Comments: "Queen Victoria" decided
to give each of her soldiers fighting in the Boer War in South
Africa a Christmas gift, a tin of chocolate. This probably was the
first time that a reigning monarch ever gave such a personal gift to
their serving soldiers, thus a lot were kept as souvenirs. The three
major chocolate companies "Fry", "Cadbury" and
"Rowntree" each produced 40,000 tins each initially;
3,000 more were
manufactured later by "Fry". The firms were reluctant at
first to produce these tins; as they were all Quaker owned , but in
the end they thought that it was probably better for business to
carry out the Queen's instructions rather than be considered
unpatriotic, especially during this time of conflict. Having said
that, each company made sure that their name was clearly embossed on
the half pound chocolate bars!
However, the three companies tins do all vary
slightly in appearance, the two that are the same size are printed
with different hues of blue, the type is a different thickness and
the Queen's medallion edge has different shape of embossing, and the
third one is a different size. The two larger tins were made
by "Barclay & Fry" for "Fry' and "Barringer, Wallis
and Manners" for "Rowntree", and the smaller one was
manufactured by "Hudson Scott" for "Cadbury". The
total cost of the tins to the Queen's Privy Purse was 3587.50
British Pounds or about 6,500 US Dollars.
See photo6 it shows the workers packing the tins for dispatch to
South Africa.
"Barringer, Wallis and Manners" produced a
silver facsimile of the tin for the Queen!It is
very unusual to see the complete set of three and they are in good
condition.
To view other images of this item, please click here:
photo1
photo2
photo3
photo4
photo5
photo6
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