Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Emery, Edward
EMERY, EDWARD (d. 1850?), numismatist, under whose direction the notorious imitations of coins known as ‘Emery's forgeries’ were produced, was a coin-collector and coin-dealer living in London. He is said to have belonged to ‘a respectable family,’ and to have been well off. He engaged an engraver at considerable expense to manufacture dies of rare English and Irish coins, and some of the specimens struck off from these dies sold for large sums. The forgeries were in the market during the summer of 1842, but they were exposed in the ‘Times’ and in the ‘Numismatic Chronicle.’ Before the end of that year Emery (or his engraver) was obliged to surrender the dies, which were then cut through the centre and thus rendered useless. Emery's forgeries are: penny of Edward VI, with portrait; shillings of Edward VI with false countermarks of portcullis and greyhound; jeton or coin of Lady Jane Grey as queen of England; half-crown and shilling of Philip and Mary; gold ‘rial’ of Mary I; groats and half-groats of Mary I (English and Irish), and probably others. The forgeries are clever, though the lettering is not successful. After 1842 Emery is believed to have left London in debt, and to have died at Hastings about 1850.
[Hawkins's Medallic Illustrations of Brit. Hist., ed. Franks and Grueber, i. 63, 64, ii. 725, from information supplied by the late W. Webster, the London coin-dealer; Numismatic Chron. (old ser.), v. 159, 160, 202, 203, where the Times of 19 July 1842 is quoted; Emery's forgeries in Brit. Mus.]