Notes on Some Issuers of Countermarked Spanish Dollars
NOTES ON SOME ISSUERS OF COUNTERMARKED SPANISH DOLLARS By S. A. H. WHETMORE THIS paper is an attempt to comply with the wishes of Presidents of the Society, expressed more than once, that more attention should be given to modern coins. It deals with some of the issuers in Great Britain, at the time of the Industrial Revolution, of Spanish pieces of eight reales—so-called Spanish dollars—suitably countermarked for the issuers' purposes. Information regarding the issuers is uneven in quantity. Further investigation would, no doubt, produce more knowledge, but perhaps the time has come to record what has been found. I have followed the territorial classification of W. J. Davis,1 except where it has been convenient to group some of the Scottish cotton mills together, as their development was due to the enterprise of a few persons. The descriptions of the countermarks given by Davis, when he knew them, are quoted, with such comment as seems neces- sary ; and references are made to the catalogues of the more important collections of this century, viz. J. G. Murdoch (1904), T. Bliss (1916), W. J. Davis (1924), A. Thellusson (1931), H. E. G. Paget (1944), F. Cokayne (1946), and H. M. Lingford (1950). Information from these and other catalogues of dates of dollars, and dates of first appearance of countermarks, is of interest. It is sometimes stated in the narrative that coins known in the early part of the century have not been noted since. Perhaps they passed into the possession of Mr. Cokayne and were permanently lost when his first collection was stolen.
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