Money Talks: Stories of People and Cash

Cloth is widely used in Africa as a ceremonial gift but also as currency. Raffia cloth or hand-woven grass cloth was a useful means to make everyday payments by people in Central Africa from at least the 1600s.

Photography by David Lindsay. 

Gold is too soft to be used for tools or weapons, but it is relatively rare and desired for its brilliance and resistance to corrosion. It has been used as money, as well as for adornment and as a symbol of power across the world. 


Photography by Ed Hall.

In the late 1700s and 1800s, cities like Leeds had many private banks operating at the same time. They printed notes with blank spaces so they could be numbered, signed and dated by hand.


Photography by Norman Taylor.

Coins can be works of art in themselves. In 1952 the sculptor Mary Gillick’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth II was chosen to feature on British and Commonwealth coinage, and it remained in circulation until 1971.

© Leeds Museums and Galleries (Henry Moore Institute Archive). Photography by Nick Singleton

In the 1600s and 1700s, counterfeiting was widespread in England. These clippers were discovered in the workshop of Arthur Mangey, a successful Leeds gold and silversmith, who was hanged for coin clipping in 1696.


Photography by Norman Taylor.

This racing game was designed by Walter Lee and Roy Vincent Palmer, two neighbours in Leeds, and first produced in 1938. It presents an upper middle-class view of horse racing, involving training horses as well as racing them. 

Playing with toy tills, banknotes and coins allows children to role-play as consumers. The product choices on this pink ‘Have fun with Barbie’ till include make-up, high heeled shoes and flowers. It comes with two credit cards with no spending limit.

Cash registers were first used in the late 1800s to record sales and to safely store cash while being displayed at the front of a shop. Many were ornately decorated. There are fewer cash registers operated by sales assistants today, as UK shoppers increasingly use self-checkouts.

On 15 February 1971, known as ‘Decimal Day’, a new system of 100 pence to the pound was introduced in the UK. Every person in the country had to use coins which looked different and represented new values. Chocolate decimal coins were given out to school children.

There are many types of spending, including donating to charitable causes.  This donation box is made out of a teabag tin, and was used to raise money at the first Leeds Queer Film Festival in 2005. 

Some of the oldest examples of keeping money safe are coin hoards, and hundreds of ancient hoards have been discovered in Yorkshire. There are many reasons why someone might bury or hide coins; one reason is to have a secret, safe place for the family wealth.  

Money boxes are a popular way to store and save money in the home. They are often given as gifts to children to help them learn the principles of saving and managing money.

There are traditions and beliefs associated with money across the world, and some practices date back thousands of years. This figure from India of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, would be used as part of a family shrine in the home or in a business to ensure prosperity.

In Britain a coin like this could be used as a ‘touch piece’ and worn as an amulet. During a ‘touching’ ceremony the king or queen would bless the coin with their God-given power and touch it on the head of someone suffering from scrofula, (tuberculosis), in order to cure them.

Incorporating coins into clothing is common in parts of Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. As well as being highly decorative ornaments, coins can make the association between personal wealth and good luck and protection.