Joseph Clarke was a hatter, hosier and furrier in Norwich, with a shop just off the Market Place and in 1794 he issued his own Halfpenny that he could give in change. His little copper halfpenny, about 27mm in breadth and prettily advertises the sort of items he sold.
In the 1790s there was no official small copper change in the country. Britain was at war with France and the price of copper had risen causing the regal issue to ‘vanish’. This caused tremendous hardship for small merchants and shop keepers throughout the country, for how were they to conduct the everyday transactions of selling small goods if they had no change. The Crown was busy with the war and any ‘unofficial’ production of coin of the realm would be seen as forgery which was punishable by hanging !. Eventually a Welsh mining company hit upon the idea of turning their copper straight into pennies and halfpennies but calling them ‘tokens’ that were redeemable in official coin – thus avoiding the forgery . As they were the correct weight, no one bothered and in the space of a year, merchants in every town in England started issuing their token pence !
On the edge of Joseph Clarke’s halfpenny pictured here is the legend PAYABLE AT J CLARKES MARKET PLACE NORWICH, thus stating that it was redeemable as a halfpenny and not an actual halfpenny !
This solved the lack of small change in the 1790s and for ten years, until the government got its act together after the war and issued official copper. Until then, throughout the 1790s it is these copper ‘token’ pence and halfpence one would have had in one’s pocket.
There were many merchants in Norfolk issuing their own coppers, particularly Norwich but also other towns such as Aylsham, Wroxham, Yarmouth and Harleston – and also in Suffolk, Towns such as Bungay, Blything, Bury St. Edmunds, Hoxne, Hartismere, Haverhill, Sudbury and especially Ipswich.
Michael Apsey was an ironmonger and brazier in Bury St. Edmunds with a shop in the Butter Market and produced this undated halfpenny in around 1795. It has the marvellous legend of ‘SUCCESS TO TRADE’, which sadly was a forlorn hope in his case, as he is recorded as being declared bankrupt a couple of years later in 1797 ! It took eight years before his stock and shop were eventually sold off.
The tokens for all these East Anglian localities can be seen in an auction of 18th. century Tokens being held by A H Baldwin & Sons on the 25th. of May.
This is one of the finest collections of these tradesmen’s tokens to come onto the market in many years and each piece can be viewed on https://thestrand.com/departments/coins#upcoming-auctions.
They provide a marvellous window into this last decade of the eighteenth century and almost every English town is represented in this collection.
