William Joseph Taylor (1802 – March 1885) was a British medallist and engraver who produced a wide variety of medals and tokens throughout his career, including the majority of medals and tokens produced in London, as well as a notable enterprise in Australia which attempted to establish the continent's first private mint.

[1] Another colleague was the painter and engraver Henry Weigall, who modelled Taylor's masonic medal of Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, in 1843.

[12] He produced prize medals for the Royal Microscopical Society, featuring John Quekett on the obverse and a wreath with a blank space for a name on the reverse.

[7] Taylor also worked internationally, engraving a medal for the Timaru Agricultural & Pastoral Association, New Zealand, which featured a cow, a horse, a sheep and a pig on the obverse.

[26] He engraved a medal of James William Gilbart, banker, who appears to have commissioned the work as a form of publicity to celebrate both his and the banks achievements.

[34] Taylor also produced tokens for a variety of businesses and organisations, in Britain and abroad including: taverns, the military, railways and auctioneers.

[35] They chartered a vessel, called The Kangaroo, to transport the press, the dies and two employees, Reginald Scaife and William Brown to Australia.

[35] They arrived at Hobsons Bay on 25 October 1853,[38] unfortunately the press was too heavy to move and Scaife and Brown had to dismantle it in order to transport it to the site of the new mint.

[9] However, Taylor did retain some trade in Australia and New Zealand, issuing private tokens for companies, including Melbourne businessmen John Andrew and A.G.

[42] A syndicate of Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, Peter Tindall (Jnr) and William Joseph Taylor funded the venture.

The trio purchased a vessel called The Kangaroo (660 nrt), originally owned by Peter Tindall (Snr),[43] to transport significant amount of colonial supplies to Port Phillip along with the press, the dies and two employees with a prefabricated building.

[45] That narrative is just part of the false numismatic story as the gold price in Australia was stable, long before the Kangaroo set sail from England, mainly as a consequence of the Bullion Act 1852 in Adelaide.

That theory was debunked on 2005 when John Sharples of the Museum of Victoria discovered and published the 1853 agreement (the Deed) between the 3 entrepreneurs and the store manager, R Scaife.

[37] All this can be found in correspondence from Scaife (store manager) in Sharples (of the Victoria Museum) work on the Kangaroo Office.

[52] "I have much pleasure in calling your attention to four curious pattern pieces in gold, struck in the year 1853, when it was proposed to erect a separate mint for Port Phillip (Melbourne), in South Australia.

They cannot indeed be considered specimens of art, but they will serve hereafter as an interesting record of what the most prosperous colony England ever founded intended as the type of their national coinage…..

True, it never existed in terms of the narrative put forward by William Morgan Brown, Vaux and also W Roth a well known coin and token collector and commentator of the late 18th century.

[55] It is fact that the bullion rounds, medals as Sharples calls them, were marketed as mementos of the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition[41] and did not sell.

The rounds had no interest until the Museum got 'duped' into buying a set and W S W Vaux subsequently made all kinds of false claims about them.

[55][52][35] We also see institution like the Smithsonian and the British Museum[56] now stepping back from the false Vaux narrative that these rounds were "pattern coinage for national circulation".

[57] Public houses who Taylor issued tokens for included: the Horns & Chequers in Limehouses;[58] St Helena Gardens in Rotherhithe;[59] the General Napier in Pimlico;[60] The Florence - Billiard & Skittle Rooms;[61] Middlesex Music Hall;[62] Marylebone Music Hall;[63] the Old Welsh Harp Inn;[64] Audinet Restaurant;[65] the Traveller's Rest in Shepherd's Bush;[66] the Downham Arms, Islington;[67] the Blue Bull, Grantham.