½ Crown Palace Internment Camp

Palace Internment Camp was established on the Isle of Man during the Second World War, one of several sites used by the British government to detain enemy aliens — primarily German and Austrian nationals, many of them Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi persecution and were now, by grim bureaucratic logic, classified as potential threats. The camps issued their own internal scrip because internees were prohibited from holding sterling.

Isle of Man camp currencies are among the more sobering survival artifacts of wartime British internment policy. Genuine examples are genuinely scarce; the population was small, the duration limited, and most scrip was withdrawn when the camps wound down.