Auction Catalogue

14 February 2012

Starting at 2:00 PM

.

World Tokens

Washington Mayfair Hotel  London  W1J 5HE

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Lot

№ 1285 x

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14 February 2012

Hammer Price:
£170

Sierra Leone, Macaulay & Babington, Penny, 1807 [struck in 1814], European and negro clasping hands, African village behind, rev. legend in Arabic, 36mm, 16.95g/12h (Vice 1; KM. Tn1.1). About very fine £70-90

Provenance: Bt Baldwin June 1968.

Zachary Macaulay (1768-1838), b. Inverary, Scotland, emigrated to Jamaica in 1784 where he worked on a sugar plantation and started to take an interest in slaves and their welfare. Returning to London in 1789, he effected introductions to William Wilberforce and others known to his brother-in-law, Thomas Babington (1758-1837). He first visited Sierra Leone in 1790 and became the governor in Freetown from 1794 to 1799, then secretary of the Sierra Leone Co from 1799 to the dissolvement of the company in 1808, after which he became an independent trader to Africa, at first on his own account and later with his nephew, Thomas Gisborne Babington (1788-1871). In later life Macaulay was a prime mover towards securing the total abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire