1/2 Penny Suffolk – Haverhill

Haverhill's late eighteenth-century token issues emerged from the same acute small-change shortage that plagued provincial England following the government's near-total neglect of regal copper coinage after 1775. Fincham, operating in a market town on the Essex-Suffolk border, commissioned this halfpenny to keep local trade moving when Royal Mint output had effectively ceased to meet demand.

DH#31 is one of several distinct Haverhill pieces catalogued by Dalton and Hamer, distinguishable by die specifics rather than surface description alone.