Another talk about token coinage again this time. Today I would like to focus on a British token coinage issued during the late 18th century called ‘evasion tokens’.
Now the picture above (although blurry, and the token itself quite worn), shows one of the many different types of evasion tokens which were minted during this period. So why do these things exist?
During the late 18th century in Britain counterfeiting was rampant, with some reports saying that only 2/5th’s of the coins in general circulation were actually genuine. These figures come from around 1753, by 1771 it was getting out of control, and magistrates were applying more and more pressure to find the counterfeiters and destroy the minting machines. It was then that the counterfeiters found a loophole in the law which allowed them to continue making the fake coinage.
The laws at the time stated that only ‘Regal’ coinage was covered by the counterfeiting laws. Thus, if a coin was not an ‘exact’ copy of one issued by the government, then the law is technically not being broken, and thus any punishment is evaded. They were not coins, but tokens. Hence the name ‘evasion tokens’. Most of these tokens were thus changed to suit the work-around in the law. So a large number of figures replaced King George, such as Isaac Newton, William Shakespeare, and even George Washington (the example in the photo shows Pope Gregory II). George III wasn’t completely removed either, with his facing changed, or the legend around his bust altered. The legends themselves were often nonesense or humourous in nature. With some saying ‘Brittania Rules’, ‘These Bonny Isles’, ‘Bonny Girls’ and so on. There were some instances of company names being included on the reverse of some tokens too. Speaking of the reverse, these were also a target for changes, with Britannia being slightly altered, or replaced with the Irish harp entirely. The legend was also subject to change, with similar epithets to those placed on the obverse, often more outlandish with examples of ‘Englands Glory’ and ‘Hilarias’ being used.
The tokens themselves were often widely accepted by the populace at the time for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, there was a dire need of small change at the time, due to indifference by the government towards a copper coinage. It was a widely held belief that copper was not a fit enough metal to strike a ‘regal’ coinage, and thus striking copper coins was not an especially important activity for the Royal Mint to pursue. Secondly, many of the native provincial Britons were illiterate and if the ‘coin’ on offer looked somewhat genuine and something they were used to, they were happy to accept it.
The earliest examples of evasion tokens date from the mid-1770’s, but the majority seem to come from between 1795 and 1800. There are thousands of different designs out there, and were first started to be catalogued in 1892 by Atkins, which then wasn’t updated until in 1987 by Cobwright, with a further revision in 1993 (A walk in the Monkolokian Forest in search of the Spiny Fubbaduck – yes, that is the title of the work by Cobwright).
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