1 Penny Middlesex - London / St. George's Hospital

St. George's Hospital at Hyde Park Corner relied on trade tokens during the 1790s because the Royal Mint had effectively abandoned small copper coinage — official halfpennies and pennies were so debased and counterfeited by mid-century that commerce in London ground toward private solutions. The hospital's token circulated as part of the broader Conder token phenomenon, in which hundreds of provincial and metropolitan issuers flooded Britain with privately struck coppers between roughly 1787 and 1797.

Parliament's Coin Act of 1797 and Boulton's subsequent Soho Mint contract eventually killed the trade token trade, but enforcement was gradual enough that hospital-affiliated pieces like this continued circulating into the final years of the decade.