A Different Kind of Easter Story
By Denis Richard, Coin Photography Studio
March 31, 2024
8-minute read
1966 Ten Shilling Commemorative Coin
Easter is renowned as the Christian holiday celebrating Jesus's resurrection. However, this post delves into a different Easter rising, a tale unfolding in the heart of Ireland.
The Easter Rising
Ireland's history is peppered with tales of rebellion and resistance to British rule. The Easter Rising of 1916, played out over five days in Dublin, is among the most iconic and significant events in this long struggle.
With England's attention turned to defeating Germany in WWI, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) Military Council took advantage of the situation in their fight for independence. They issued a call to arms, seized government buildings and occupied critical buildings in the city, including the iconic General Post Office (GPO).
A barricade in Townsend Street, Dublin, during the 1916 Easter Rising.
Retaliation
Things started well for the IRB. British authorities only had 400 troops to about 1,000 Irish rebels, but within days, a British warship and 19,000 troops arrived and quickly crushed the new Republic's fighters.
British soldiers behind a barricade of barrels.
Following a shelling from a Royal Navy battleship, Dublin was in flames, and with little in the way of public support, the rebels surrendered.
The burned-out shell of the General Post Office on Sackville Street after the Easter Rising.
The seven leaders - Patrick Pearse, Thomas Clarke, Thomas MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett, Éamonn Ceannt, Sean MacDiarmada, and James Connolly - were among fifteen people executed for their involvement in the unsuccessful coup. They are remembered as martyrs for Irish independence.
Though immediately unsuccessful in achieving independence, the Easter Rising sparked a renewed enthusiasm for Irish nationalism, eventually leading to Ireland breaking away from the British.
The Commemorative Coin
Fifty years later, in 1966, the Golden Jubilee of the Easter Rising was commemorated in Ireland and worldwide. Events included a reenactment of the rebellion, parades, and ceremonies honouring those who had fought for Irish independence. Ireland's largest public transport provider, the Córas Iompair Éireann, or CIE, renamed major railway stations around the country after the 1916 revolutionary leaders.
Outside the General Post Office
In Dublin, on Sunday, April 10, the Official Ceremony began with a grand military parade. The event was honoured by an estimated 600 veterans of the Rising on O'Connell Street in Dublin, drawing a crowd of over 200,000 spectators in the city center.
In commemoration of the 50th anniversary, Ireland's Central Bank released the .850 silver coin featured below for general circulation. The Ten Shilling coin, as it was known, was designed by English medal and coin designer Thomas Humphrey Paget and struck by the Royal Mint in London. The Central Bank arranged for the coins to be available in all bank offices in the State on Tuesday, April 12, 1966, and later struck an additional twenty thousand proof versions packaged in unique green boxes.
This ten-shilling coin is noteworthy for several reasons. It is both the first commemorative coin and the first official coin to honour the 1916 Easter Rising. As the Minister for Finance at the time, Mr. J. Lynch, stated during a senate session to approve the coin in 1966, "I am sure the House will agree that this is an eminently suitable occasion for the issue of our first special coin."
Struck in silver to match the event's solemnity, the coin was worth half an Irish pound, making it the highest-value coin in the pre-decimal system. However, the Coinage (Amendment) Bill of 1965 restricted its usage, specifying that it could only serve as legal tender for transactions up to five pounds, thereby limiting each transaction to a maximum of 10 coins. Such limitations are a common practice even today; almost all countries impose limits on the number of coins used in transactions.
The ten-shilling coin also stands out as the sole Irish coin featuring an edge inscription. In Gaelic type, it reads "Éirí Amach na Cásca 1916", which translates as "1916 Easter Rising". When reading the edge inscription, the obverse is typically at the top. As with all coins, there are varieties. Interestingly, around half of the minted coins have an inverted inscription, making one no more valuable. There are also some with jumbled letters in the inscription, resulting from a malfunction of the edging machine during manufacturing.
The Leader
On the obverse is a bust of Pádraig Henry Pearse, the revolutionary IRB figure and de facto Commander-in-Chief of the 1916 Easter Rising. In another first, this ten shilling is the only Irish coin to depict an individual linked to Irish history or politics besides a monarch.
Proclamation of the Irish Republic
Pearse, a poet, writer, and school headmaster, recited the Proclamation of the Irish Republic outside the General Post Office, which served as the rebellion's headquarters. Pearse was chiefly responsible for drafting the Proclamation and was chosen as the first President of the new Republic if it succeeded.
However, fate was against the rebellion, and when the time came to surrender, Pearse issued an order that was carried to the strongholds still under rebel control.
It read: "In order to prevent the further slaughter of Dublin citizens, and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers now surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, the members of the Provisional Government present at headquarters have agreed to an unconditional surrender, and the commandants of the various districts in the City and County will order their commands to lay down arms."
