Hudson’s Bay Company Scrips from the B.C. District

HBC BC District Scrip

Sydney Hodgkinson we glimpse as a Hudson’s Bay Company man. In 1909 he’s working as an accountant at the H.B.C. Telegraph Creek trading post in the northern part of British Columbia. Sydney is an imaginative and lyrical chap – he writes to a friend in familiar verse, thanking him for a book: Sydney Hodgkinson worked with the mighty H.B.C. from 1908 to 1935. The trading posts were often in tiny, remote settlements. In the 1910 Henderson’s B.C. Gazetteer, where Hodgkinson is listed as an accountant, Telegraph Creek is noted as  “a trading post, mining camp and post office in the Comox-Atlin district”…

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1820s Hudson’s Bay Company first promissory notes

HBC 1820 York Factory Pound 001

A One Pound Sterling and a Five Shilling promissory note from the Hudson’s Bay Company York Factory at the Red River Settlement. “Currency was needed by the new settlers in the Red River Settlement, and the Hudson’s Bay Company’s first promissory notes—2000 for one pound each and 4000 for five shillings each—were sent to York Factory in May 1820. The promissory notes were issued in books containing 100 notes each. They were not put into circulation immediately as Governor Simpson feared the settlers might hoard them, but after 1824 they gradually came into circulation and other denominations added. The notes…

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Scrip: British POW Camps in India 1941

India Coin News notes > The British established POW camps in India in 1941 as a result of the large number of POWs captured during the North Africa campaign. Over 100,000 POWs were transfered to camps in India which held Italian and Japanese POWs and German, Japanese, and Italian civilian internees. Some Indian political prisoners were also held in the camps. Ten of the camps were known to have issued currency. There were two major types of notes issued. Type one notes have a 6 mm bar on the left side of the note and type two notes do not. A…

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