1/2 Penny Somerset - Bath / John Howard

John Howard, the prison reformer whose death in 1790 from camp fever contracted while inspecting a Russian military hospital near Kherson, was commemorated extensively in the British conder token series of the 1790s. Bath issued this halfpenny under Somerset's token output at a moment when the Royal Mint's chronic copper shortage had left provincial trade almost entirely dependent on private token issues. Howard had visited Bath and was well known in Somerset reform circles.

Dalton & Hamer 36 places this among the more frequently encountered Bath pieces, though Batty's separate cataloguing reflects genuine die distinctions within the Howard commemorative type.