1/2 Penny Middlesex - Skidmore's / Louis XVI and M. Antoinette

Skidmore's token was struck in the aftermath of the guillotine's work — Louis XVI executed in January 1793, Marie Antoinette in October of the same year. By 1795, commercial token issuers across Britain were already mining the executions for sentiment and sales, producing pieces for a public that had watched the Revolution's trajectory with a mixture of horror and fascination. Skidmore, operating out of London, issued prolifically during the 1780s–90s token boom that emerged precisely because the Royal Mint had allowed copper coinage to fall into catastrophic shortage.

Dalton & Hamer 513 places this among a cluster of Skidmore royalist-themed pieces. The pairing of the two condemned monarchs on a single token was a deliberate commercial choice, not a political act — grief sold.