Comments on: Love Tokens From The Thames

By: Diane Keane

Diane Keane — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 17:15:52 +0000

This article put me in mind of The Quincunx, a novel Dickens-inspired novel by Charles Palliser (I can’t help but wonder if that’s a nom de plume?) published in 1989. The author is an American living in England. The descriptions in the book of London poor scavenging a living from Thames detritus are very compelling. In the book they are called sand-dippers, which I assume is an accurate historical phrase. There is a scene where two boys must pass under a submerged stone buttress when caught under water by the incoming tide, truly hair raising.

By: Joe Linker

Joe Linker — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 17:06:28 +0000

A few scenes in Penelope Fitzgerald’s “Offshore” (1979) shows the children, who live in a houseboat on the Thames, searching for these and other treasures during low tides, and what they find they offer for sale to a local merchant.

By: Colin

Colin — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 14:57:19 +0000

They are beautiful, but I’m afraid I think they should be left in river where they were intended to lie.

As a teenager many years ago I visited a heavily vandalised cemetery outside a village that had been cleared by Franco’s government to make way for a nearby reservoir. I picked up and took a fragment of a headstone with the name Maria roughly engraved on it. I still regret that decision and hope to return it to its resting place one day.

By: M D West

M D West — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 10:50:31 +0000

Well I shall never laugh at guys with metal detectors again!….these finds are magic.

By: Bureboy

Bureboy — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 19:35:36 +0000

As discussed on Start the Week ths morning.

By: Barb Drummond

Barb Drummond — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 15:51:46 +0000

Fascinating post. Years ago there was an exhibition – I think at the Museum of London with similar carved pennies by prisoners in hulks waiting to be sent to the colony of New South Wales. Even more heart breaking than many of these

By: Lynne Perrella

Lynne Perrella — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 10:51:33 +0000

What an enviable collection. I love the mystery that surrounds found objects…..and applaud
the serendipitous resurrection of these coins, while others are eternally lost to the bottom of the sea. Happenstance? Destiny? Kismet? All of it: Wonderful food for thought.
Many thanks, GA.