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While there is some hint that Wilmshurst had been suspected of misdeeds when he was young, his first phase of forgeries seems to have started soon after he married Anne - they married 8 Dec 1846, his first known crime was in January 1847. Did she encourage him or did he feel unable to provide for his wife so decided on the actions for himself? We have no way of knowing which, if either, is the case. It was clearly him who carried out the crimes but she is far from innocent - it is her who seems to know where all the cheques and financial information is in the house and she says that William didn’t know where these documents were. We do know that in later census returns she consistently lied about her background and her life with her second husband makes her clearly a questionable character.
While it seems obvious that Wilmshurst was guilty of the crime and had a past history of similar crimes, does the jury’s comment indicate there was more to this or were they mislead by a clever attempt to blame other people? It seems unlikely that he was the dupe of a clever plot by other people as it would seem that there would need to have been many people involved to create the plot.
While the cases against him at Oxford and Tenterden seem good, the Dorchester one seems more questionable. The only real evidence seems to be one person involved identifying him 9 months later and there was no mention of an identity parade so the procedure would presumably have been to show Wilmshurst to the witness and ask if he was the person who had carried out the crime. However, the alibi that William was at a solicitor’s office in London when the Dorchester fraud happened seems doubtful since it took them 15 months to present this to the Home Office.
The meeting of Beaman and White at Wilmshurst’s house seems very odd but there is no way of telling what its significance was.
There seems to have been some confusion about whether William could have a solicitor representing him and he seems to have defended himself - this seems odd but does it indicate he was prevented from getting full justice or was it bad decisions on his part? Again this can only be speculation.