Vyvyan H Moyle, vicar of Eston and the £2m 'gigantic forgery'

The area was agog with sensation 150 years as word spread that a highly respected holy man was languishing in Northallerton jail accused of forgery equivalent to £1.97m in today’s values.

Or, as the more measured tones of the D&S Times in its first edition of 1873 put it: “A flutter of unhealthy excitement has prevailed this week on Teesside owing to the apprehension of the Reverend Vyvyan H Moyle, vicar of Eston.

“Mr Moyle is so widely known, and has been so generally respected by all classes in and around Middlesbrough, that when the report of his arrest was issued on Monday, it was received with incredulity, and it was not until the matter was put beyond all doubt that the public feeling of distrust gave place to a sensation of deep pain and sorrow.”

The D&S Times headline of January 4, 1873

Mr Moyle was the son of a Cornish surgeon and his wife, Wilhemina, was the daughter of an Inspector of Constabulary in Ireland. Aged 33, he was appointed the first vicar of St Helen’s, Eston, in 1868 when the new ironworking community had grown to become a parish in its own right. He moved into Normanby House, which the D&S described as “a comfortable country mansion” in which he had a collection of Old Masters paintings.

He quickly became involved with the local militia, freemasons and schools boards. He was president of the Cleveland Literary and Philosophical Society, and advised local MPs.

“Latterly,” said the D&S, “he appears to have evinced a disposition to mix himself up in commercial affairs.”

At public meetings he loudly advocated that local people, including his parishioners, should join a London financial institution called the Mutual Society, which was trying to break into the booming economy of Teesside.

Shortly before Christmas 1872, Mr Moyle presented the Mutual Society with shares in Jackson, Gill & Company, a firm of Middlesbrough ironfounders of which he had recently become a director. Without any question, for such a fine, upstanding pillar of the community and such a prominent promoter of their services, the society advanced him £22,000 in return (nearly £2m in today’s values, according to the Bank of England Inflation Calculator).

The Manor House surgery manager Helen Price in 2001 outside the Normanby doctors' practice which is in the grand country home in the Rev Vyvyan Moyle

But on Boxing Day, the society discovered that the shares were forged. The society informed Middlesbrough police but requested that Mr Moyle was “not interfered with while he was engaged in discharging his pastoral duties”. The police discretely watched him from a distance as he preached at South Bank and Eston on Sunday, December 29, and then arrested him the next morning in Normanby House.

The D&S was keen to spare the clergyman the rod. It said he had not “intended to enrich himself at the expense of others” as he was expecting to pay the Mutual Society back when he received dividends from other iron companies in which he had invested.

Jackson, Gill & Co was not expected to be “injuriously affected”, said the D&S, “nor is it expected that in the long run the Mutual Society itself will be a loser”.

The paper concluded: “The chief losers are the afflicted family of Mr Moyle. A wide circle deeply sympathises with them.”

A few weeks later, Mr Moyle was declared bankrupt and the contents of Normanby House, including his paintings, were auctioned.

The Reverend Vyvyan Moyles' church, where he preached immediately before his arrest 150 years ago, is now next to the Pockerley Waggonway at Beamish museum

At his trial in March 1873, despite many influential people giving him character references, it was shown that he had perpetrated the forgery with “great premeditation and contrivance”, and he was sentenced to seven years in prison.

He was released in 1878, and seven years later, became a vicar near Reading. However, in 1906, he was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud by getting people to invest in a fake company, the South & South West Steam Trawling & Fishing Syndicate. He was sentenced to 18 months hard labour and died, aged 73, shortly after his release.

His home, which was built around 1716 for the Pennyman family, is a Grade II* listed building and is now the Manor House doctors’ surgery in Normanby; his 12th Century church, St Helen’s in Eston, closed in 1962 and has been rebuilt at Beamish museum as part of its 1825 landscape; the initials of Jackson, Gill & Company have been found cast into iron sections of the Tay Bridge, which collapsed in 1879.