1 Penny - R. Henry, Hobart, Tasmania

R. Henry operated as an ironmonger in Hobart Town during the 1850s, a period when the chronic shortage of small British regal coinage in the Australian colonies forced tradesmen to commission their own copper tokens simply to make change. These private issues were not fringe experiments — they were a practical necessity, circulating alongside whatever official coin happened to be available. Henry's token was struck in Birmingham, almost certainly by the Heaton Mint, which supplied the overwhelming majority of Australian tradesman tokens during this decade.

The colony of Tasmania had only been renamed from Van Diemen's Land three years prior, in 1856.