PENNY SUBSCRIPTIONS

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 30, Issue 17, 1 March 1918, Page 2

PENNY SUBSCRIPTIONS

The appointment of Captain Amery to the new War Cabinet secretarial staff serves as a reminder that he has been twice honoured by a “penny subscription,” at one time a favourite method of lionizing celebrities. On the first occasion Captain Amery was fined a sovereign at Wolverhampton for boxing the ears of a voter who called him a liar at an election meeting there. His supporters forthwith subscribed 5,310 pennies, and purchased with them a gold presentation watch, suitably inscribed, in commemoration of the incident. Two years later, when again contesting Wolverhampton, the watch was stolen. A similar subscription inaugurated, and 7,100 pennies raised, with which another watch was bought and presented to him to replace the lost one.

Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, was probably the first cele'brity, so far as England is concerned, to be similarly honoured. Nearly ten thousand pennies, were collected, with which were purchased a set of Shakespeare’s works, casketed in a model of the bard’s house at Stratford-on-Avon.

Then there was the case of the silver wreath, bought in 1879 with 52,800 pennies,’subscribed by working men supporters of Lord Beaconsfieid.