6 Pence Staffordshire - Bilston / Rushbury and Woolley

Rushbury and Woolley operated as button manufacturers in Bilston, a Black Country town that had become a center of small metal goods production by the early nineteenth century. Their 1811 sixpence belongs to the short-lived wave of provincial silver tokens issued after chronic small-change shortages — worsened by wartime silver hoarding and the Royal Mint's near-total neglect of low-denomination coinage — left local traders unable to make change for daily transactions. Parliament suppressed the entire class of private silver tokens in 1812, giving pieces like this a circulation window of a single year at most.