South Yorkshire Times 3rd April 1965
Children Find 10 Years Gap in 10,000 Pennies
Children of a Conisbrough primary school are learning that facts are often stranger than fiction. In their collection for the Winston Churchill Appeal Fund, the pupils of Conisbrough Morley place Primary School have handled perhaps 10,000 pennies – but found not a single coin dated from 1950 to 1960.
“It is almost unbelievable that out of all the coins the children have handled, not one between those dates came to light,” the Headmaster Mr. C.M. James told the “South Yorkshire Times” on Tuesday.
The collection of pennies at Morley Place began when the school decided to relate its history to the lifetime of Sir Winston Churchill – he was born in 1873; the school was founded a year later.
“We decided to collect pennies for every year of Sir Winston’s life,” added Mr. James.
Rare coin
“The children must have raised something like 10,000 pennies between them, and we found one or two gaps. We found none dated 1933 for instance, but I have since been told that very few were minted in that year and a 1963 (sic) penny is really a collector’s piece.”
Other gaps came during the war years, 1941 to ’43, and also from 1923 to ’25, but there were reasonable explanations for all of them. There was no explanation for the 1950 to 1960 gap.
Said Mr. James, “We should be very interested to find out the reason, and perhaps see how many pennies one would have to collect before finding one between those dates.
“I have asked about this at the bank, but they have not been able to help.”
Although the appeal fund collection is complete – about £6 has been sent to the chairman of Conisbrough Urban Council, Coun. G. Cheshire – the Morley Place pupils will continue their hunt to fill in the gaps on a specially prepared chart showing the years of the pennies they have collected.