World Tokens

Jamaica, Checks, Tickets and Tokens, ST DOROTHY, Kelly’s Estate, Marquis of Sligo, white metal Shilling, name above value, rev. payable…each friday eveng 6 o’clock, 36mm, 14.29g/6h (Lyall 159; Prid. 147, this piece illustrated [Sale, lot 129]; D & W 338/47). Central hole unpierced, trifling rim nicks and surface marks, otherwise extremely fine and extremely rare; one of the classic tokens in the West Indies series £800-1,000

Provenance: Bt Spink 1976.

Howe Peter Browne, 2nd Marquis of Sligo, KP, PC (1788-1845), formerly styled Viscount Westport and Earl of Altamont, acquired Kelly’s Estate, a sugar plantation, some time before his appointment as the Governor-General and Vice-Admiral of Jamaica in 1834. After his governorship was terminated in 1835 Sligo rented the estate to Alexandre Bravo (†March 1868), a newly-appointed Jewish member of the Jamaican assembly who represented Kingston and had owned 1,000 slaves. Bravo subsequently purchased it and another neighbouring estate owned by the Marquis in 1842, to add to his extensive property interests on the island; he subsequently served as Jamaica’s Auditor-General from 1851 to 1867. It would seem that the tokens were used to pay the newly-emancipated slaves on a weekly basis (Lyall, p.62)