1794 Conder Token • Newgate Prison/Payable at Residence of...

[Larry]

Specious token are tokens with a fictitious promise to pay by issuer(s), because of imaginary characters or satirical intent.

In this case, the four 'issuers' were actually convicts resident in the prison,
hardly in a position to redeem anything.

This is one of a group called Specious Tokens, bearing fictitious issuer(s), or imaginary redeemers. 

Whether for collectors or for commercial use, the possibilities of a freely-circulating medium, almost impossible to police, were obvious to those who wished to spread propaganda against the state, and although the manufacturers and engravers of tokens would happily take commissions from such parties, the issuers could if necessary acquire the necessary machinery to manufacture them alone. Associations of dissenters who felt themselves particular notable, therefore, or those who wished to celebrate one of the few triumphs against the status quo, often had recourse to this form of advertising in copper.

The danger and isolation of dissent led to a grimly humorous camaraderie that makes these tokens witty, but often hard to grasp. The piece below, for example, mimics the commercial issues that invited the buying public to redeem their tokens for silver at the issuer's business address ("Payable at the premises of..."),but the 'address' given by the other design is Newgate Jail, because the four men named had been imprisoned there for sedition the previous year.





Source: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/dept/coins/exhibitions/spence/index1.html

So no redemption was possible. Still the tokens circulated widely, though some were produced
for collectors and supporters.

Per Dalton & Hamer, briefly...

• Symonds was publisher of the 'Jockey Club' and the 'Second Part of The Rights of Man.'
• James Ridgway was convicted of the same offenses as Symonds.
• Winterbotham was a dissenting minister convicted for preaching two seditious discourses.
• Daniel Holt, printer of the Newark Herald, for selling some of Paine's writings.

[BCNumismatics]

Larry,
  Another amazing coin with a very interesting story behind its issue into circulation.

Aidan.