David
I have just finished reading "The Gallows Pole" by Benjamin Myers. Set in The West Riding of Yorkshire, it is an historical novel that focuses upon a group of men known as The Cragg Vale Coiners. Round about 1760, these men became notorious for clipping coins and using the resulting metal to create new coins in ingenious moulds. They created so much extra coinage that it affected the local economy around Halifax and The Calder Valley. By all accounts it was also used to make the lives of impoverished hill and valley dwellers more bearable. The Coiners were led by a man called David Hartley whose grave can still be seen in the churchyard at Heptonstall - the same graveyard where the American writer Sylvia Plath is also buried. Hartley was hanged at York in April 1770. The landed gentry and the business community were not prepared to tolerate the continuation of his criminal activities so they decided to silence him forever. Hartley was a tough, often ruthless man. He ...
