1860s replacement of the British copper coinage

Though the commission recommended no action on moving toward decimalisation, the Master of the Mint, Thomas Graham, persuaded the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone, that it would be an opportune time to replace the copper coinage with smaller, lighter coins of bronze, which would be more durable.

[2][3] Nevertheless, the copper coinage (the penny, halfpenny, farthing and the rarely seen twopence and half-farthing pieces) remained, according to the numismatic scholar G. P. Dyer, "heavy, cumbersome and inconvenient".

[4] Those copper coins depicting Queen Victoria showed her as she had looked as a young woman, a design created some twenty years previously.

[5] Chambers's Edinburgh Journal wrote in 1860, what a bruised, battered, ill-matched, ill-conditioned lot are a shilling's worth of halfpence [24 pieces]: large and small, thick and thin, old and new, pierced with holes, dented and scarred by wanton ill-treatment, disfigured by advertising newspaper proprietors, or that numerous but disgusting class of people who persist in placing vulgar names or initials where they are least to be desired.

[7] Although the final report found the idea of decimalisation had "few merits",[8] the new master, Thomas Graham, persuaded the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone, that the copper coinage should still be replaced.

Graham evidently enjoyed the contact with cabinet ministers, writing to his sister, "it is a little curious to find myself taken into council by the Government ... and to be talking over affairs of state with the Chancellor of the Exchequer ... over a parlour fire in Downing Street".

[10] On 4 August 1859, Gladstone, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, succeeded in gaining a vote of £10,000 (equivalent to £1,265,000 in 2023) to be used to replace the copper coinage.

[11] The original request had been for £50,000, but Gladstone told the House of Commons that the lesser sum would be sufficient to call in the heavy copper coinage and restrike it into lighter bronze pieces.

[12] The bill extending the laws relating to copper coins to those of mixed metal gained royal assent on 13 August 1859.

[16] He was already working on the project, and several days after the vote in the House of Commons, Gladstone expressed his satisfaction with pattern coins that Graham had sent him.

[17] Wyon was instructed that Britannia should be on the reverse of the new bronze penny; she had appeared on the copper coinage since the reign of Charles II in the 17th century.

According to the numismatic scholar Howard Linecar, it was felt that to remove Britannia from the coinage would be to signify that Britain no longer ruled the waves.

This exchange caused The Mechanics' Magazine to express astonishment that six months' work had not yet produced designs for three coins, and to regret that there had not been a public competition.

Gladstone, a classical scholar as well as a politician, insisted on BRITT rather than BRIT, noting that the abbreviation of a plural noun in Latin should have its final consonant doubled.

Production began, and on 30 June, Graham submitted examples of the new bronze coinage to Gladstone, seeking final approval.

[24] Wyon entered in his diary for 4 July 1860, "bad news today:—The Queen wishes the portraits on the new copper [sic] coins to be altered".

[29] The BRITT controversy resulted in a series of letters to The Times, with one likely written by Graham, and a paper read before the Numismatic Society of London.

[30] Stated The Mechanics' Magazine: "The advantages which will accrue to the public from the introduction of the new money form a consideration of much more practical importance than pedantic quibblings about the second t in 'Britt'.

[31] Sebastian Evans, in a paper read for him before the Numismatic Society by John Evans, questioned the likeness of Victoria and disliked the placement of a sailing ship and a lighthouse of almost equal size on either side of Britannia: "altogether, on both obverse and reverse, the design is feebler and the work less satisfactory than in any former coin of the reign".

[38] The weight of the penny was halved, so that 48 of them would weigh a pound avoirdupois (454g), and it was made thinner to make it as large in diameter as possible.

[39] Since speed of production was a priority, and there were three different sources of supply, there are a large number of varieties in the early years of the bronze coinage.

[38] To get the new coins quickly into circulation, the Royal Mint paid for their shipment to any part of the country; this programme led to local surpluses and was stopped at the end of 1872.

[38] In February 1873, Charles William Fremantle, Deputy Master of the Royal Mint, recommended that the coppers no longer be accepted, as the amounts being submitted had become insignificant, and this was done with effect from 31 July 1873.

[41] The Royal Mint continued to receive applications to exchange the old copper coinage, generally from those in country districts, for several years afterwards.

[38] Fremantle suggested that much of the unredeemed copper, especially from the early, heavier issues, was melted down privately for its metal, and therefore that most of the pre-1860 coins had been accounted for.

[49] The Bun penny, with Wyon's obverse, and its analogue for the halfpenny and farthing, continued to be struck until replaced with the Old Head coinage in 1895.