Good Copper and Bad Copper Part A

 

The kirk session elders had two main sources of money. First was the collection at the kirk services. Elders were allotted inside the kirk and at the west and east doors, especially on Sacrament Sabbaths, to receive the collection. 

The Kirk Collection by Henry W Kerr

 

Second, parishioners were fined for breaking rules such as working on the Sabbath or ‘fornication’ (no shortage of fines here). Rent from the Mortcloths was also added to the budget.

The money was held in a special locked box and kept safe by the treasurer or the Minister. Minutes of the income and expenditure in Scots, pounds shillings and pence, were recorded down to the last ¼ penny. The budgets included regular distributions to the poor in the parish. Lots of widows were on the ’poor’ lists receiving very small amounts to keep them alive. 

The Money Chest at Canongate kirk

 

In Scotland at the time the small change that was in circulation was a mixture of various old Scottish, English and foreign copper coins, worn down, often fake. ‘Bad copper’ was refused at the markets and with local merchants. But in the kirk session accounts between 1772 and 1776 (when the available records stop) these ‘bad’ copper coins were shown as appearing in the collection box.

In August 1772 the session elders were clearly becoming concerned about the copper coin in the box. They decided they needed a proper inspection and sort out of the good from the bad. ‘The collection since the last distribution together with the Sacrament distribution amounting to fifty five pounds ten shillings Scots whereof eighteen pounds twelve shillings was bad copper so that there remained only thirty six pounds eighteen shillings good’. 

What to do? In August 1773 the most extraordinary thing happened. The session elders got their bad copper together - six pounds Scots from one collection and twenty pounds sixteen shillings already in the box and chose two elders to take the bad copper to Inverness to see what could be got for it. The session then records that ‘nothing could be got was by two of the elders thrown into the sea’. 

 

So they lost their bad copper but no further information is given in the records about the fate of the two elders nor who they were. But given that drownings were common, (no such thing as a life jacket) it doesn’t look good for them.

To be continued.

Source: Scotland’s People, Latheron Kirk session Minutes 1734-1776