Pill-Poppin' Sam": 1773 love token on British King George III halfpenny

Pill-Poppin' Sam": 1773 love token on British King George III halfpenny



Host coin: British KM-601 halfpenny of George III (ca. 1770-1773).
Obverse: original design with bust of George III right, unaltered.
Reverse: hand-engraved inscription "Sam / Jessop / 1773" within wreath, with flourishes and ornamental border.

I've long liked these 18th century copper love tokens, but because I'm not alone in that regard, prices on them seem to have gotten a bit stiffer and have mostly risen into low 3-figure territory these days. I had this one in my eBay watch list for a good while, and when the seller reduced the price by about 40% (to just a hair over $50), I pounced.

I would have been happy with it at that price, but as has happened a few times before, when I got around to doing a little research, I found an interesting backstory to the coin which made it even more valuable to me.

The seller had transcribed the name on this piece as "Pam Jefson", which is an understandable mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. It clearly says "Sam", and when one takes the old-style long S into account, it is plain that the name is "Sam Jessop".

And that is where the story gets intriguing, for there was a Samuel Jessop of Heckington, Lincolnshire, England (b. ca. 1753, d. 1817) who was the subject of several contemporary press reports. It seems he got himself into some legal trouble, as he was a hypochondriac and a drug addict with prodigious appetites, whose incredibly excessive pill-popping got him into serious money trouble. He ran up a bill of 787 pounds, 18 shillings, which was a truly staggering amount of money at the time- the equivalent of many tens of thousands of dollars today-all to feed his habit! So societal ills like "prescription drug abuse" are nothing new.

They were hard on debtors in those days, so perhaps Sam was lucky that his case was settled for 450 pounds, which was still a fortune. He died only two months after the verdict, in May 1817, aged 64 (or 65, by some sources). The case was widely reported in the press, and revisited many times in the 19th century and even as late as 1905, no doubt due to its sensational aspects. By the later accounts, his name had morphed into "Jessup", but contemporary accounts spell it "Jessop", just as it is on this coin.

Of course it's entirely possible that there was more than one "Sam Jessop" in England in the late 18th century, but given that the general time period, place, and name fit, I'd say there is a good chance this love token was once owned by the infamous pill popper in his younger, healthier days. Samuel Jessop would have been about twenty years old in 1773 when the engraving was done on the reverse of this coin. Was it a gift from a sweetheart in his youth? If so, one wonders what happened, since he was described as a "bachelor of opulence" at the time of the trial in 1817. Did he never marry? Was he widowed? Who gave him the love token? Was it still in his possession as a keepsake as he neared his tragic, sordid end? We'll never know all these answers, but I think you'll agree with me that the backstory makes this love token all the more fascinating.




The New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 7, 1817 (source of quote in image above)
The Cabinet of Curiosities, 1824 (somewhat longer article)
"The Pill Devourer" (modern British Library "Untold Lives" blog entry)

This love token was once one of the finer pieces in my old Engraved/Counterstamped/Oddball Type Set. I have since sold it to a good friend who collects this sort of material, but hopefully he will hold on to it for a while so I can have future "visitation rights".

 

It was one of MY favorites, too. And I would've kept it, but has gone off to live with savoyspecial.

 

Yep, that archaic Long-S tripped up the seller of this piece when it was listed on eBay, and has caused some confusion and mirth amongst people who read some of our founding fathers' documents.

But because I saw it for what it was, I was able to track down this story. Had to "read between the lines" a little bit before I went a-Googlin'. This happens sometimes.

 

PS- note that by the early 19th century, when that 1817 newspaper article in the image above was printed, the Long-S had mostly fallen out of favor.

Had the article been printed around 1773, when the love token was engraved, Sam's surname in print would've certainly looked more like "Jefsop".