawnbrokers had been seeing more and more forgeries turning up for sale, and noted collectors had found their work scrutinised and found to contain dozens, sometimes hundreds of fakes.

An article on the case was picked up by a local worker, who recognised the handwriting of Smith and the police duly paid him a visit.

Smith, however, was never charged with forgery - the Lord Justice Clerk of the time clarified that it was not a crime to fabricate documents any more than it was to copy a picture. Neither, he said, was it a crime to tell lies about the forgery, as Smith had done to help make the sale. Rather, his crime was to have made money by pretending the works were genuine.

The man believed to be the single mass-producer of forged literature in Scottish history was duly sentenced to 12 months in prison for his crimes.

After his release, he put his knowledge of antiques to good use, setting up a shop in George Street where he dealt in antique books and letters, among other things. Speculation has remained that he continued to produce forged works, possibly selling them in his own shop, though he was never again brought before a court.

Today, his "works" - which number in the hundreds, if not thousands - can still be found in collections around the world and have a value all of their own, reflecting the interest in a truly unique part of literary history.

The art of faking it

Thomas McAnea, of Glasgow, jailed in 2007, forged 20 notes indistinguishable from the real thing to the untrained eye due to their holograms and watermarks.

The Hitler Diaries, sold to German magazine Stern for ten million marks in 1983 and re-printed by The Times, were revealed to be a huge hoax.