Pádraig Pearse and the other leaders were court-martialed and executed by firing squad. In the diary of Samuel Henry Lomas, the British soldier who commanded the firing squad that executed Pearse, Lomas recalls that at 3:45 am, on the morning of May 3, 1916, Pearse faced his death by whistling as he left his cell on his way to Kilmainham yard. Pearse was 36 years old.
The courtyard of Kilmainham Gaol.
A cross stands as a solemn marker at the site where the leaders of the 1916 Rising were executed.
The Symbol
On the reverse, we see The Dying Cuchulain, a miniature reproduction of a 1911 bronze statue by Irish sculptor Oliver Sheppard. Cú chulainn - pronounced Ku Kulane - is an Irish mythological demigod who was the great warrior-hero of the Ulster Cycle. His ferocity was supernatural, and he contorted his body with rage, becoming an unrecognizable monster who knew neither friend nor foe.
The Dying Cuchulain
Legend says that Cú Chulainn, mortally wounded in his final battle, refused to die lying down, so he tied himself to a standing stone (some say he used his own entrails) so he could die upright, fighting to his last breath. Such was the terrifying battle frenzy of Cú Chulainn that even after his death, despite being tied to a stone, no one dared approach him. Only when a raven lands on his shoulder, the moment depicted in Sheppard’s statue, do his enemies believe he is finally dead.
A Grim Parallel
Similar to Cú Chulainn, James Connolly, the commander of the Dublin Brigade, was so severely injured during the fighting he couldn’t stand. He was carried to his execution on a stretcher and then tied to a chair to face his death upright.
By the time this commemorative coin was minted in 1966, The Dying Cuchulain had become synonymous with Irish nationalism and rebellion. However, in 1916, during the uprising, this was not the case. At that time the statue was relatively unknown, sitting unsold in Sheppard's studio on Pembroke Road. It would languish there for another twenty years before being embraced by the Irish people as a symbol of their struggle for independence.
Interestingly, not all the rebellion leaders faced execution. Éamon de Valera, center right, escaped the firing squad and was instead shipped off to prison in England. De Valera was one of the few republican leaders spared partly due to his American citizenship. This happened during the UK's efforts to involve the US in the European war, with the Irish American vote holding sway in American politics. De Valera, the most senior survivor of the 1916 Easter Rising, came to power in the Irish Free State in 1932.
In an act of symbolic appropriation, De Valera chose Sheppard's sculpture as the official memorial for the Rising in preparation for its 20th anniversary. Sheppard's portrayal of the death of the legendary warrior hero Cúchulainn symbolized the idea of "dying for Ireland," aiming to connect cultural nationalism with political independence.
The statue was unveiled on Easter Sunday, 1935, in front of a large crowd at the General Post Office, Dublin, where the Irish rebels had proclaimed their declaration of independence in 1916. Today, the statue still stands in the General Post Office. It is a popular tourist attraction and a reminder of the sacrifices made by those who fought for Irish freedom.
The Legacy
Thomas Humphrey Paget's coin design is a powerful symbol of national pride and resilience, if not necessarily a great work of numismatic art. Much to the disappointment of the Irish senate, voiced during the 1966 senate meeting, the coin was rushed through the design process without consultation or sufficient time to prepare a design by an Irish artist nominated by the Council of Design. Some senators felt it a bit odd because, as they pointed out, we were long aware that the 50th anniversary of the Rising was approaching. The Minister of Finance explained that the thought of creating a coin for the occasion only came towards the end of the process. As a result, organizing a competition became unfeasible. When the decision to move forward with a coin was made, there was only time for consultation between the Central Bank and the Royal Mint, where Humphrey Paget was commissioned to prepare the design.
Nonetheless, Mr. Lynch assured the Senate that Mr. Paget was an authority on coinage design and claimed, "I have seen a prototype of the coin, and I think the Seanad will agree that it is attractive in its character."
Thomas Humphrey Paget was a well-known sculptor and designer of coinage. Though he signed his work HP, he was Tom to his family and friends. However, at 72 years old, Paget was well past his peak and in poor health when he was commissioned for the Irish coin. He was likely available at short notice because, at this late stage in his career, demand for his work had waned. His critics claimed his designs lacked imagination, a point he didn’t dispute, remarking that "it was a new era" and he wasn't necessarily a part of it.
One of the coin's more subtle characteristics is its gentle concave shape, a feature not seen on any previous Irish coin. As G.P. Dyer notes in The Numismatic Chronicle (1966-), this feature "raised difficult technical problems" for Paget "because of the dishing," referring to the coin's concave surfaces. However, Paget overcame the difficulties, demonstrating his skills, if not his artistic vision, were still strong.
