Born the son of a poor foundry man who worked in the furnace room at the Backbarrow Foundry  in Cumbria, England, John learned at an early age, the science and  potential of pouring molten metal into moulds, working alongside his father in the searing heat of the furnace room.

 Though he realised the limitations of smelting with furnaces heated by coke which produced poor grade iron, it was down to him, the industrial innovator Wilkinson to help solve these problems with more and more effective bellows systems later in his career.

An incredibly ambitious man, he rapidly transited through the ranks of worker up to the management of a number of ironworks, until partnerships beckoned and Wilkinson 'the boss' emerged.

 Innovator is an excellent word with which to tar John Wilkinson. He was a man who saw potential in metal all around him and with the industrial revolution full tilt, Wilkinson became the first to build a large steel transporter barge called the Trial,  to ply the new British canal systems,  being built to carry massive loads of coal and clay throughout the industrial Midlands.

The rest as they say is history.

 Wilkinson became a formidable part of a remarkable trio of British industrialists which included the scientist and inventor of the steam engine James Watt  and the father of Birmingham, Matthew Boulton.

These three great men were the leading lights of British industry and were appropriately called the Steam Engine Parliament.

The finacier, Boulton, took on the role of business executive and entrepreneur, whilst naturally James Watt continued with his scientific developments, leaving Wilkinson as manufacturer and developer, honing with ever greater precision the great  engines, cylinders and machinery of the industrial north.

 Wilkinson owned and ran an industrial Empire of vast foundries, blast furnaces and iron works throughout Britain. Each producing a vast array of goods, pipe work, weapons, rolling stock, wheels and machinery and it was to him that countless thousands of workers relied on for his employ.

His innovative brain clicked into gear again, this time as Wilkinson the retailer, with John opening shops called Tommy shops for his ironworkers, brick makers and potters throughout industrial England where the story of the Wilkinson Token begins.

 John Wilkinson was in one, a ruthless businessman, a tender man of charity and a miserly Scrooge. He was also both a lovable and less lovable rogue rolled into one with a widespread reputation for womanising,  upheld by his three children all being born out of wedlock to his lover.

The Wilkinson Industrial Token

 Around 1775, the British government, who looked inwardly to the city of London and the south being of greater consequence than the British good, decided in their infinite wisdom to stop the minting of all copper coins.

 Things haven't changed much then!

This messed things up completely for the ordinary man in the street and the poorer working class of industry and agriculture, as all what we would call 'small change' was suddenly abolished. So for England where a penny was a lot of money to a working class family, its proportionate half and quarter of a penny disappeared too!

 Now in today's' world where this little value coinage or 'shrapnel' just weighs down your pocket or gets collected in a jar, certainly buys you next to nothing and may not matter much  to us. Back then though, it was a big, big deal and could have had grave consequences.

So in steps in the inimitable John Wilkinson who, seeing a hole in the market decides to make his own money and kill a number of birds with one stone.

Firstly, he could use his coinage to pay his workers and the coins would be redeemable in his own shops and secondly he could buy the coins from the mint by weight and well below the face value and make money on the transition.

Trade Token History:

 The first trade tokes appeared in 1787 with the face of the ironmaster himself depicted in a right profile, as shown above, surrounded by the words, JOHN WILKISON IRONMASTER. Around its edge some of his factories, WILLEY, SNEDSHILL, BERSHAM and BRADLEY, with a different design appearing on the reverse each year.

<This image from 1793 depicts the huge drop forge in use in one of his foundarie and it was used for all of his coins minted in 1787, 1788, 1790, 1792, 1793 and 1795.

As with all coins, the issues soon brought about forgeries, though they are easily identifyable as they often carry misspellings of Wilkinsons name and incorrect factory towns around there edges.