It seems that in the last European war prisoner medals were issued privately only. The extensive search for such medals carried on by the author in numismatic literature and dealers’ catalogues as well as through interviewing of collectors and dealers, yielded only four items. Three are of German origin, only one is French. None of these medals has aroused as yet the attention or curiosity of numismatists in general or of collectors of medals in particular.

Because of its medallic representation a typically German “war medal” will be mentioned first. No specimen was available to this writer. None is found in the Museum of the American Numismatic Society in New York City. It is a unilateral bronze medal, measuring 64 millimeters in diameter, designed by the German artist. Ludwig Gies, whose initials L.G. appear on the obverse. It is one of the numerous “war medals” created by him in the beginning of the First World War. It depicts the act of capture. A German soldier is shown capturing and taking away a French, a Russian, an English, Belgian, Serbian, and a colonial native prisoner of war. A brief description, but no reproduction of this medal, is found in J. Schulman’s Catalogue LXV, of April 1916, p. 82, No. 809. It is pictured among the artist’s other war medals in Max Bernhart’s Die Muenchener Medaillenkunst der Gegenwart, Plate 15, No. 102, wherefrom the reproduction is made.

The medal reproduced here as No. 1, another German war prisoner medal, is a silver medal, of 37.67 grams, measuring forty-one millimeters in diameter. The obverse depicts the full figure of a German prisoner of war, dressed in his uniform, on which a sign PG (French: prisonnier de guerre) is visible. Standing on the shore of a river, being of course the Rhine, he holds his hands stretched out to express his fervent longing for his home country. Not only the mountains of the latter are visible on the opposite shore but also the home village with its little church in the foreground. The inscription in the left upper space of the medal, before the soldier’s eyes, reads: SEHNSUCHT (longing). The reverse bears the following inscription in a quadrangular space surrounded by ornaments: VOLKSBUND/ZUM SCHUTZE/DER DEUTSCHEN/KRIEGS u. ZIVIL/GEFANGENEN, meaning, “National Society for the Protection of German Military and Civil Prisoners of War.” On the rim of the medal name and place of the producing firm are visible: C. Poellat, Schrobenhausen. The designer’s name does not appear on the medal. No year is given. In accordance with the aims of the issuing society the medal was probably destined to promote interest in and support of the German prisoners of war in enemy land. No records or accounts of the activities of this society were available in this country. Nevertheless it is safe to assume the following. Sending of food parcels from Germany was possible only in the first years of war. But even later, in the period of grave food shortage, funds were still needed and actually raised for clothing, and particularly for books, which were continuously sent to prisoner camps in great quantities. A specimen of this medal is in the collection of Dr. Bruno Kisch, New York City.

There is a French counterpart to this medal. A small medal, 26 millimeters in diameter, similar to No. 1 in its motives, but apparently more artistically designed, is known to have been struck in France. No specimen is available in this country. According to the brief description in J. Schulman’s Catalogue LXXIII it was designed by O. Yencesse and executed in a silvery white metal. The obverse shows a French soldier seated in an attitude of despondency. The inscription reads: POUR NOS—PRISONNIERS. that is: “For Our Prisoners.” On the reverse a dove is visible bearing in its bill an olive branch. Below is the date 1916. The motive of the issuance of this medal was patently fund raising.

