I got my first Joey. Not this Joey: (and not my coin) ...but this Joey (a letter from Joseph Hume written in August 1842, advocating for social reforms in the Indian colonies and Scotland): Now, let me explain how this is, in fact, coin-related. A Joey was the slang word for the silver fourpence coin, also called a groat. (Later in the 1900s, the term Joey came to refer to the threepence, instead.) It is thought that the term “Joey” was originally derisively named after the Scottish physician and politician Joseph Hume (1777-1855). He had promoted the revised use of the silver fourpence in the 1830s for general circulation. (A fourpence was already being used for the ceremonial Maundy money.) This was to prevent London horse-driven cab drivers from pretending not to have exact change, hoping to extract a bigger tip. It is believed that drivers started the use of the term “Joey” as a derogatory reference to the fourpence. A Hansom cab - Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli called them ‘the gondolas of London’ In Keep the Aspidistra Flying, an early novel by George Orwell that deals with poverty and materialism, the term Joey is used. (The setting of the novel was the 1930s and at that time, the Joey referred to a threepence and not its original meaning of a fourpence.): The money clinked in his trouser pocket as [the novel's main character Gordon Comstock] got up. He knew the precise sum that was there. Fivepence halfpenny — twopence halfpenny and a Joey. He paused, took out the miserable little threepenny-bit, and looked at it. Beastly, useless thing! And bloody fool to have taken it! It had happened yesterday, when he was buying cigarettes. ‘Don’t mind a threepenny-bit, do you, sir?’ the little bitch of a shop-girl had chirped. And of course he had let her give it him. ‘Oh no, not at all!’ he had said — fool, bloody fool! His heart sickened to think that he had only fivepence halfpenny in the world, threepence of which couldn’t even be spent. Because how can you buy anything with a threepenny-bit? It isn’t a coin, it’s the answer to a riddle. You look such a fool when you take it out of your pocket, unless it’s in among a whole handful of other coins. ‘How much?’ you say. ‘Threepence,’ the shop-girl says. And then you feel all round your pocket and fish out that absurd little thing, all by itself, sticking on the end of your finger like a tiddley-wink. The shop-girl sniffs. She spots immediately that it’s your last threepence in the world. You see her glance quickly at it — she’s wondering whether there’s a piece of Christmas pudding still sticking to it. And you stalk out with your nose in the air, and can’t ever go to that shop again. No! We won’t spend our Joey. Twopence halfpenny left — twopence halfpenny to last till Friday. The study of numismatics is sometimes more than just coins. guy
