Talk:William Joseph Taylor

Comments on Kangaroo Office

Editor @Billenben: addedsome detailed commentary to the section on the Kangaroo Office. Since it is largely unreferenced, and they are a new editor, I've moved it here for the time-being:

"The above is what is known as the false numismatic story. It is a story that elevates medals, not coins, to the pinnacle of Australian coin collecting. Most of the above relies on one source, Coinworks - who, no disrespect, wear numismatic goggles.

The Kangaroo Office was intended to be a colonial supplies store in Port Phillip that included a press for tokens and bullion rounds; the bullion rounds described as the “Gold Business” by Office manager R Scaife in a letter dated 9 Sept 1854. The Kangaroo Office had more than the one objective numismatics focuses on. A syndicate of Dr. Hodgkin, Tindall and Taylor funded the venture. The trio purchased or chartered a vessel, there are conflicting narratives, called The Kangaroo, to transport significant amount of colonial supplies to Port Phillip along with the press, the dies and two employees, Reginald Scaife and William Morgan Brown.

There are numerous narratives that claim the ventures prime objective was to profiteer on the difference in gold prices between the gold fields of Victoria and the market in London. That narrative is just part of the false numismatic story as the gold price in Australia was stable, long before the Kangaroo set sail from England, mainly as a consequence of the Bullion Act 1852 in Adelaide. The venture is alleged to have been considered in Nov 1852. By this point in time gold was around 71 shilling per ounce in the colonies, had been for a while. The Kangaroo did not leave for another 7 months. The store, the Kangaroo Office, failed as a venture due to a number of factors, lack of customers, lack of copper blanks, lack of diggers selling gold in Melbourne. All this can be found correspondence from Scaife (store manager) in Sharples (of the Victoria Museum) work including reference and the sting. The store closed in 1857.

The Kangaroo Office pieces (bullion rounds) rose to fame after the Coin and Token section of the British Museum purchased a set of the weights in 1862/3 (under false claims) from William Morgan Brown, formerly of the Kangaroo Office . Head of that Coin and Token section was W S W Vaux. In a piece in the 1864 The Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Numismatic Society, published by the Royal Numismatic Society, Vaux made all sorts of unsubstantiated and false claims when he ‘introduced’ the weights to the numismatic world.

"I have much pleasure in calling your attention to four curious pattern pieces in gold, struck in the year 1853, when it was proposed to erect a separate mint for Port Phillip (Melbourne), in South Australia. They cannot indeed be considered specimens of art, but they will serve hereafter as an interesting record of what the most pros­perous colony England ever founded intended as the type of their national coinage….. These pieces are now preserved in the British Museum; and I am informed by Mr. William Morgan Brown, from whom they were purch­ased during the last year (1863), that twenty-seven sets were originally struck, and that of these all have been melted down except one which is preserv­ed in Melbourne, and the one I have described above”. (Italics added) Vaux 1864

Some of the erroneous claims by Vaux (in italics) include:

Pattern pieces - strange because these are just weights, not coins or even tokens and no one at the Kangaroo Office in 1854 was ever calling them patterns. The Kangaroo Office was calling them “mementos of the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition”.

Struck in the year 1853 - only if Taylor (the die maker) struck them before the Kangaroo left England.

Erect a mint - a Exhibition medal screw press at a shop in the Victorian colony selling colonial goods.

Port Phillip (Melbourne), in South Australia - Vaux is geographically challenged.

Intended as…their national coinage – perhaps misled by William Morgan Brown. The dies were English (Taylor) so nobody in Victoria (or Australia) intended anything. And weights aren’t coinage.

Purchased last year – the introduction is in 1864. The Museum website claims they were purchased in 1862. Perhaps Vaux is both geographically and chronologically challenged. Perhaps Vaux is correct with 1863 and the website is wrong.

Vaux's introduction is very removed from the actual facts, it qualifies as deceptive. From this point on the false numismatic story was parroted and embellished to the point where that false narrative is now virtually unchallenged and all but ubiquitous.

Although; John Sharples of the Victoria Museum in a paper called the Kangaroo Office a ‘sting’ (the sting) and said it never existed. True, it never existed in terms of the narrative put forward by Morgan Brown, Vaux and also W Roth a well known coin and token collector and commentator of the late 18th century..

It is fact that the rounds, medals as Sharples calls them, were marketed as mementos of the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition and did not sell. The rounds had no interest until the Museum got duped into buying a set and Vaux subsequently made all kinds of false claims about them. Today the rare gold weights are highly prized collectables on the back of a completely false narrative generated by some high profile people in positions of trust at forefront institutions and publications."

Looking forward to seeing it fully referenced and sections reincorporated into the text. Lajmmoore (talk) 10:04, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Noting here @Billenben added the material back, but didn't fix the sourcing issues. Continued the discussion on their talk page Lajmmoore (talk) 15:14, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

References