The Wonderful World of Completely Random Facts — Issue 94

An Honest Man’s Warning

The Bank of England has never had gold stolen from its vaults, but that might not have been the case if an honest worker hadn’t let them know of a serious problem.

In 1836, the Directors of the Bank of England began receiving anonymous letters in which the writer stated that he could get into the bank’s gold vault. He even offered to meet them in the gold vault whenever they chose.

The directors finally agreed to gather in the vault one night to see if the claims made in the letters were valid. To their surprise, at the agreed upon hour, a noise was heard under the floor, and a man appeared coming through the floor boards.

The man was a sewer worker who had been doing repair work and had discovered that an old drain led directly under the gold vault. The directors were shocked to find that the man had been telling the truth, but that didn’t stop them from taking an account of the gold in the vault. After they had discovered that the man hadn’t taken any of the gold, the Bank of England awarded him for his honesty in alerting them to the problem and gave him a sizable gift of £800. This was about £76,555 in today’s money. Source