The only known Tasmanian Rum Order reveals how convict Hobart really paid its bills.
When most people think of early Australian currency, they imagine crude coins, promissory notes, or perhaps the famous Holey Dollar. But in the earliest decades of colonial Tasmania, another form of “money” often carried more practical value than official coinage: rum.
Among the most historically important pieces in the John McCullagh Collection is a small and remarkably fragile printed permit dating to circa 1817 – today believed to be the only surviving Tasmanian Rum Order known.
Presented as part of the McCullagh Collection in Auction No. 159, the piece stands as one of the clearest surviving relics of Australia’s infamous “rum economy”.
Rum as Currency in Colonial Australia
In the early nineteenth century, official coinage in Van Diemen’s Land was chronically scarce. The growing colony relied heavily on barter, private notes, Spanish dollars, and promissory instruments to keep trade moving.
Rum quickly emerged as one of the colony’s most trusted mediums of exchange.
It was portable, divisible, universally desired, and often easier to obtain than official currency. Labour, goods, transport and services could all be paid for in spirits, particularly in isolated settlements where government-issued money remained limited.
The practice became so widespread that authorities were eventually forced to regulate the movement and sale of alcohol – almost as though it were legal tender itself.
The surviving Rum Order from the McCullagh Collection is evidence of that reality.
The Only Known Tasmanian Rum Order
The permit itself is modest in appearance – a small printed form authorising the removal of rum from a licensed premises in Hobart Town – yet its historical importance is extraordinary.
Issued under the authority of Police Magistrate A.W.H. Humphrey in 1817, the order authorised the removal of spirits from the house of Colour Sergeant Thomas McGuire at the Barracks, a licensed retailer permitted to sell spirits to military personnel.
The document references Boyle Thomas, a former convict transported to New South Wales in 1807 aboard the Guilford, later arriving in Hobart Town in 1812 aboard the Ruby. By 1817, Thomas was sufficiently established within colonial society to issue a reward of one gallon of rum for the return of a missing boat – a remarkable illustration of rum functioning as a practical monetary substitute in everyday colonial life.
The permit survives today as the only recorded example of its type.
Its provenance is equally impressive, having passed through the collections of Dr Arthur Andrews, Dr G.H. Abbott, Edward Wills, and later D. Raymond circa 1947 before appearing in major Australian numismatic sales. Few artefacts combine rarity, provenance and social history so effectively in a single piece.
Regulating the Rum Economy
The story behind the note also reveals the government’s growing concern over the movement of spirits within the colony.
On 18 October 1817, strict regulations were issued from Government House, Hobart Town, granting Police Magistrate A.W.H. Humphrey exclusive authority to approve permits for removing more than one gallon of wines or spirits from any premises in Hobart and surrounding districts.
This was not simply bureaucracy, it was economic control.
Rum had become deeply embedded in the colonial system. Restricting and tracking its movement meant controlling trade itself. The Rum Order survives as a direct consequence of those regulations.
A Wider Story Within the McCullagh Collection
What makes the John McCullagh Collection particularly compelling is that this Rum Order does not exist in isolation.
Across the collection are numerous surviving examples of the same improvised colonial economy: promissory notes, private currency issues, liquor permits, and early paper instruments that reveal how Australians conducted trade long before a stable monetary system existed.
Among them is an extraordinary bound set of printer’s sample banknotes issued by the Lachlan & Waterloo Mills Company in Sydney during the 1820s. The sixteen-note sample booklet includes denominations ranging from two shillings and sixpence through to ten pounds sterling and is believed to be unique.
Like the Rum Order, these notes existed because official currency shortages forced private enterprise to fill the gap.
The collection also includes rare Van Diemen’s Land promissory notes such as the 1825 T. Allison one-shilling issue from Hobart Town – unique in that denomination – alongside later liquor permits from Launceston authorising the removal of rum and gin from bonded stores in 1847.
Taken together, these pieces tell a much larger story than simple numismatics, they document an economy being invented in real time.
As Auction No. 159 approaches, the McCullagh Collection continues to reveal why it is regarded as one of the most important numismatic holdings ever brought to market in Australia. Not simply for its rarity, but for the stories embedded within every piece.
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