Women’s work on small change: privately issued currency by women in mid-17th century London

Abstract

This paper focuses on privately issued currencies by women in mid-17th century London. These currencies appeared across England as part of a large wave of minting which began during the English Civil War as a result of severe shortages of low value coinage (‘small change’), used for purposes of petty trade. In London alone over 4200 tradesmen and businesses issued tokens, only around 140 of these issuers were women. The tokens are a rare visual and material source on the daily life of working women and their self-representation. By contextualizing the issuers’ occupations and token designs within the history of women’s legal status, this paper will demonstrate that token issuers were likely not under the status of married women. The paper examines who these women issuers were, their occupations, and the legal status that enabled them to become independent active agents within the new commercial sphere of tokens. The paper will demonstrate that the artifact of tokens issued by women is extraordinary within the phenomenon, though the line of work these women did was not unique in the period. The ability of women to represent themselves on a token was likely a direct result of their legal status and the commercial rights it entailed.