1/2 Penny Lancashire - Manchester / I. Fielding

Manchester's token coinage of the early 1790s emerged from a genuine shortage of regal small change — the Royal Mint had issued almost no copper since 1775, leaving provincial commerce to fend for itself. Fielding's halfpenny belongs to the first great wave of commercial tokens that flooded Britain between 1787 and 1797, a private solution to a public failure that the government eventually suppressed with the 1817 copper coinage reforms.

Dalton & Hamer's attribution at DH#127 places this squarely within the well-documented Manchester merchant issues, a group notable for the sheer variety of local traders who commissioned pieces from the same small pool of diesinkers.