HOARDED GOLD

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 253, 13 July 1918, Page 9

HOARDED GOLD

Not so long ago a. country medical mnu was rather surprised to receive payment for his services from eomo of his poorer patients in sovereigns ami halfsovereigns—not • recently minted, but many years old. "Tho fact is," he told me, "they are beginning to feel the hard times and are dipping into the ''old stocking.'" For generations it has been tho custom of the poor, and particularly tho poor of tho villages, to save in gold, and uMloulKedly in t,ho aggregate there are thousands of golden sovereigns hoarded in cottago homes. In the first place, shilling by shilling tho money wa6 saved, and then the silver coins wero exchanged for gold and the gold added to tho littlo board. I heard an elderly agriculturist remark the other day that he himself would bet every penny he possesses that the gold thus lying idle amounts not, ne 1 have estimated, to thousands, but to several millions of sovereigns. "And clever," he went on, "will be the powers that be if they succeed in getting the people to give tno money up. U'h ploughman does not—in fact, cannot—realise Jiow urgent is the Empire's need of gold and that the need becomes moro pressing every day. He has no faith in banks, paper money, and investments. Ho grumbles, at being paid his wago in notes; and he does not care about putting any coins but sovereigns and halfsovereigns in the 'stocking.' "Frequently one or other of my men coiuw to mo with' notes and copper and silver, and, in spite of past refusals, asks for gold for the money-box." Many straugo "stockings" are continually coming to light. A few weeks ago, for instance, an old shepherd died, and those who assembled in the cottugo after the funeral were amazed to see one of relatives step forward with a crowbar and a grin to get at the will, as lie put jt. After a lot of prodding and probing, and with some help, ho succeeded in heaving up the hearthstone, and there lay a hoard of 200 sovereigns and a short will. The money lay in a neatly bricked epace, some 12in, by ISiii., into which it had been slipped 50 years ago, through a slit just largo enough to admit a sovereign. Another "stocking" that I heard of a month or so ago was a pewter tea caddy, found hidden behind a couple of loose bricks in the wail of nn ancient brick bread oven. The caddy was ae full of golden coins ns it would hold, moro than 150—the life savings of >nn elderly basket-maker. A few days before the man's death ho wisely told a clergyman of tho littlo .hoard and iU hiding place; otherwise it might never have been discovered.