1273       London – Holborn, Thomas Spence Halfpenny (1795/6), Draped bust left of Lord George Gordon, rev. 4-line legend, edge SPENCE DEALER x IN x COINS x LONDON x, 30.25mm/10.3gm. (DH 782). Good Extremely Fine, with considerable amounts of original lustre and much reflection, rare.                                                                                                                   £120-160

            With a Spinks ticket c.2008 – therefore very likely ex F S Cokayne Col.

Lord George Gordon, son of the 3rd Duke of Gordon, is mostly renowned for giving his name to the Gordon Riots in 1780 (to which the date on the token refers). On the 2nd. of June he headed a crowd of some 50,000 people and marched to the Houses of Parliament to present a petition against Catholic Emancipation. They threatened to storm Parliament, but then dispersed and over the next few days burnt down Catholic chapels, several prisons and even attempted to storm the Bank of England. Eventually the army was brought in and some 450 people were killed or wounded before peace was restored. For his role in instigating the riots Gordon was charged with High Treason and sent to the Tower of London – although a few months later he was acquitted on the grounds that he had no ‘Treasonable Intent’.
In 1787 he converted to Judaism taking on the name of Yisrael bar Avraham Gordon and went to live in Birmingham. The next year he was sentenced to five years in Newgate prison for defaming the French ambassador, and whilst there conducted the life of an Orthodox Jew – He grew his beard to a long length (as pictured on the token), put on his tzitzit and tefillin daily. He fasted when the halakha (Jewish law) prescribed it, and likewise celebrated the Jewish holidays. He was supplied kosher meat and wine, and Shabbat challos by prison authorities. They also permitted him to have a minyan on the Jewish Sabbath and to nail a mezuza on the door of his cell. The Ten Commandments were also hung on his wall.
Shortly after his release, as a model and pious prisoner, he caught Typhoid, which had been raging through Newgate, and died. He was not buried in a Jewish cemetery but in the ‘detached’ (because he had been excommunicated) Anglican burial ground of St. James’s Piccadilly, (just north of Warren Street).
The auction will take place on the 11th of October 2023, at A.H. Baldwin’s location at 399 Strand, London. Interested bidders can participate in person, by phone, or online through the company’s website.