Token Recalls Days Of Coinage Shortage

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30895, 30 October 1965, Page 19

Token Recalls Days Of Coinage Shortage

A half-penny token, dug up in Aikmans road garden recently, is a relic of the 1860 s when, to overcome an acute shortage of copper currency, local tradesmen issued their own coinage.

The token, issued by Henry Joseph Hall, a Christchurch grocer and general merchant, is in a good state of preservation, marred only by what seems to be a nail hole driven through it. Hall also issued penny tokens, and his was one of 48 New Zealand firms known to have used them.

Hall, who arrived in Christchurch in 1857, took up the 60,000-acre Motunau estate, and also had land holdings at Leeston and Christchurch. His home was “Oakford,” a 50-acre estate on the Riccarton road-Mandeville street block, subsequently owned by Mr John Rhodes, and demolished a few years ago. He look up the grocery trade as a side-line, opening his first shop in Cashel street west in 1864, and later buying, for £5BOO, the Wesleyan chapel in High street, the present site of Wool worths. The church transferred to what is now known as the Durham Street Methodist Church, which recently celebrated its centennial.

Hall gave up his shop in 1873 and devoted himself to his wider interests. While in business, he issued 19 different kinds of penny and halfpenny tokens, a little larger than the respective legal coins. Some of them are now of considerable value.

The half-penny example carries the message: “H. J. Hall, Family Grocer, Wine and Spirit Merchant” on the on > side, and “Henry J. Hall, Christchurch Coffee Mills” and the value on the other.

Tokens were in wide general use from 1857 until they were demonetised by legislation in 1897. The dearth of copper coinage had been overcome by the issue of new British silver and copper coins to the colonies in 1881.

Among the Christchurch firms to issue tokens were Mason Struthers, Ltd., Reeces,

Beaths, Ballantynes, Petersens, and Milner and Thompson, the predecessors of Charles Begg and Company.