April 2007

Next club meeting Monday 30^th April 2007.

• News from the Romano-Britannic Empire By Edward Besly (National Museum Cardiff)

Meetings are held at the Abbey Baptist Church, Abbey Square, commencing at 7.00 p.m.

April meeting.

Kevin Clancy gave a talk entitled A Currency Without a Coinage, being an account of the Ricardo Ingot plan of 1819.

Ricardo was a famous economist. He reccommended the abandonment of Gold coinage, to be replaced by notes, backed by several Government ministers - and this only three years after the reintroduction of the new coinage sovereign in 1816.

Kevin was introduced to a bundle of correspondence relating to the 1797 crisis, which caused the introduction of the Bank restriction act, near collapse of the monetary system. Various attempts were tried to remedy the problems including the printing of more banknotes and the use of counterstruck coinage.

One school of thought attributed this to the Napoleonic wars and upheavals of the period. Another said it was due to the industrial revolution and huge expansion of the economy - resulting in a desperate shortage of sufficient money. Ricardo had made enough money by the age of 40 so that he could devote himself to academic study. He reccommended that provided banknotes were soundly backed by gold bullion and strictly controlled they could fulfil the needs of commerce. The Government however followed the policy of issuing the new sovereign. He got himself elected to parliament and subsequently sat on several committees and proposed his plan that banknotes be issued backed by gold ingots. This was much more economical than issuing gold coin. This was approved in 1819, but was only partially successful as sovereigns had already been issued and circulated.

He suggested ingots of 60 ozs - made round and stamped with coinage dies. Kevin showed a significant letter written to Matthew Boulton's successor at the Soho mint describing and discussing these ingots - it was a very full and frank letter. Also, Kevin found large dies with four coin punches in the Royal Mint museum which showed what the ingots would have looked like. Until the discovery of the letter noone had any idea what the dies were for. Kevin showed slides of the dies, showing the four coinage dies set into the main die - held in by screws. Four obverse and four reverse dies all dated 1819, a sovereign, Crown, halfcrown and shilling were used but they are not listed in the Royal Mint stock inventory.

No gold ingots have survived, not even impressions - but records of these impressions, possibly in tin, unfortuately now lost. Kevin then showed various references to these dies and impressions - last reference was a sale in 1921 - if anybody comes across one of these impressions - the Royal mint would like to have it! He did show a resin impression, plated in gold which was passed around.

Another point of interest - the 1819 sovereign is extremely rare, 4000 struck of which about 8 survive (as opposed to over 3 million struck in 1818, 2 million in 1820 and over 8 million in 1821).

The technical problems with striking these ingots were immense and eventually the idea of the round ingot was abandoned in favour of the rectangular (conventional) ingot and sufficient gold was received by the Mint to make these rectangular ingots and the Bank offered these ingots in payment against notes. Two ingots were issued in March (both to Banking firms) and were called Ricardos after their inventor. Very few of these ingots were called for.

By 1821 less than 1 dozen ingots were produced and issued whereas sovereigns were produced and issued in millions. Ricardo realised that his idea would never really succeed, while sovereigns were also being issued. The failure was not down to the Bank of England, who had invested half a million pounds in ingot production and clearly favoured the plan but from May 1821 they sent the ingots back to the Royal Mint for making into coin.

Periodically, aspects of the Ricardo plan were brought up and tried again but never the complete plan and eventually Britain went off the gold standard (1917) returned briefly in 1925 and then abandoned it forever. None of the original ingots have yet turned up although four dies still survive, also impressions and even casts of ingots survive - but no originals.

A letter from William Wyon in 1837 mentions one of the original ingots and in 1867 these were passed to the British Museum. The British Museum then proceeded to sell items not deemed worthy of retention (which included the ingot) around 1877 (approved by William Poole) therefore it's probable that this ingot (and the other thirteen ingots unaccounted for) may well have been melted down. There remains, however, a small chance that one or more may survive, certainly impressions survive and sufficient evidence to corroborate the details of the experiment.

Spring social - Skittles Evening 19^th May 2007

It is not too late to sign up for the Spring Social. This will be a skittles evening at the Red Lion pub, Theale on Saturday 19th May. We intend to start gathering around 7pm for an 8pm kick off.

The price is £15 per head (£30 per couple) and includes a good buffet. If you would like to come please see any Committee member at the next meeting. Would those attending please pay at the next meeting.

Future Events.

• Baldwin Auctions - 24^rd and 25^th April
• Croydon Coin Auctions - Jury's Hotel, Great Russell St. 19^th May

Past Events

30 years ago Harold Good spoke on "Seventeenth Century Token Coinage of Southampton"

20 years ago Phil Wainwright gave a talk on "Celtic Coinage"

10 years ago Tim Hayward spoke on "Aspects of German coinage"