Gates of the Abode - A season of talks and workshops on death, departure and the unseen at Abney Park; this lecture is part of the Tales of Departure series.
Engraved coin keepsakes, customary between 1752 and 1868, are a durable material culture of absence and separation. Although already known by numismatic collectors, these tokens remained virtually anonymous to scholarly research until the 1990s. They resurfaced thanks to Tim Millett, who made his extensive private collection available to museums. These love tokens fall into three categories: Sailors' Farewell Coins, Prisoner Coins and Leaden Hearts (convict coins with transportation association). They allow us to shed light on how sailors, criminals and commoners alike saw themselves and their parting from dear ones.
Abney Park tells its own tales about this world of punishment and separation. Chartist orator Henry Vincent, buried here, was tracked by government spies at a time when transportation to Australia was a common punishment for social unrest. Also resting at Abney Park is Archibald "Archie" Sloss, a burglar transported first to Bermuda, then to Western Australia, before reforming and joining the Salvation Army — his funeral in 1900 drew hundreds through London.
Join us at Abney Park, final resting place of reformers and reprobates alike, for a talk on these small, defiant tokens of love against impossible odds.
Speaker Biography:
Alessandra Curtis is a British-Italian folklorist, with a background in archaeology, driven by a passion for material culture and London history. Drawing on a wealth of social history and curious details, she explores the forgotten meanings attached to every-day items that tell stories of ordinary people, often overlooked in conventional records.
Meeting point:
Please meet at the Harriet Delph room, next to the cafe, at the Stoke Newington High Street entrance.
Please arrive 10 - 15 minutes before the start time of 7:00pm.
Access information:
The Harriet Delph room is located next to the Abney Park Cafe.
There is level access at the High Street entrance to Abney Park.
Accessible toilet facilities are available.