Jamaican pound

The pound was the official currency of Jamaica between 1840 and 1969. It circulated as a mixture of British currency and local issues and was always equal to the British pound. The Jamaican pound was also used by the Cayman Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands.

History

The history of currency in Jamaica should not be considered in isolation of the wider picture in the British West Indies as a whole. See Currencies of the British West Indies. The peculiar feature about Jamaica was the fact that it was the only British West Indies territory to use special regional issues of the sterling copper coinage. (Exceptions to this are a copper penny issued in the Bahamas in 1806, and also the four pence groat coin which was specially issued for all the British West Indies, and later only for British Guiana.)

The earliest money in Jamaica was Spanish copper coins called maravedíes. This relates to the fact that for nearly four hundred years Spanish dollars, known as pieces of eight were in widespread use on the world's trading routes, including the Caribbean Sea region. However, following the revolutionary wars in Latin America, the source of these silver trade coins dried up. The last Spanish dollar was minted at the Potosi mint in 1825. The United Kingdom had adopted a very successful gold standard in 1821, and so the year 1825 was an opportune time to introduce the British sterling coinage into all the British colonies. An imperial order-in-council was passed in that year for the...
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