Shipp Splits Bills, Gets Three Years.

A Man with more counterfeiting ability than the most expert manufacturer of spurious coin and who succeeded in splitting ten-dollar bills and passing both halves, was yesterday granted mercy by Judge Newman on the ground that the prisoner was insane. Charles E. Shipp is the name of this wonderful counterfeiter, whose feats in the line of increasing his financial condition without getting more money have astonished the officials of the secret service department of the United States. Shipp was found guilty yesterday and sentenced to three years in the government penitentiary at Raleigh, N.C. He would have been given a longer sentence, but Judge Newman thought him to be of unsound mind. Shipp is but a common farmer from Paulding county, near Dallas. He has always been a poor man and was considered by his neighbors to be ignorant. He has little education, but seemed born with a faculty for changing one ten-dollar bills into two. His process of splitting the bills has never been made known, and it seems a physical impossibility, so closely woven are the fibers of the silk paper. But Shipp split the bills and then passed them. He would take a bill and split it into two parts. Then he would take thin tissue-paper photographs or prints of the bills and paste them on the split side of the mutilated bill. So neatly did he do his work that the bills were not noticeably changed, and he eagerly passed them upon the merchants of Paulding county. The extent of his operations will never be known, but there are many of the split bills scattered around among his victims, who are keeping them as souvenirs. Shipp’s attorneys made the plea yesterday that Shipp was insane. They contended that several members of the Shipp family had been insane. They claimed that Shipp did not have sense enough to realize that he was doing wrong when he made the counterfeit money. The jury found the defendant guilty, but recommended him to the mercy of the court. Judge Newman said that he would give Shipp a light sentence on the recommendation of the jury, but he did not think the prisoner suddenly insane to justify mercy. But he did think the prisoner ignorant and that the crime was due more to his than to mental derangement.