Black dog (coin)

A dog or a black dog was a coin in the Caribbean of Queen Anne of Great Britain, made of pewter or copper, typically worth 1½ pence or 1⁄72 of a dollar. The name comes from the negative connotations of the word "dog," as they came from debased silver coins,^[1] and the dark color of those same debased coins.^[2] Black dogs were also at times called "stampes" or "stampees", as they were typically the coins of other colonial powers—French coins worth 2 sous or, equivalently, 24 diniers—stamped to make them British currency.

A dog and a stampee were not necessarily of equal value. For example, the Spanish dollar was subdivided into bits, each worth 9 pence, 6 black dogs or 4 stampees. Before 1811, 1 dollar equalled 11 bits (making a dog 1⁄66 of a dollar and a stampee 1⁄44 of a dollar); after 1811, 1 dollar equalled 12 bits (making a dog 1⁄72 of a dollar and a stampee 1⁄48 of a dollar). In 1797, however, a "black dog" is equated with a "stampee".^[3]

Mary Prince's narrative tells of slaves in Antigua buying a "dog's worth" of salted fish or pork on Sundays (the only day they could go to the market).^[4]