1/4 Cent - Edward VII

The Straits Settlements quarter cent persisted well into the twentieth century largely because of its purchasing power at the lower end of the colonial economy — small enough to matter for daily transactions among the laboring population, particularly in the rubber and tin industries where piece-rate wages made fractional coinage genuinely functional. By the time Edward VII's portrait replaced Victoria's on this denomination, debate within the colonial administration about whether the quarter cent remained economically justified was already underway. It would survive him, but not by much — the denomination was abolished in 1932.