Enjoy this The Royal Mint chapter from "Imperial London", a unique view of London and its inhabitants, first published in 1901, by Arthur H. Beavan.

In 1900 the musical tinkle of sovereigns as they are poured out of copper shovels into scales or paper bags and passed under the counterrailings to the customer, reminded one of their place of origin, the Royal Mint, on the east side of Tower Hill, facing the entrance to St. Katherine's Dock.

There was another Mint behind it, which was the private establishment of the great house of Rothschild and Co.

The Mint is a quadrangular building built upon the site of an ancient Cistercian Abbey.

Its fine stone front by the architect Smirke, and its six-columned portico, with Royal Arms above, are sufficiently imposing, while the presence of sentinels ever on guard at the lodge-gates implied that it was no ordinary edifice.

Aesthetically, it was marred by the tall chimney on the left, at intervals vomiting forth smoke like a factory shaft.

In the front part of the Mint are the offices, and the waiting-room where parties of visitors (restricted to six in number) had to await their turn of escort.

In a building on the left of the quadrangle was the museum, or sample-room, seldom shown, but of special attraction to a numismatist, for it contained in glass-cases, specimens and dies of the Nation's various coinage in use since the Mint was first established; also commemorative medals; the Maundy money; gold coinage of £2 and £5 pieces, never publicly circulated; and the special coinage of the two Jubilees.

Directly across the quadrangle from the entrance-hall was the working portion of the Mint, and if gold happened to be coining there when any one visited the place, the party was in luck, for the process was not always going on.

In a very ordinary room were a few stalwart, silent workmen, apparently engaged in some complicated culinary operation.

Every now and again they opened the doors of sundry moderate-sized furnaces, and sampled the contents of some glowing crucibles discernible within, in which the ingots were alloyed and melted.

Presently the moment arrived, and the cooking was done to a turn; the pots were lifted out, and their contents, like thick treacle, poured into the moulds that formed them into small bars or strips.

They were then passed through rollers, were brought to their required thickness, and subjected to punching-machines which converted them into blank discs.

These, when weighed, annealed, and blanched, were conveyed to the coining department, where the wonderful automatic self-feeding screw, pressing on both sides at once, milled the edges, and gave them the guinea-stamp.

After a final cleansing and brightening, they were fit for use as the current coin of the realm.

The process of silver and bronze coinage was the same as that of gold. but the former was prettier to look at.

The sight of the smaller coins - the sixpenny and threepenny pieces - being produced by automatic machines under glass cases, and poured out into little hoppers, was very impressive.

The most extraordinary pains were taken to ensure the employment of the accurate proportion of alloy in the different coinage.

The precious metals given out to the workmen were weighed to a nicety, and checked as against the weight of coins produced, and the "cuttings" and "waste" left over, so that theft was practically an impossibility; nevertheless the artificers were all searched before leaving the premises.

Some dry facts about the Royal Mint are indispensable.

In 1898, no fewer than 98,099,217 coins were struck.

This was a record, exceeding the largest number struck in any preceding year, by 2,261,402.

When one read in the official reports, of 110 tons of gold bars being melted down for coinage, 470 tons of silver bars, and 61 1/4 tons of bronze bars for the so-called "coppers" - all in a single year - one began to wonder where the poor men really were.

Much of the colossal output consisted of light gold withdrawn from circulation and cast into the metal-pot, and made into coins of full weight; but, after allowing for this, the net addition to the gold currency for 1898 was £5,503,255; that for 1899 being eight and a half millions of sovereigns and half-sovereigns.

In subsequent years there was a large demand for pence.

This was due to the penny-in-the-slot machines for the sale of gas, sweetmeats, cigarettes, and the like.

In London alone, the Deputy-Master of the Mint estimated the amount of bronze coinage thus locked up at not less than £40,000.

In one year (1899-1900), no fewer than 75,258,000 pennies, weighing 647 tons, were dropped into the automatic penny-in-the-slot gas-metres supplied by the Gas Light and Coke Company to 114,668 consumers.

It may not be generally known that the Royal Mint would not convert gold dust or ingots into current coin for any individual, unless its value amounted to a million sterling.

This sum would weigh about eight tons; and ordinary-looking wagons could be seen proceeding from the Mint to the Bank of England carrying two tons at a time of the precious commodity, guarded only by a clerk and a porter.

Its heaviness constituted its chief defence from ordinary theft, but should a break-down or serious collision occur on the road, the passers-by might be astonished and exhilarated at the spectacle of brand-new sovereigns or ingots of gold rolling broadcast in the gutters.

The Royal Mint is a place suggestive of a good deal; and fittingly did the Empress Frederick remark, when shortly before her marriage she visited it privately, "I shall never spend a sovereign again without thinking of the trouble the Royal Mint takes in making money for the public."

Next:

Mercantile London in 1900 - The London Stock Exchange