6 Pence Somersetshire - Bristol / To Facilitate Trade

Issued during the small change famine that gripped Britain in the early nineteenth century, this piece belongs to a short-lived experiment in private silver coinage. The Bank of England's wartime suspension of cash payments after 1797 had drained small silver from circulation entirely, and by 1811 local merchants across the country were issuing their own fractional silver tokens to keep retail trade moving. The Bristol group behind this piece — Garratt, Terrell, Bird, Beck, and Grigg — were among the more organized of these private issuers.

Parliament killed the practice in 1812, making the production window a single year.