Catalogue Number
NMLH.1990.3.50.1
Object Name
Token
Title
'LTPWS 3'
Place
Liverpool
People
Liverpool Tin-Plate Workers' Society, Tin-Plate Workers' General Union
Description
A brass token created by the London Tin-Plate Workers' Society. It has the initials 'L.T.P.W.S.' around the edge, and a 3 in the middle. There is a star shape stamped at the bottom.
This token is from around 1820. They were used to regulate how much beer attendees at Society meetings drank. Attendance at meetings was compulsory, and provision of drinks was sometimes used to reward attendance. However, drunkenness was increasingly viewed as a sign of lax morals in the Victorian era, and the alcohol consumption of working class people was viewed by upper classes as a social disease, and proof that workers couldn't be trusted to know what was in their own best interests. Avoiding drunkenness at meetings was a good way to prevent a union from being classed as immoral or anything other than a political meeting. So, to legitimise the worker's rights movement, workers' behaviour was strictly controlled when they might be viewed as representing their trade union.
*On Display*
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