NUMISMATICS AND RIOTS Öffentlichkeit Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 7, Number 19, May 9, 2004, Article 17
NUMISMATICS AND RIOTS
Steve Pellegrini writes: "When thinking about the incidence of
Riots on Medals I immediately thought of the 1478 medal by
Bertolo di Giovaanni which commemorates the Florence riot
instigated by the Pazzi conspirators to cover the assassination
attempt on the Medici brothers, Lorenzo and Giuliano. In fact
only Giuliano was killed. Lorenzo escaped with only a flesh
wound. Stephen Scher, in his beautiful book 'The Currency
of Fame' has assigned this medal #41 - and included photos
of the historical piece on pp. 129 & 130.Another example of medals, or rather a tokens with riotous
connections are the Middlesex Conder Tokens issued by
Thomas Spence featuring the portrait of Mendoza, the popular
prize fighter of 1790-1810 London. During the 'Old Prices'
riots in Covent Garden in Sept.- December 1809 Mendoza
and his boxing colleagues were hired by harassed theatre
owner John Kemble. Kemble hired Mendoza and his boxing
cronies to help keep order in the theater on performance nights.
The boxers were prominently seated (free of charge) where all
the theater-goers could not fail to see them. Should any 'New
Prices' dissenters begin to disrupt the performance Mendoza
and his boxers very publicly made swift work of them.During this period prize fighting was dominated by Jewish
boxers, much as was US boxing during the hard immigration
years of the early 20th century. The anti-Semitic allusions found
on these 'Old Price Riot' tokens stem from Kemble's
employment of these Jewish boxers to suppress further rioting."- 2004-05-09
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