No. 2 is a medal made of hard white metal, and struck for the German prisoners of war interned at Douglas, Isle of Man, to commemorate their detention there. Its diameter measures 46 millimeters. On the top there is a rectangular vertical loophole. The obverse shows the Douglas prison camp, in the foreground its barracks and huts, also an unfolded banner is visible; in the background a fortress at the left of the beholder, and a lighthouse at the right. Between the fortress and the lighthouse is the Manx triskelion or triquerta, occupying a prominent place in the upper center. The entire picture on the obverse is enclosed by a surrounding wreath of barbed wire. The reverse has a wreath of leaves with a panel in the middle. The inscription reads, in the upper segment: WELTKRIEG 1914-1915 (“World War 1914-1915”); in the lower: DOUGLAS ISLE OF MAN; in the middle: ERINNERUNG AN DIE KRIEGSHAFT (“In commemoration of war detention”). No artist’s name is given. Specimens of this medal are found in the museum of the American Numismatic Society, New York City, and in this writer’s collection. The first mentioned specimen is in an (original) plain wooden case with no ornament. Other wooden cases are known, on the cover of which an inlaid design is visible representing an open-jawed snake as the symbol of war. The words Weltkrieg 1914/15 are added on the case. This medal was pictured and briefly, though not exactly, described in The New York Times of August 26, 1916. In The Numismatist of March 1916, a reproduction with a few explanatory lines was also published, the medal having been exhibited at the January meeting of the New York Numismatic Club.

Douglas, Peel and Knockaloe had been chosen as sites for the detention camps on the Isle of Man. Here many an alien who for years had followed some profession or trade in Great Britain was interned in 1914 for the duration of the war. The English and German Relief Committees with the active cooperation of the American Young Men’s Christian Association succeeded in performing what seemed to the New York Times correspondent at that time to have been an unheard-of feat under the existing conditions: the establishment of an art school for prisoners of war at Camp Douglas. Beside wooden boxes done in chip carving and in wood intaglio, the commemorative medals for German war prisoners were certainly the most artistic objects produced there. Through a strange irony of fate, they were strictly “made in England.” “Some day they will be of historic value,” said the New York Times correspondent in concluding his article. The art school was established in 1915. From the inscription on the medals “1914-1915” it is clear that they must have been designed and executed in the latter year, three years before the war came to an end.

No other war prisoners medals dating back to the First World War have come to the attention of the present author. Yet, there may be some that eluded him. He therefore would appreciate any additional information that readers should be kind enough to send him (address: 415 West 115th Street, New York 25, N. Y.)

III
American War-Prison Tokens and Medals

1. “Historical Tokens”

The study of European money and medals issued for prisoners of war in 1914-1918, aroused—little wonder—the curiosity as to whether similar items came into existence in this country too. No war prisoners money or medal originating in the last war is known to the author. In his collection, however, five related items are found, four small tokens and one large medal, which are deserving the historian’s and medallist’s attention. All of them picture war prisons of ill fame. Four pertain to the Revolutionary War, the fifth to the Civil War. Thus it is pertinent to consider them all in this connection.

Nos. 3 A, 3 B, 4 and 5 are copper tokens, each 31 millimeters in diameter. They are not “historical” items in that they have come down to us as immediate witnesses from the period of the Revolutionary War. They are rather medallic creations of an outspoken commercial character, but nevertheless “historical” tokens. Nos. 3 A and 3 B are identical with No. 1 of a series of fourteen “Historical Tokens” issued by August B. Sage, a well-known New York coin dealer, in 1859. No. 4 in the present numbering is identical with No. 2, and No. 5 with No. 5 of the same series. On the first page of his Catalogue of Coins, Medals and Tokens, No. 1, of February 1859, Mr. Sage announced that “this series will consist of about 25 tokens, each one giving a correct representation of some public building around which there is anything of an historical interest.” No more than fourteen tokens were actually issued of this series. All of them were advertised in Mr. Sage’s later catalogue of June 1859. They were executed in copper plain edge and in copper and brass with reeded edges. In 1859, the set was offered for sale for $4.00. Mules in copper, brass, and tin are known. Of No. 1 and No. 6 two dies were made: in both cases the original die showed some mistakes in picture or legend which were corrected in the second die. In Chapman’s catalogue of the Bushnell collection a specimen of No. 1 in silver is listed as No. 462. It was described as of “weak impression, but very rare.”

