Owner Comments:
Middlesex Skidmore's Clerkenwell DH #161
Obverse: A large public building with a cupola, weather vane and clock with the hands at twenty to twelve THE SMALL-POX HOSPITAL NEAR Ex: ST PANCRASS
Reverse: The fictitious Arms of the Skidmore family surmounted by LONDON, P. SKIDMORE MEDAL MAKER COPPICE ROW CLERKENWELL
Edge: I PROMISE TO PAY ON DEMAND THE BEARER ONE PENNY X Diesinker: Benjamin Jacobs
Manufacturer: Paul Skidmore
Rarity: Scarce
St. Pancras Hospital, London. The smallpox hospital was originally established in Windmill Street, Tottenham Court Road in 1746. This building was built with voluntary contributions in 1767 on the present site of Kings Cross Railway Station, and was finished in 1794. It was demolished in 1846.
The family business of the token manufacturer Peter Skidmore was an iron foundry at 15 Coppice Row in Clerkenwell with a shop at No. 123 High Holborn. Skidmore realized that there was a market for tokens as the genuine tradesmen's pieces of the time were very keenly collected as they were issued.
Paul Skidmore was the son of Peter. This is from Skidmore's series of 20 ‘Clerkenwell Pennies' that featured well known Provincial buildings, - mainly Guild-halls, Hospitals and Palaces. They were issued them in quite small numbers - plus the dies that Jacobs engraved were quite brittle and many broke before the required number was struck. The coins were primarily sold to collectors but in these times of desperate need for copper change they often got into circulation alongside the regal copper and other genuine tradesmen's tokens.
Atkins: Middlesex 90
Bt. Sovereign Rarities
Ex: David Dykes
Ex: Spink Sale
Plate Coin "Coinage and Currency in Eighteenth Century Britain, The Provincial Coinage" by David Dykes, page 276, plate 304