25 Centimes - Béthune Mining Company

The Compagnie de Béthune operated coal mines in the Pas-de-Calais basin, a region that spent much of the First World War either under German occupation or directly behind the front lines. By 1917, the disruption to normal banking and coin supply was severe enough that industrial employers across northern France resorted to printing their own fractional notes — bons de nécessité — to pay workers and keep internal commerce moving. This note is one such instrument, entirely local in economic scope.

Imprimerie Chaix was a serious commercial printer with a long history of railway timetables and official publications; its involvement here reflects how widespread the emergency scrip phenomenon had become by mid-war.