No. 3 A shows on its obverse a three-story building. On top a fourth-story attic is added with four dormer windows. Above the roof rises an octagon-shaped tower surrounded by a balustrade and surmounted by a cupola ending in a cross. On the front side of the building at the level of the main floor an empty space is visible. It was probably designated in the draft for a gate or entrance door which is, however, missing. The building is surrounded by a fence. In the lowest part of the obverse, a large asterisk is placed between two smaller ones. The top space contains the inscription: THE OLD PROVOOST, N. Y. The reverse has the following legend arranged in five lines A/ BRITISH/ BRISON/ DURING THE/ REVOLUTION. The third word reads Brison, and not Prison. This inscription is placed within the chain of shackles in a wreath-like arrangement. The endings converge but do not meet, in the lower part of the obverse. Between the open ends one reads: NO. 1, and underneath in smaller letters parallel to the rim: AUG. B. SAGE’S HISTORICAL TOKENS.

No. 3 B, of the same type and make looking almost identical with, but differing in details from No. 3 A, must be considered as a “revised edition” of the latter. The obverse is identical with that of No. 3 A with only one deviation: No. 3 B has an entrance door instead of the empty space in the front wall of the building. The reverse shows more divergencies. The wording and arrangement of the main inscription are identical with that of No. 3 A. But the mistake in the word PRISON is here corrected, the B having been replaced by a P. In 3 B the surrounding open chain occupies only the upper half of the margin, while the title of the token series takes its place in the corresponding space in the lower half: “AUG. B. SAGE’S HISTORICAL TOKENS.” The half-circles of the chain in the upper part and of the series title in the lower part thus form a kind of wreath surrounding the main inscription of five lines. The numeral, No. 1, appears here in the lower part and is separated from the last line of the inscription, REVOLUTION, by a small asterisk between two brief exergual lines. Asterisk and lines are missing in No. 3 A.

Both types of the token, 3 A as well as 3 B, have on the obverse below the left corner of the fence, the initial L, representing the name of the engraver, George H. Lovett, who is listed in the New York City Directory of 1859 as die-sinker at 131 Fulton Street. He executed all the Sage tokens and several very pretty Washington medals.

The medallic picture of the “Old Provoost” is undoubtedly based on Alexander J. Davis’s (1803-1892) drawing that was engraved by Alexander Anderson (1775-1870) and reproduced in The New York Mirror of September 10, 1831, in John Pintard’s article, “The Old Jail.”

The site of this “modern bastille” was City Hall Park. It was built as the second jail, in succession, in the City of New York in 1757 and completed in 1759. In the revolutionary period it was memorable during the occupation of the City by the British forces, from 1776 to 1783, as a British military prison, known as “Provost” and later as “Martyr’s Prison”, still later as “Debtor’s Prison”. In 1830 it was reconstructed and fitted to receive public records, henceforth known as “Register’s Office” or “Hall of Records”. It was finally demolished in 1903 to make way for the Subway. Coins, buttons, and human bones were found in the excavation. A tablet, erected in 1907, on a granite monument in the Park still marks the site of the “Old Provost.”

This British military prison, under the superintendence of the ill-famed Captain Cunningham, Provost-Marshall—from whom it took its name—and his deputy, Sergeant Keefe, was the scene of great brutalities to American, or, in the language of the times, “rebel” prisoners during the Revolution. The Provost was destined, as John Pintard, the meritorious New York historian, tells us, for the more notorious rebels, civil, naval, and military. An admission into this prison was enough to appall the stoutest heart. On the second floor, called derisively “Congress Hall,” prisoners of note were confined, citizens of distinction and many American officers, among them the famous Colonel Ethan Allen and Judge Fell, of Bergen county, New Jersey. Could these dumb walls speak, John Pintard exclaims, what scenes of anguish, what tales of agonizing woe, might they disclose. In his aforementioned article he gave a vivid account of the “Old Jail’s” history well known to him from the personal reminiscences of many a distinguished prisoner still living in his day.

