Issue 58: who was Elizabeth Goever?
What can we discover about a woman from only her 17th Century trade token?
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In the footpaths in Rainham, an ancient Essex village now in the far east of Greater London, are a series of round brass plaques. Installed as part of a public art/history project in 2012, they depict the commerce and industry of the area’s past: from butchers and shoemakers to the old wharf and the ‘trolley’ into central London. Among them is a curious recreation of a trade token from 1668.
What’s interesting about the token is that it bears the full name of a woman.
17th Century token production took place between the late 1640s and early 1670s when there was a severe shortage of low value coinage. The tokens functioned as both an alternative to official currency and pocket-sized advertising. Business owners had the tokens created from cheap metals in farthing, half penny or penny denominations to allow locals to make their small, day-to-day purchases. Sometimes the tokens were accepted right across the local area, and other times only in the issuer’s own business. The tokens relied on trust in the issuer that the customer, or another businessperson who accepted the token as payment, could later redeem its value for official coinage.
Research on surviving examples of trade tokens from mid-17th Century London found women issuers to be in the extreme minority. A paper by Idit Ben-Or analysed 4,200 tokens created between 1649-1672, of which only around 140 (or 3%) featured the full name of women. (Around 39% of male-issued tokens included a triad of initials representing husband and wife; 30% of the tokens analysed could not be categorised by the gender of the issuer.)
Consider that the population in London around this time was about 450,000-500,000, while in Rainham in 1670 there were just 44 occupied houses, and Goever’s token is even rarer and more impressive.
Goever’s footpath plaque features an amalgamation of the two sides of her real-life token and incorporates details from other tokens, too (such as the spelling ‘halfe’). The original is described in a contribution from A G Wright to a 1928 issue of the ‘Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society’ as:
A token of Rainham, which was presented to the [Colchester] Museum in 1910 by Mr. J. Barton Caldicott and is recorded in the Annual Report, 1910, p. 22, where unfortunately the name of the town is misspelt.
I submitted this token to the British Museum authorities, who considered it "the first token yet known of that place."
This token is in a fine state and reads:
[Obverse]: – ELIZABETH . GOEVER – A five-pointed star; HER . HALF . PENY, in three lines, within circle.
[Reverse]: – AT . RAINHAM . 1668 – stop or mintmark, a five-pointed star or mullet. EG on either side of reversed true lover's knot.
In his ‘History of Rainham, Wennington and South Hornchurch’ published in 1966, Frank Lewis reveals that only one example of Elizabeth Goever’s token survives: the aforementioned donation to Colchester Museum.
But sadly, when I contacted the museum recently, they were “disappointed and frustrated” to tell me the token “currently has an unknown location”. The catalogue description doesn't help us understand who Elizabeth was, or what she did, either. It simply gives the date it was received by the museum – as above: 1910.
A search of the Essex Record Office revealed little more. The most promising link I’ve been able to find is from the parish register for Rainham, which records the baptisms, marriages, and burials that took place at the local church. It has a listing for an Elizabeth Gover who was buried there on 13 April 1702. It’s not uncommon for words and names to be spelled in different ways during this period. Indeed, Elizabeth’s token spells ‘penny’ with just one ‘n’ (as do all other 17th Century tokens I’ve seen).
A hearth tax assessment from 1670 (from which we get the above figure of 44 occupied houses in Rainham) lists a Robertus Gomer, but no Goevers or Govers.
So, what can we surmise about Elizabeth Goever from the scant historical evidence?
Tokens were issued to enable commercial trade and served as an advertisement for the business. So, issuers would have worked from a set location and therefore owned or paid rent on a premises.
They would have needed a licence to trade. Given restrictions on women in this period, for Elizabeth to run her own business and issue her own token, she would have needed to be a single, independently wealthy woman; a widow; or, if married, recognised as a 'feme sole’ (which also applied to single women) for the purpose of carrying out her own trade. Importantly, she would have controlled the earnings from her business.
The most common occupation depicted on the women’s trade tokens surveyed by Ben-Or was ale house/tavern/inn keeper. In the 17th Century, Rainham residents made their living from farming and the river Thames. Agriculture, and a little boat building and operating, were the industries of the area. But according to W R Powell’s ‘A History of the County of Essex’, there were a few drinking establishments. The Ferry House ale house (later the Three Crowns) was first recorded in 1556. The first inn was established after 1633, possibly called the White Hart (by 1716 it was the Phoenix – the name survives on a pub to this day). In 1640 there were five licenced houses in the parish, but sadly, records for alcohol licences at the Essex Records Office jump from 1640 to 1713, skipping the period Elizabeth’s token shows she might have been in charge.
As best as I can guess, Elizabeth Goever was a financially independent woman who may have quenched the thirsts and provided rooms (possibly beside the river – might the knot on her token be related to tying boats at the ferry?), for the butchers, sheep and cattle-breeders, watermen, shipwrights – and passers-through – of 17th Century Rainham.