JAMES DODSLEY CUFF (1780-1853)

WORKING in the Bullion Office of the Bank of England placed James Dodsley Cuff in a position from which he was able to acquire some of the rarest coins of the milled period to add to a collection which contained some of the choicest English coins.

James Dodsley Cuff was born in Corsley, near Warminster in Wiltshire, in 1780, the only son of Caleb, a yeoman farmer, and his wife Kitty, a niece of James and Robert Dodsley, who were well-known publishers based in Pall Mall. Cuff became interested in numismatics in about 1810 and spent the next 40 years or so studying English coinage from the earliest times. He worked at the Bank of England for about 48 years and for the last 28 of those he worked in the Bullion Office.

In his capacity as a principal in that department he was in a position to examine coins which came to the Bank for conversion into bullion. Without Cuff’s interest it is probable that many rare coins would have ended up in the melting pot and thus be lost to later collectors. Only three sets of the 1786 shilling and sixpence are known, one set in the British Museum and the remaining two sets in Cuff’s collection. Similarly, Cuff owned not just one specimen but five examples of the 1798 Dorrien and Magens shilling.

Cuff was an early member of the Royal Numismatic Society, founded in 1836, and it was recorded that when his health permitted, he was noted for his punctual attendance at Council and ordinary meetings of the Society. He was ever ready to share his expertise with others and was described as being courteous and communicative.

His final residence was at Prescott Lodge, Clapham New Park, and it was here that he died on September 28, 1853 from what on his death certificate was described as softening of the lumbar spine, which he had suffered from for about 18 months. In his will, he left his estate to “his dear wife Sarah”, a daughter of Bartholomew Barry, a Bristol bookseller. Cuff directed that his collection should be sold by public auction and named S. Leigh Sotheby and John Wilkinson of Wellington Street off the Strand to be the auctioneers.

The collection was catalogued by H. O. Cureton, a prominent dealer, and lasted a total of 18 days starting on June 8, 1854. There were 2,506 lots and the list of buyers reads like a Who’s Who of mid-19th century numismatists: Wigan, Bergne, Shepherd and the dealers Lincoln, Webster and Dantziger. Cureton managed to acquire something like a third of the whole collection and William Chaffers was successful in getting approximately a fifth.

Cuff’s library, including an extensive collection of priced auction catalogues (complete with the purchasers’ names) occupied lots 2320 to 2502 and fetched a total of £167 13s 6d. The catalogue of the collection of Edward, Earl of Oxford, in 1741 was the earliest and later notable sales were the Bank of England duplicates in 1811, John Trotter Brockett in 1823, Thomas Dimsdale in 1824, Marmaduke Trattle in 1832, the dealer Matthew Young in 1839 and Thomas Thomas in 1844.

Lot 2398 was the star item being a collection of 19 volumes of “a very extensive and perhaps unique collection of the sales catalogues of all the most celebrated collections that have been disposed of by auction, both in London and the provinces between the years 1756 and 1830”. Cureton acquired this highly desirable lot for just £5! The sale realised a total of £7,054 8s, a fortune in 1854 and indicative of the breadth and quality of Cuff’s collection.

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