For naval “rebels” a similar function as that of the “Old Provost” for civil and military “rebels” was fulfilled by “prison-ships.” On board of such vessels seamen were subjected to every possible hardship, to compel them to enter into the British service. As is well known, prison-ships were old vessels-of-war which had been condemned as unseaworthy, and unfit for store or hospital ships, and converted to this, the last use to which they could be applied. One of them has gained medallic interest, the “Old Jersey Prison Ship,” which was included as No. 5 in A. B. Sage’s series of “Historical Tokens.” It is No. 4 in the present essay.

On the obverse the center of the medallic space is occupied by a representation of the Jersey as it is found on contemporary engravings. In the upper space one reads: THE OLD JERSEY. Underneath the ship an anchor is pictured between two skulls and bones. The engraver’s initial L is missing on this token. The reverse shows the same arrangement as found in all Sage’s prison tokens. The open shackles in half-circle in the upper space together with the half-circular designation AUG. B. SAGE’S HISTORICAL TOKENS surround the following legend: A/ BRITISH/ PRISON/ DURING THE/ REVOLUTION. The last word stands between two ornamental lines, the lower consisting of three big stars flanked on each side by a group of three small stars. Underneath one reads: No. 5.

The prison-ship Jersey built in 1736 was a fourth-rate ship of the line, mounting sixty guns, and carrying a crew of four hundred men. She was first used as one of the Channel fleet, later sent repeatedly to the Mediterranean Sea, to Spain, the West Indies, Newfoundland, and was active in several naval engagements. Already in 1747 the Jersey was laid up as evidently unfit for active service. On the renewal of hostilities with France, in 1756, she was refitted for service and again operated in the Mediterranean. She continued in active service until 1763 when she returned to England and was laid up once more. But in 1766 the Jersey was again commissioned and sailed for America in 1769. At that time, the active duty of that ship appears to have been brought to a close, since she remained out of commission from 1769 to 1776. In this year the Jersey was ordered, without armament, to New York as a hospital-ship. In the latter part of the year 1781 she was fitted as a prison-ship and was used for that purpose during the remainder of the Revolutionary War. “She remained until the termination of the British authority in New York, when she was abandoned to the fate to which she was justly entitled, and was subsequently overwhelmed in the mud of the Wale bogt, where she remains to this day.” An abundant literature of memoirs, letters, and lists of the prisoners tells the story of this prison-ship and its inmates by whose blood and sufferings the independence of the United States and the civil and religious privileges all of us can now enjoy, were achieved and purchased.

Two more of Sage’s tokens have undertaken to memorialize other Civil War prisons. In design and execution they are similar to the tokens described here. No. 2 of Sage’s “Historical Token” series pictures on its obverse a large building and has the following inscription: CITY HALL, WALL ST. N. Y. ERECTED IN 1700/ DEMOLISHED/ 1812. The obverse is very similar to that of No. 3 A, the uncorrected No. 1 of Sage’s historical series, two skull and bones emblems having been added. A specimen is in the author’s collection. I. N. Phelps Stokes’ Iconography of Manhattan Island: 1498-1909 (Vol. VI, 1928. p. 539, s. v. City Hall) does not give, however, any evidence that this building was used as a British prison during the Revolution. It is different in the case of Livingston’s Sugar-House. which was located on the South side of Liberty Street, New York City, adjoining the Dutch Church graveyard east of Nassau Street. This building was chosen by Mr. Sage as the subject of another token, No. 2 in his series “Odds and Ends,” executed in the very same manner as all the other tokens. Its obverse bears the inscription: OLD SUGAR HOUSE LIBERTY ST., N. Y. FOUNDED 1689/ DEMOLISHED 1840.

2. Historical Medals

In contrast to the aforementioned tokens, No. 6 and No. 7 are historical medals in the specific meaning of this term. No description or mention of either of them have come to this writer’s attention.

