A Treasure Hunt
I was recently part of an international group of button sleuths hunting down the identity of this button. It was part of a collection of British and Colonial prison uniform buttons. It was dated ‘May 24, 1896’.
The backmark is David Jones & Co, Sydney. This dates to (unfortunately) a wide time frame; 1833 – December 1906. David Jones was a haberdashery store that grew into a chain of department stores, but they were not button manufacturers. Their tailoring department must have had the tender to produce the uniforms these buttons adorned.
An initial red herring was the name ‘Toga’ as there is a Polynesian Island of that name that is currently part of the nation of Vanuatu. However, This island has too small a population to have needed specific uniforms. The gentleman heading the hunt was under the impression that Toga was an island in the Torres Straight, and that this was a jail uniform button from that island. The Aussies on the hunt firmly dissuaded him of that notion.
The original “incorrect” notion that the button related to Tonga turned out in fact to be correct, as any philatelist (stamp collector) would know! Stamps printed with the name ‘Toga’ date from 1897 -1948. Apparently the letter ‘G’ in Tongan is pronounced as ‘ng’, so there was no need to have the letter ‘N’ in the word. But sometime in the 1940’s it was decided to include the letter, possibly to help English-speaking, non-Tongans to pronounce the word as a Tongan would. Thus the word ‘TONGA’ has appeared since then on stamps and presumably uniform buttons (thanks Tony).
As can be seen, the crown of the button matches the Tongan crown.
Crown of Tonga
The word ‘Jela’ remains a mystery, as it is not a Tongan word; in fact the letter J is not part of their alphabet.
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