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5 Pounds - Elizabeth II 5th portrait, The Infamous Prison
| Issuer | Royal Mint |
|---|---|
| Year | 2020 |
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| Orientation | Medal alignment ↑↑ |
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| Reverse description | Central design featuring a Gothic Roman arch window motif evoking the architectural character of the Tower of London, within which inscription lettering appears at centre left. The legend MY LIBERTIE DENIED is inscribed within the design, referencing the historical imprisonment of notable figures within the Tower. The words TOWER OF LONDON appear above the arch as a principal legend. A small Tower of London mint mark is positioned to the right of the central design. The engraver's initials T.N. for Timothy Noad appear within the field. |
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| Mintage | 2020 - BU - 12,980 |
| Additional information |
Issued as part of the Royal Mint's "Great Engravers" or commemorative crown series, this piece marks the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower voyage — except it doesn't. "The Infamous Prison" refers to the Old Marshalsea, the debtors' prison in Southwark that held, among thousands of others, John Dickens in 1824, dragging his twelve-year-old son Charles into warehouse labour at Warren's Blacking Factory. That experience saturated Dickens's fiction for the rest of his life, most directly in *Little Dorrit*, whose protagonist is born inside Marshalsea's walls.
The prison closed in 1842. A fragment of the south wall still stands on Angel Place, Borough.