Love Tokens

photo by michael weisbrot

You may be familiar with the expression: There was a crooked man and he walked a
crooked mile. He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile. He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse. And they all lived together in a crooked house. But did you know that there really were such items as crooked sixpences? The bent sixpence was made to be kept as a good luck charm along with many other items which were thought of as bearers of good luck. An old English superstition explained that a bent coin should always be kept in a pocket or purse and it would ensure that its owner would always have a pocketful of money.

The crooked sixpence also served another purpose. In medieval times, until late in the 16th century, it was the custom for a gentleman to bend a copper coin and give it to his beloved as a token of his love and a sign of his intention to marry her. The coin was not to be spent, but instead, to be carried always by the woman as a demonstration of her fidelity, a constant reminder to her each time she opened her purse. The difference between the good luck symbols and those given as love tokens was that those used as good luck charms to bring monetary fortune were usually bent through the center, while those made as love tokens were usually bowed or even cup-shaped. The first settlers who came to America, brought these customs with them and the customs endured well into the 19th century.

In the 18th and 19th centuries coins continued to be used as love tokens. They were handmade by suitors who gave them to their sweethearts. These love tokens were always flat. Poorer working class young men made their tokens from copper coins. The wealthy young man could use a silver or even a gold coin. Love tokens varied in size from the cartwheel penny of George III, to the smaller farthings. They were made simply and highly decorated. The coin would be rubbed down on both sides, until the monarch’s head and other details of design were removed. The young man then engraved or stamped his own design and message onto the blank disc he had created. Considering the fact that most of the men who created these love tokens were unskilled and most-often illiterate, some of the results are quite remarkable. Decorations ran the gamut from finely decorated to very crude. The symbols that were included used romance and love as their theme, so there were many hearts, hearts and arrows, Cupid’s bow and arrow, flowers, doves, lovers’ knots, as well as the initials of the young man or his sweetheart’s.
Victorian times brought with them a whole slew of new love tokens. Because the waistcoat was a fashionable part of gentlemen’s clothing and a watch was worn in the waistcoat pocket, one would often find coins hanging on a watch chain. The coins were usually farthings, silver threepenny pieces and sometimes even sovereigns. The coins of lesser value were the ones which had one side filed down and the name of a beloved engraved upon it. So much for the crooked sixpence!

—Judy Lewis (www.HudsonValleyWeddings.com)