The medal No. 6 measures forty-four millimetres in diameter and was struck in silver, bronze, and white metal. The American Numismatic Society has a specimen of each type in its collection. The obverse shows the “Old Sugar House, Rose Street, N. Y.,” a large five-story building, of which the front and side are visible. The space between the third and fourth story of the front is occupied by the number 1763, the year of its foundation, as the legend says. The space between the uppermost window on the gable front and the two lower windows has as inscription these letters: BRS. All windows are grated. Above the representation of the building one reads the following half-circular inscription: OLD SUGAR HOUSE ROSE ST. N. Y. Below, there appears this inscription: FOUNDED 1763 DEMOLISHED 1892. On the reverse the half-circular legend, A BRITISH PRISON, is placed above a small representation of the frontside of the gable. The latter shows the uppermost window in the highest corner, and underneath two more grated windows in a row. Above the left window the initial I, above the right one the initial S are visible. The lower part of the reverse is occupied by a key in horizontal situation being the ill-famed prison-key, underneath shackles are placed. The ornamental arrangement is in symmetrical correspondence with that in the upper part. In the middle of the space one reads in two lines: DURING THE/ REVOLUTION.

The “Old Sugar House Rose Street, N. Y.,” which stood on the corner of Rose and Deane Streets in New York City, was erected by Henry Cuyler, Jr., for his heir, Barnet Rynders Cuyler, probably in 1763. This date, which appears on the medal twice, is based on an authority “who had opportunity to observe.” John Austin Stevens stated from personal recollection “that he saw the date 1769 high upon the brick wall in iron figures.” The good engraving which is reproduced in James G. Wilson’s Memorial History of the City of New York and may well have been the model for the engraver of the medal, shows the year 1767 on the wall of the building. As disputed as the date of its erection is also its use as prison during the Revolution. Wilson writes: “The date and the architect’s initials are still to be seen on the side of the building, worked in wrought-iron characters, quaint and old. The Rhinelander family has owned the property since 1790, and much of the land around it has been in their possession much longer than that. When first erected the house was used as a sugar-house, but the great interest in the old building is in the memory of the use to which it was put in revolutionary times. The grated windows, the dungeon-like underground cellars, the general air of solidity and impregnability which impress the observer at first sight, bear out the assertion, which has become a creed among the neighbors, that during the Revolution the sugar-house was diverted from its legitimate use and turned into a British prison, where many an American patriot suffered not only imprisonment, but cruelties and starvation.” This was written by Wilson in 1892 in commemoration of the then recent demolition of the structure. It seems that it was the very same occasion that caused the issuance of the medal, bearing the year of the building’s demolition. Nevertheless, the use of the Rhinelander sugar-house as a prison during the Revolution was “denied by Stevens and others, who have presented testimony to disprove it,” as Stokes tells us. It seems almost impossible to decide the issue which, in turn, renders the historical justification of the issuance of the medal also doubtful.

No. 7 is the only medal known to the author referring to a military prison in the Civil War. No specimen of it is found in the museum of the American Numismatic Society. Nor do the catalogues, guide-books, and other pamphlets published by the Libby Prison War Museum Association in Chicago mention this medal that was probably issued by this very association. There is nothing about it in the files of the Chicago Historical Society. The Chicago newspapers of 1893 might have some article or note. But as they are not indexed it would take a great deal of time and labor to search through them.

The very heavy medal measures seventy-one millimetres in diameter. It is made of type metal, coated with a bluish-black lacquer. The obverse shows in its upper part the following legend: LIBBY PRISON; and in the lower part: WAR MUSEUM/ CHICAGO 1893. The space in the center is occupied by the picture of Libby Prison as it stood in its original place in Richmond, Virginia. Four prisoners’ tents are visible in the foreground. Of course, no barbed wire, and not even a fence are indicated. Instead sentries can be seen in front of the main building as well as of the tent-barracks, their number being six in toto. The picture is that well known from contemporary drawings or etchings.

The reverse of the medal bears an extensive legend in eighteen lines. These are surrounded by a circular panel, showing on top clasped hands, at the bottom crossed sabres. The panel inscription reads: NO SECTIONALISM—1861—NO NORTH—NO SOUTH—1865—NO ANIMOSITY. The eighteen-line legend gives an historical account of Libby Prison and its transformation into the Chicago War Museum: