One purpose of the redesign was to replace portraits of the queen which had changed little since her youth, and which no longer resembled the monarch, who was nearing her seventieth birthday.

[4][5] When a double florin was proposed by a director of the Bank of England in 1874, the Deputy Master of the Royal Mint, Charles Fremantle, opposed it.

These limits were so tight that 45 per cent of newly-struck half sovereigns were rejected by the automatic scales at the Royal Mint, requiring their recoinage.

In 1884, the Gladstone government proposed to reduce the amount of gold in the half sovereign by a tenth, rendering it a token coin, but the change was abandoned.

[11] In September 1886, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Randolph Churchill, replied sympathetically to a proposal in the House of Commons to abolish the half sovereign and replace it with silver coins.

Although Churchill was noncommittal,[12] his son and biographer Winston wrote that he "harboured a deadly design against the half-sovereign—'that profligate little coin'—which he believed was an expensive and unnecessary feature of British currency".

The numismatist G. P. Dyer, in his article on the influences that brought about the double florin, wrote: Its origins are clearly to be found in a desire to limit use of the costly half-sovereign, something that in turn would conserve gold and expand the demand for silver, both desirable objectives given the concern that a diminished supply of gold and a surplus of silver, by disturbing their relative values, had harmed trade and hurt the Government of India.

That both double-florins and crowns should be issued suggests ambivalence and indecision as to which might be preferred, but in the event the British public was quick to show that it cared for neither.

[17]Sir John Clapham, in his 1944 history of the Bank of England, described the double florin as "a half-hearted concession to admirers of the decimal system".

Her Golden Jubilee in 1887 gave an opportunity to place new designs on the coinage, and all the circulation coins but the bronze pieces saw a new portrait of her that year.

[22] Boehm prepared a likeness that was used for a medal marking the queen's Jubilee, and which was adapted for the coinage in lower relief by Leonard Charles Wyon, who made small changes.

"[28] Simon Heffer, in his history of Britain in the decades before the First World War, stated that the engraving on the Jubilee coinage was "honest and lifelike", but that Victoria "looked sour, chinless and porcine, her over-sized head made all the more glaring by a crown several sizes too small being perched upon it, above a bizarre flowing head-dress".

The act which permitted Victoria to adopt that title had forbidden her to use it within the United Kingdom, and the double florin reflects that decision.

The winner, a design by Thomas Brock, was placed on the coinage beginning between 1893 and 1895,[8] with new reverses for the surviving silver coins between the sixpence and half crown; and on them is a statement of the value.

[41] On 12 May 1887, Fremantle officially announced that there would be changes to the gold and silver coinage, including the introduction of a double florin, and an Order in Council to that effect was printed in The London Gazette on 17 May.

Later that month, the Annual Report of the Deputy Master of the Mint contained engravings of the new issue;[42] Fremantle wrote in it of the double florin, "it remains to be seen whether this handsome coin will be generally popular".

[6] Fremantle authored an article for the June number of Murray's Magazine entitled "Our New Coins and Their Pedigree" in which he said of the double florin, "I am not without hope that these attempts to substitute silver coins of artistic design for the somewhat commonplace currency to which we have been accustomed during the last fifty years may be favourably viewed by the public; and it is possible that the introduction of a larger piece than those which we have hitherto been in the habit of using, in the shape of the double florin, may in many ways be found useful.

[18] The Standard wrote on 19 May that "there is no particular need for a four-shilling piece ... And, now that the double florin will form the middle denomination between the two shillings and the half-sovereign, probably a fresh attempt will be made to withdraw it [the half-crown] from circulation".

[43] The Belfast News Letter, writing on 23 May, stated, "It is difficult to imagine what purpose the double florin will be calculated to serve; for the inconvenience of large and heavy silver coins is too great to be overlooked".

It was some storm: questions in Parliament, outspoken criticism from all sections of the press, derisive cartoons and doggerel in Fun and Punch, and even some unfriendly comment by John Evans in his presidential address to the Royal Numismatic Society.

[51] The only immediate effect of the outcry was that the sixpence, which lacked a statement of its denomination and was gilded to pass as a half sovereign, was given again its former reverse design, which stated its value.

[52] In December 1887, Fremantle wrote to Robert Hunt, deputy master of the Sydney branch of the Royal Mint, that the reasons for the double florin's issuance were very complicated, and that he doubted that it would "ever be in great demand".

[54] With only 2 mm difference between the diameters of the double florin and the crown, there is anecdotal evidence that some at public houses lost their livelihood to the "Barmaid's Ruin".

They would find it, we believe, a difficult thing to be perfectly sure which coin they were dealing with unless they examined the reverse and saw whether or not the knight and the dragon [the crown's design] was on it".

[37] According to Richard Lobel in the Coincraft Standard Catalogue of English and UK Coins, "this denomination, unpopular at the time of issue, lasted until 1890, when it had outlived its usefulness.

piece, its size and its novelty were fatal handicaps; it was dropped ... after an issue of 2⁠1/2⁠ million specimens, and the flop was so flagrant that the Mint, contrary to all its practice, took the coins back at full face value on request".

Boehm died in December 1890, and according to the art critic Marion Spielmann, who knew him well, "his gentle spirit bowed in silence beneath the torrent of scornful condemnation with which his work was received", leading to his illness and death.

[37] In 1895, Robert William Hanbury, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, stated in response to a parliamentary question that he did not know why the double florin had been issued, and that some great distinction should have been made between it and the crown.

[65] The double florin's rival, the crown, continued to be issued, and considerable efforts were made to circulate it, in the hope it would displace some half sovereigns from trade, but by 1902 it was clear that the main use of the coin was to pay government wages at the dockyards, after which it immediately went back to the banks, and it was stopped.

[63] A 1931 report for the American government mentioned the double florin as the sole obsolete coin issue circulating in Britain, and described it as "rarely seen".