Forgery
The legal offense of making a false instrument so that it may be accepted as genuine, thereby causing harm to others. Under the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, an instrument may be a document or any device (e.g., a debit card) on which information is recorded. An instrument is considered false, for example, if it purports to have been made or altered by someone who did not do so, on a date or at a place when it was not, or by someone who does not exist. It is also an offense to copy or use a false instrument, knowing it to be false or to make [Law, p. 146]. In a manuscript context, a forgery is usually understood as a false or inauthentic document fabricated with the deliberate intention of deceiving people into believing it is genuine. Forgery is endemic to the nature of documents, which are inherently unstable as embodiments of authority, given the relatively limited nature of the materials and the skills needed to counterfeit them, as well as the personal inducements for such a practice. Forgery is consequently a phenomenon of great antiquity [Beal, p. 140]. Bills of exchange were not susceptible to forgery in the way that coins were. Even when fully endorsed, they were often handed scrap paper between individuals. There was no consistent standard to judge the validity of one bill of exchange over another. Also, the laws affecting them were much laxer than those affecting the coins. Bills of exchange were private property, not state symbols. Yet they did have a profound effect on the way people behaved [Dick, p. 395]. The offense of making a “false instrument” so that it may be accepted as genuine, thereby causing harm to others. Under the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, an “instrument” may be a document, a stamp issued by the Post Office or HM Revenue, or any device (e.g., magnetic tape) in which information is recorded or stored. An instrument is considered to be “false” if, for example, it purports to have been made or altered (1) by or on the authority of someone who did not do so; (2) on a date or at a place when it was not [Law, p. 149].
Sources:Law, J. (2022). A Dictionary of Law (10 ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beal, P. (2008). A Dictionary of Manuscript Terminology 1450-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Law, J. (2016). A Dictionary of Accounting (5 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dick, A. J. (2007). “The Ghost of Gold”: Forgery Trials and the Standard of Value in Shelley’s The Mask of Anarchy. European Romantic Review, 18(3), 381–400. Retrieved from: doi: 10.1080/10509580701443364