King Charles Conferred A Tram Ride

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 13, 6 April 1927, Page 8

King Charles Conferred A Tram Ride

Strange Currency Pieces Still in Circulation

After washing the feet of a poor subject on Maundy Thursday, in the year 1679, Charles 11. of England handed him a new twopenny piece. “The Merry Monarch” little thought that he was conferring a tram ride on an Aucklander in the year 1927. The story is traced through a numismatist conductor of this city.

“That’s the first time I’ve had it put over me for three years.” Conductor 22 of the Auckland City Tramways looked disgustedly at a poker counter of white bone which had been handed to him, under a sixpence and which he had accepted as legal tender. The occurrence had not only hurt his pride as a business man but also as a numismatist. He happens to be one of those and, to a numismatist, a bone counter is anathema, a cursed counterfeit, an unholy thing. A SUN man happened to be on the tram. Some people cultivate hobbies and some, like Conductor 22, have hobbies forced upon them. When he was taking his first rides on the trams he used to be indignant when old ladies handed him up marks and centimes and other foreign currency. He would hand them back saying, “What do you think you will get for this”? And the old ladies would reply, “Dear me, how strange, what is it? But one of you conductors must have given it to me.” He was a potential numismatist at this time although he did not know it. One day a strange coin intrigued him and after handing it back to the fare, who received it with downcast looks, he said, “How much do you want for it”? “You can have it for sixpence,” said the fare and the conductor had it. From then on he developed the habit of buying the queerest-looking coins, though occasionally he found one which had fallen unnoticed into his change bag. The Tramway Board does not make any allowance to its servants for counterfeit and foreign coins and the conductors are usually wide-awake for the passengers who endeavour to get rides on doubtful currency. AN ANCIENT CUSTOM It is amazing the variety of coins which have come into his possession in a few years. Twenty pieces of money were shown to THE SUN man; they come from the ends of the earth and date back to the 1679, thereby establishing the connection of the “Merry Monarch,” Charles 11., with Conductor 22. A by-way of history is opened up by this little silver medal, the size of a threepenny piece, inscribed “Carolus 11, Dei Gratia Mag.

Br. Fra. et Hib. Rex, 1679.” It is known as a Maundy Thursday twopence and it is a relic of the ancient custom of the washing of the feet of the poor by the Sovereign of England, on the Thursday before Easter. This little coin, in excellent preservation, found its way from the original receiver through two centuries and a half and over a waste of seas, to the bag of the conductor. A pretty tale that piece could tell. As a matter of fact Conductor 22 could not have refused to take it because it is legal tender, by statute. Someone once handed him a bronze coin, bigger than a penny. It happens to be a “token” and a splendid example, stamped with the effigy of a Maori chief and bearing the legend “Advance New Zealand.” Issued about 1870 by Milner and Thompson, a music firm of Christchurch, it has done good service as a coin of the realm. In those days tokens were accepted everywhere in the Dominion, and though a great many were issued, few good specimens are found now. Much battered is a George 111. halfpenny dated 1774. It is considerably bigger than the current “ha’penny” and it fits over another halfpenny dated 1854, and bearing the head of Victoria. After this later date the halfpence were reduced in weight from one-fourth of an ounce to onesixth of an ounce. Another English piece is the “Lion Shilling,” of 1826, when George IV. was on the throne. One of the returned soldiers probably brought back the five-piastres from Cyprus and a South African veteran picked up the Kruger sixpence (1895). Canada and the United States currency has often come the conductor’s way and his collection includes two coins from the Argentine, e. single centavos dated 1884 and a five centavos of 1896.