Convict love token by H Heald
Object No. 2003/40/1
Convict love tokens such as this one by H. Heald for 'Mary' have been described by Anne Schofield as the first Australian artwork. Even purely narrative tokens such as this example have their own distinctive style, but even more important is the fact that they exist at all. They were made from smoothed-down coins as mementos for wives, lovers, friends and family members (including those of the same gender). Their purpose was to comfort the recipient, and perhaps subconsciously to keep alive the memory and relationships of a convict transported to the far side of the world. The tokens' very tangibility both as the voice and one-time personal belonging of a convict makes them unique as a record since most other associated material was produced by the system that caught, tried, jailed, and transported them. In the main these are paper documents - trial records, shipping manifestos, memos, pardons, musters, tickets of leave, but also uniforms, chains and the products of their labour - buildings such as Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney, and other civic projects including road cuttings and bridges all over New South Wales and Tasmania. It is a sad fact that convict love tokens remain one of the few classes of items convicts made, or had made, purely of their own volition and as such they are unique in their humanising of a class that the system did its best to dehumanise. Convict love tokens were made for the whole period of transportation in New South Wales (1788-1840) and Tasmania (1788-1853), with their heyday in the 1830s - the time when Heald's example was engraved from a smoothed 1799 halfpenny. Clearly demonstrating such token's earlier origins is a First Fleet (1787/88) example in the Powerhouse Museum made by (or on behalf of), Thomas Tilley as a memento for his loved one (Powerhouse Museum object number 87/1494). Convict love tokens are rightly renowned as rare examples of the convicts' own voices - albeit voices that borrowed popular phrases and rhymes of separation and lament that were symbolic of those times when most journeys equalled long periods of incommunicado between loved ones. There are approximately 350 known convict love tokens in existence, which are probably a small representation of the many more that were probably made, but subsequently lost or even destroyed in an effort to remove the ancestral 'convict stain' - an historical status that has only since the 1960s become a background to celebrate and remember. Paul Donnelly Curator 2002
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Summary
Object Statement
Convict love token, on cartwheel penny, George III (1760-1801), 1797, copper, possibly engraved by H Heald, probably Britain, 1825-1835
Physical Description
Copper disc made from smoothed-down coin cartwheel penny of 1797 issued by George III, dedicated on both sides with inscribed capitalised lettering.
DIMENSIONS
Depth
3 mm
Diameter
36 mm
PRODUCTION
Notes
The maker is not known. The crude nature of the token suggests it was made by the convict, H. Heald or a fellow convict in the ship hulks or gaol. The place of manufacture is not known, but probably Britain. The usual pattern was that the tokens were made in the hulks or gaols and then given to their loved ones prior to embarkation for Australia. 1820-1840 was the period when the majority of convicts were transported to New South Wales (then including Queensland and Victoria) and Tasmania - averaging five to six thousand conicts a year. As a natural consequence, most convict love tokens date to this period.
HISTORY
Notes
Made for Mary whose surname is not known. Convict love tokens were produced by, or on behalf of the convicts to give as mementos to loved ones such as wives, lovers, friends, and family. While other items were undoubtedly given, the inscribed, commemorative and indestructible nature of the coin-based love token has ensured these remain as the best known identifiable type. They follow an already established tradition in the United Kingdom used by non-convicts of using a smoothed and engraved coin for a commemorative purpose. Such tokens similarly celebrated love and relationships, but also, death, births and christenings engraved on coins whose ease of availability made them an ideal matrix. Typically however, these tokens of the 'free' were made on silver coins, whereas the poor convict was only able to afford copper coins such as a halfpenny or cartwheel penny and twopenny pieces of King George III's reign.
SOURCE
Credit Line
Purchased with funds donated by the Metropolitan Coin Club of Sydney, 2003
Acquisition Date
17 March 2003
Copyright for the above image is held by the Powerhouse and may be subject to third-party copyright restrictions. Please submit an Image Licensing Enquiry for information regarding reproduction, copyright and fees. Text is released under Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative licence.
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