In its final "first," the ten shilling coin was the first modern Irish coin equivalent in value to a banknote. Unfortunately, that fact might have been its undoing. Issuing a ten-shilling coin while a ten-shilling banknote is already in circulation was not prudent. Despite its commemorative appeal, the coin was not helpful for everyday transactions; it was bulky and less convenient to carry around than an equivalent ten-shilling banknote. People didn't want them. The government started putting them into civil servant pay packets to get them into circulation.
Due to its lack of popularity, within five years, 1.27 million coins, over 60% of the original issue, were withdrawn and melted down by the Central Bank in preparation for decimalization in 1971. Notably, the ten-shilling coin was unaffected by Decimal Day, the day on which the UK and Ireland transitioned from their respective £sd currencies to the new system of pounds and pence. The commemorative coins, worth fifty new pence, remained valid and stayed in circulation.
However, another nail in the coffin of this ill-timed coin was a sharp rise in silver prices during the Oil Crisis of 1973, causing a mass private melting. By then, the value of the ten-shilling coins surged to 7 times its face value – an impressive 600% return within seven years. It was an excellent investment if you were lucky (or foresighted) enough to have stocked up on them. By 1980/81, the silver price had tripled once more. Consequently, a substantial number of the remaining coins were again privately melted and sold as bullion. Surprisingly, despite these purges, there may still be several hundred thousand remaining, as they are relatively common in the coin market today.
Through most of its 36-year circulation, the ten-shilling coin was never abundant but still, on February 10, 2002, whatever ten-shilling coins survived were officially demonetized as part of the shift to the Euro.
The Easter Rising made the front page of The New York Times eight days in a row. While it may have been a military failure, its impact reverberated globally, inspiring anti-colonial movements worldwide. As Professor Dooge expressed during the Senate meeting back in '66, and I paraphrase, “Our fiscal independence, indeed, the fact that we have our own coinage, was made possible, in part, by the Rising of 1916. Accordingly, it is appropriate that we should honour it through our coinage.”
Nearly 70 years have passed since the introduction of the ten-shilling coin, and its Easter tale remains a poignant reminder of Irish history. From its hurried creation to its unexpected unpopularity, the ten-shilling coin, like the Rising itself, may not have been an immediate success, but it has undoubtedly become an essential part of Irish history and numismatic culture.
Thank you for reading this blog post! I hope you found it informative and enjoyable. If you're interested in similar topics, check out our other posts on numismatic subjects. From history to coin photography, we have lots to offer. Remember to leave a comment below with your thoughts and feedback. We love hearing from our readers; it helps us improve our content.
Thank you again for your support, and we hope to see you back here soon! Happy collecting!
Read More
Anyone familiar with Irish coins will notice the bust of Pearse replaced the Celtic harp on the obverse. A symbol of Ireland, the harp is traditionally featured on Irish coins, making the ten-shilling the only circulated Irish coin without it (before the Euro's introduction.)
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Humphrey Paget's uncle
Thomas Humphrey Paget's uncle was Sidney Paget, a renowned British artist from the Victorian era, most celebrated for his iconic illustrations that were featured alongside Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tales in The Strand Magazine. His portrayal of the iconic detective, with the deerstalker hat and Inverness cape, is still the most recognizable image of Holmes to this day.
Cú Chulainn
You would have thought that a spark of fire was on every hair. He closed one eye until it was no wider than the eye of a needle; he opened the other until it was as big as a wooden bowl. He bared his teeth from jaw to ear, and he opened his mouth until the gullet was visible.
From Early Irish Myths and Sagas, by Jeffrey Gantz
A Final Thought.
Thank you for reading this blog post! I hope you found it informative and enjoyable.
If you're interested in similar topics, be sure to check out our other posts on numismatic subjects. From coin history to coin photography, we have lots to offer.
Don't forget to leave a comment below with your thoughts and feedback. We love hearing from our readers and it helps us improve our content.
Thank you again for your support and we hope to see you back here soon! Happy collecting!
Coin References
O'Brien Coin Guide: Irish Pre-Decimal Ten Shillings
https://oldcurrencyexchange.com/2016/03/27/obrien-coin-guide-irish-pre-decimal-ten-shillings/
Ten shilling coin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_shilling_coin
Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks: 1935 – The Death of Cúchulainn, by Oliver Sheppard
Éamon de Valera
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89amon_de_Valera
The Curious Case of Cú Chulainn: Nationalism, Culture, and Meaning Making in the Contested Symbols of Northern Ireland
Golden Jubilee of the Easter Rising 1916-1966 – Remembering The 1916 Rising
https://rememberingthe1916rising.wordpress.com/golden-jubilee-of-the-easter-rising-1916-1966/
Silver Prices - 100-Year Historical Chart
https://www.macrotrends.net/1470/historical-silver-prices-100-year-chart
Thomas Humphrey Paget (1893-1974)G. P. DYER The Numismatic Chronicle (1966-) Seventh Series, Vol. 20 (140) (1980), pp. 165-177 (17 pages) Published By: Royal Numismatic Society