South African Silver Rand Shilling Modified to Winston Churchill OR Sherlock Holmes Coin is holed but i believe this is a legit peice of trenchart 1for1
An 1896 1 Shilling from South Africa. (same as yours) mintage of 437,000. I was thinking it was probably a token made in a concentration/internment camp during the The Second Anglo-Boer War (18991902). But of course no way to prove it.
Well the coin would have been in circulation for a few years before the war so would have been readily available. I looks like it was made by an amateur without access to any proper engraving tools so I am guessing a bored prisoner with a nail and too much time on their hands. The arrow motif denotes property of the British Crown, introduced onto prison uniforms in the 1870's and used up until 1922 it would probably have been familiar to the South Africans. It looks like the number 11 is on the collar and the hat, I will probably have to do a bit more research into that as I have no idea of the significance. It may be a political statement along the lines of "South Africa is a prisoner of Great Britain" or it might just reflect how the engraver felt about themselves at the time. From what I can gather most of the interned were women and children and they didn't wear prison uniforms, Google images doesn't have many pictures of the internment/concentration camps.
