Lot 1014

Description

Convict love token, made from a Great Britain cartwheel penny, 1797, with reverse smoothed and an undercut groove made in the upper half and infilled with silver, stippled on the reverse, 'George/Bevan/Birmingham (this on silver infill)/Born January/the 16. 1827 Age/19. 1846/Forget Me Not/18, (flower) 1845', around the reverse edge is a stippled pattern and the rim has been given a decorative milling by hand filing. The host coin nearly very good, the rest very fine.

George Bevan was transported to Australia on the Straheden which left London in 1845 stopping at the Isle of Wight on August 3 where she took on 72 Parkhurst boys bound for Hobart. They were part of the 154 male convicts sentenced to transportation. The Statheden arrived at Van Diemen's Land on 25 December 1845 where many convicts were disembarked including the Parkhurst boys. The ship then sailed on 12 January 1846 for Port Phillip arriving on 27 January where it disembarked the remaining convicts including George Bevan. On the token created by Bevan he indicates he was born on 16 January 1827 and that he would be 19 in 1846 however he has dated it 1845 and age 18, which was his actual age when he was making the token during 1845. It has obviously taken a long time and a lot of effort to create the undercut groove and then infill it with silver, probably from a threepence, which would have been a considerable sum in the 1820s. Then the creation of the decorative milled edge would also have required a sustained amount of perseverance to accomplish. His finished work is of a style rarely seen in these types of tokens.