The Yorkshire Coiners: The True Story of the Cragg Vale Gang

In late eighteenth-century Yorkshire a powerful gang of counterfeiters held the local community in its spell. In a remote valley near Halifax called Cragg Vale, gold coins of the realm were clipped and filed, then returned to circulation, while the extra metal collected was melted down to produce new counterfeit currency. The crime was punishable by death, and violence and vengeance, even murder, was meted out against those who got in their way. The Cragg Vale Coiners were highly organised,...