Despite growing up in Scotland, I had never heard of, let alone seen, any historical love tokens made from coins. But here they were, popping up on most YouTube British detecting channels. Could it be that these gifts of the heart are confined only to England? Now that I think about it, I don’t recall seeing any Welsh or Northern Irish videos on the subject. Mind you, I’m not sure if I have seen any detecting channels from any of these countries either. If you are aware of any, please drop me a line!
But I digress.
These love tokens or Benders, as they are sometimes called, are made from coins. As you can see from the picture above, they have been bent on the edges to form an ‘S’ shape. Now many of these tokens are being unearthed in farmer’s fields by detectorists, and this fits in with their lore. It’s believed that these coins would be bent by a young man, to show the strength of his love, and given to the woman who had won his heart. If she accepted the, now love token, she would keep it and their love would bloom. However, if the woman did not have the same feelings for the young man, she would throw the token into a field. Thus, they would both move on to pastures new.
However, another version of the lore has it that instead of the coin being thrown away, it was returned to the giver, who would then make his way to the nearest tavern and drown his sorrows. Apparently this gave rise to the term “Going on a bender”.
The earliest tokens found dated back to the reign of Queen Mary (1553-1558), and they seemed to have petered out during the reign of King George III (1760-1820).
Do you recall the poem ‘There Was a Crooked Man’? The poem, was accredited to Mother Goose, and was first printed by James Orchard Halliwell in 1842. It goes like this:
There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all liv’d together in a little crooked house.
Some say that the reference to a “crooked sixpence”, may be a reference to a love token. Interesting!
To answer my own question, historical love tokens, of the coin variety, have been used in other countries, such as France, Australia and the U.S. However, the bending of the coin appears to be unique to the UK.
*Picture courtesy of Sharon Lathan
