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A strange Kettle?


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When I first saw this reverse, I hoped it might be special:

KETTLE1.jpg

 

and with thoughts of BHM# 996, I turned it over:

KETTLE.jpg

 

Close, but no cigar. The "Reward Of Merit" puts me in mind of later Victorian school attendance medals, but assuming that this was made by Kettle, what was its purpose?

Bob

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Due to ill health I have a large backlog of medals & tokens waiting to be photographed & posted and in that backlog I have the same token. I believe it is a school merit award, issued for good conduct, or as a reward for academic excellence etc, similar to the Princess Charlotte school merit award tokens by Thomas Wright Hill, which I placed as circa 1818 in a previous post. I can see no reason why this token cannot be placed about the same time. Brown in BHM & Fauver in his work on Kettle's tokens differ as to the date of this series of tokens, which use various combinations of the King's head, Lord's prayer, Jehovah radiated crown etc, Brown places most of them as 1820 for George III death, whereas Fauver goes for 1810, George's 50th year as monarch, so if Brown is correct in his dating it would date 1820 or later but if Fauver is right it could be from 1810 on.

 

The hole on your example appears to have been made in the same, very distinct way as this other Kettle token, BHM#995 RRRR. I think my reward of merit token is unholed but I am unable to check that fact at this time.

 

024-1.jpg021.jpg

 

 

As to rarity, neither Brown or Fauver mention this "Reward of Merit" token, Brown's omission is understandable as he purposely excluded school merit awards etc from his work, but Fauver would have included it if he had been aware of it, I have only seen a couple of examples myself so I would think it is pretty rare.

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Myself, I doubt the rarity purely on the grounds that it was designed to be sold to schools and most of the attendance medals I own or am aware of have large populations.

However, I can find no mention of it in Davis' Tickets and Passes of Great Britain and Ireland, so maybe just this once, I've struck lucky.

 

Hope your health's improving Pat, I found that retirement was the cause of most of my ailments so it's possible that I'll go back to work.

Of course, that'll mean even later nights at the laptop just trying to keep up.

 

bob

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