The murky depths of forgeries

Just like today, people in the past weren't shy of trying to cheat the system and make a quick buck or two.  In the collections at Hull and East Riding Museum we have a few forgeries of coins which were made in the hope of passing them off as the real thing.

These fake coins were made to look like coins issued by the Danish King Frederick IV (1671-1730), this highlights Hull's trading links to Denmark at that time and Hull's importance as a maritime city with international trade.

The counterfeit coins were found in Junction Dock (later known as Prince's Dock, and now Prince's Quay shopping centre).  They were discovered when Junction Dock was dug out and made into a dock in the 1820s.

At the time these coins were produced, the area they were found in was a moat which would have surrounded Hull's walls.

The coins are made from pewter and from the images you can see that most of them hadn't been trimmed down into coins at the time they ended up in the moat.

We'll never know exactly why they ended up dumped in the moat - however, you can use you imagination to create all sorts of stories about why that might have happened.  If you have any good ideas, leave a comment below!