Robert Spring, a 19th century forger, was so good at his profession that he was able to make his living for 15 years by selling false signatures of famous Americans. Spring was born in England in 1813 and  51  in Philadelphia in 1858 to open a bookstore. At first he prospered by selling his small but  52  collection of early U.S. autographs. Discovering his ability at copying handwriting, he began  53  signatures of George Washington and Ben Franklin and writing them on the title pages of old books. To lessen the chance of detection, he sent his forgeries to England and Canada for sale and  54 .

Forgers have a hard time selling their products. A forger can't approach a  55  buyer but must deal with people who don't have much knowledge in the field. Forgers have many ways to make their work look real. For example, they buy old books to use the  56  paper of the title page, and they can treat paper and ink with chemicals.

In Spring's time,  57  after the Civil War, Britain was still fond of the Southern states, so Spring  58  a respectable maiden lady known as Miss Fanny Jackson, the only daughter of General "Stonewall" Jackson. For several years Miss Fanny's  59  problems forced her to sell a great number of letters and manuscripts belonging to her famous father. Spring had to work very hard to satisfy the demand. All this activity did not prevent Spring from dying in poverty, leaving sharp-eyed experts the difficult task of separating his forgeries from the  60 .