(8) Picking Up Sixpences At Smithfield

(8) PICKING UP SIXPENCES AT SMITHFIELD.

On Good Fridays at St. Bartholomew's Church, Smithfield, there is a quaint ceremony conducted on a flat tombstone in the churchyard. A churchwarden places twenty-one new sixpences on the tombstone, and twenty-one widows come forward one by one, kneel, and pick up the coins. Afterwards each widow is presented with 2/6. The origin of this ceremony is said to be unknown, although it seems hardly likely that money should be paid out year by year without even a tradition as to its commencement. The surmise that the person who lies buried beneath the tombstone left money to be spent in this way--see Sir Benjamin Stone's remarks in his Pictures of National Life and History--only makes the absence of details all the more strange.