Response to Inventory/ The Tokens by Christopher Turner

Christopher Turner presents a view of a token that drastically contrasts with the lighthearted twenty-first century American perspective. The tokens in this article were more as a form of identification than a keepsake for the orphans that were admitted to "for the maintenance and education of exposed and deserted young children." In this way, the objects were more for the use of the giver than the receiver in the instance that the mother wanted or was able to return for her child as she would use the token to prove her relation. Some of the tokens listed are as sweet and sentimental as "an embroidered heart" or as unsentimental as a "bottle tag that reads 'Ale'" and some as grotesque as a piece of the mother's umbilical cord. But, again, one must recognize that these were not meant for the purpose of providing a child any comfort other than the hope that their mother would use whatever object they left behind to one day reclaim him or her. Turner likens these tokens to being orphans as well once they were removed from their "identifying packages" which makes the crucial point that for an object to become a token it must be with or connected to someone.