YOUR GUIDE TO CO-OP CHECKS
Four digit numbers are everywhere. To withdraw cash from the hole in the wall, unlock the phone or laptop, spend on the credit card, or de-activate the burglar alarm, we need those numbers. As a child, growing up in the late 1950s there was only one important set of digits; my mother’s Co-op number.
For those who are lucky enough to be too young to remember, this is how it worked. The local Co-operative Society of which you were a member may have had a number of branches, or in a small village may have been the only shop. Within the shop would be various counters at which you would queue for meat, vegetables, fish, butter, flour etc which would be weighed, wrapped and placed in a brown paper bag. Payment was made and you moved on to the next counter. At the point of each payment the magic number was recited and a ticket (one of a triple paper system known as the ‘Climax Check System’) was handed over as a record of the
In his ongoing series on collecting tokens, Mike Roberts details one of the earliest retail loyalty schemes, which has given today’s collectors many intriguing pieces to pursue
payment. Needless to say, for many of the shoppers, often with small boys in tow, this was the highlight of the day, with endless opportunities for local gossip.
Back at Head Office, an army of clerks would process the transactions, recording each purchase against the Co-op member’s numbered account. At the end of each quarter or six months, depending on local custom, there would be a totalling up, as the Big Day, almost on a par with Easter, Whit, or the beginning of a new school year was about to arrive.
‘Divi (dividend) Day’ was when the members found out how well the Co-op had fared over the period and their loyalty rewarded accordingly. A 15% return on a half year’s purchases (always stated as ‘three shilling in the pound’ rather than a percentage) might mean a new pair of shoes, some useful piece
of equipment for the kitchen, or a coveted item of furniture. Although my grandfather was not averse to embellishing a story, there was probably more than a grain of truth in his recollection of the Co-op Chairman, wearing a top hat, arriving in a big car at the local branch to declare the dividend. It was as close to royalty as they came in the villages around Barnsley.
The Climax Check System replaced an earlier regime using metal (or occasionally early types of plastic) checks. These were introduced in the middle of the Nineteenth century and were a receipt for purchases, handed over with the items bought in exchange for the cash payment. Several hundred societies issued checks in many denominations, so a complete collection would comprise many thousand pieces. From a farthing to five pounds, the higher denominations were sometimes quite artistic in design, whereas many societies made do with fairly crude stamped thin tin like pieces. Some societies encouraged their members to trade in accumulations of lower denominations in exchange for more highly valued pieces in an effort to reduce costs. The tokens were redeemed for cash or goods on or shortly after Divi Day.
In 1997 Roy Rains published an extraordinary listing of these pieces under the title Catalogue of Co-op Checks & Tokens. This indispensable book is now in its third edition and lists every known token. It is particularly useful in assigning obscure locations to counties and identifying pieces showing initials rather than full names. Roy would be the first to acknowledge the contribution of collectors who over the last three decades have added to his initial listing and from time to time new denominations are discovered and reported in the Bulletin of the Token Corresponding Society. Co-op checks were for many years regarded as of little interest or commercial value.
In the last decade or so that has changed however and whilst a good representative collection of commoner pieces can be assembled for a very modest outlay veteran collectors have been astonished to see rarer pieces change hands for £50 or more.
As the regular reader of this column knows I concentrate on collecting tokens from Yorkshire in general and my home town of Huddersfield in particular. Rains lists some 200 issuers from the county as a whole and 26 from within the HD postcode.
It seems to have been the habit of many co-ops to give themselves lengthy names which could not appear in full on their tokens. Abbreviations often encountered include ASS (Association), Co (Company), D (District), EQ (Equitable), F (Friendly), IND (Industrial), L (Limited), MUT (Mutual), P (Perseverance),
PROV (Provident), S (Society) and W.M.(Working Men’s).
One of my favourites from Huddersfield is HILLHOUSE
P.F. & I.C.S.L (Hillhouse Provident, Friendly & Industrial Co-operative Society Limited), known, no doubt, to its members as ‘T’ Co-op’ [One Pound check illustrated]
Whilst most co-op checks are, to put it politely, somewhat utilitarian in design, the occasional ostentatious flourish may be encountered. This will usually take the form of an allegorical figure or activity associated with thrift. Checks of the Halifax Industrial Society Limited depict a man ploughing. One proud member made a gilt brooch out of a pair of One Pound checks [illustrated]
The heyday of the metal check was probably just before the First World War as gradually the paper system familiar to older readers took over. Rains reckons that checks from over 700 Societies have been recorded, but that by 1938 only 27 were still using metal pieces. Forgery of higher value checks and the gaming of the system by unscrupulous members were probably to blame for this decline. If the dividend was lower than expected, why not hang on to your tokens in the hope of a better return next year? Or maybe if a member was hard up he could be persuaded to sell his tokens at a discount before Divi Day arrived. My grandfather regularly stated that being a Co-op manager was the best job going, as the scope for ‘fiddles’ was endless. Prior knowledge of the likely level of dividend would no doubt be valuable information for the less than honest.
Tokens are sometimes
encountered which give every appearance of being Co-op checks but the issuers are not Co-ops. A good example is The Economic Stores, Halifax. I have five examples in my collection of denominations from a penny to one pound and I know others exist. A couple of mouse clicks reveal that this was a very large enterprise founded in 1887, and by the late 1930s had 71 branches in west Yorkshire. They were ‘established to supply its members and the public with all goods they may require at popular prices and divide the profit accruing therefrom pro rata according to purchase’ The Company’s motto was ‘Forward; we cannot stand still’ and clearly the business was run on co-operative lines. The website visited (Malcolm Bull’s Calderdale Companion) gives details of a court case resulting from the apparent theft of one of the Company’s pigs from cold storage in Halifax Corporation abattoir in 1922. The County Court judgement in favour of the Corporation was overturned on appeal.
A second type of Co-op check is the pre-payment token and these in many instances outlived their dividend cousins. Usually for the purchase of milk, but sometimes for bread or other commodities, these could be purchased in bulk in advance from the co-op shop and left out on the doorstep overnight to await the early morning arrival of the milkman. Metal (or quite commonly, plastic) checks were convenient and obviously a more secure means of payment than cash.
Whilst the Co-operative Society (formerly The Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS)) still has branches throughout the United Kingdom, and indeed swallowed up many of the token issuing societies, local co-operative ventures have seen something of an upturn in recent years. I am a founder member of a green grocery co-op formed to prevent the closure of the last independent shop in the village and is now not only promoting local producers and growers but also becoming something of a local social hub. Dividends are not paid as a reward for purchases but rather as a percentage of the original capital contributed. Similarly, co-operative ventures have in recent years rescued a number of village pubs. And whilst I yearn for the return of the metal check I still earn a divi every time I make a purchase at my local co-op, albeit by the medium of swiping my loyalty card.
Oh, and in case you were wondering… 3592.
Note. ‘Divi’ is a term of abuse, particularly popular on Merseyside, for someone who is not particularly bright. It is believed to derive from the slang for Co-op Dividend (i.e. someone who is only [three shillings] to the pound).