British Tokens, Tickets and Passes, Wiltshire Coins and Paranumismatica

Paper Money, Bradford-upon-Avon, Bradford, One Pound, 180–, unissued, for Divett, Price, Jackson & Co, engraved by Richard Silvester, 27 Strand, London, vignette of farmer shearing sheep (Outing 237a). Damage to paper and a few small holes at lower centre, otherwise very fine, rare £140-£180

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Wiltshire Coins, Tokens and Paranumismatica formed by the late David Ward.

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Provenance: B. Creasy Collection, DNW Auction B21, 24 April 2014, lot 59.

Divett, Price, Jackson & Co, wool and cloth merchants, Bradford-upon-Avon, established 1807; the senior partner was Thomas Divett (1769-1828), a Quaker leatherseller from West Smithfield, London, who acquired Kingston House, Bradford, in 1802. The partners, London men seen locally as ‘foreigners’, erected their new mill in which they set up machinery ‘to a considerable extent and having thereby excited the envy and malice of the shearmen of Bradford’, who, with their colleagues across north Wiltshire, had been involved in a campaign of industrial violence since 1802. What was described by a contemporary as ‘a daring and alarming attack’ on the Divett mill on the night of 11 October 1807 saw a party of armed ruffians attempting to torch the factory, but they were surprised in the act. The partners, understandably nervous, implored the local magistrate to bring in troops to quell the disturbances, which they did, only for other principals, including the token issuer John Jones at Staverton (see Lot 79), to be the subject of assassination attempts. By the time of George III’s Golden Jubilee celebrations, on 25 October 1809, the situation was calmer and the company regaled nearly 500 employees in their manufactory at Bradford by giving them ‘three fine fat sheep roasted whole, plenty of bread, and a large potion of good Wiltshire strong beer’