The Dr Jerome J. Platt Collection of 17th-Century Medals

Dr Jerome J Platt

Dr. Platt has been an avid collector of British medals since the early 1970s when he first purchased a Dunbar medal. Fascinated by the direct connection between medals and the historical events they reflected, he soon became drawn into the worlds from which they came. He was interested both in English Civil War and earlier medals as well as the people of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries associated with making, selling, collecting and writing about them. A researcher by inclination and profession, he soon started collecting information about recipients where available, a difficult task at best for the early medals, but one he relished for the material he was able to unearth and the people he met and collections he was privileged to visit during his many trips to the UK. During his work, he found his wife Kay looking over his shoulder with increasing frequency, and she soon joined him at the table, unable to resist her own fascination, not only with the medals themselves, but with the people behind the medals.

Over more than two decades, the Platts published their medal research in several articles and books. Their primary work on the English Civil War period was the two-volume work The English Civil Wars: Medals, Historical Commentary and Personalities (Spink, 2014), followed by a companion volume, British Historical Medals of the 17th Century: Medallists, Authors, Books, Collectors, Book-Sellers & Antiquaries (Spink, 2017). These works, like their other books, utilized commemorative and military medals as the entry points for biographical and bibliographical studies of historical events and the individuals who participated in them. For these projects the Platts drew primarily upon the collection of the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum, but also examined the collections held by the Ashmolean, Fitzwilliam and Hunterian Museums, the Museum of London, the National Museum of Scotland and the American Numismatic Society.

Their first work on medals, The Whitewash Brigade: The Hong Kong Plague of 1894 (Dix Noonan Webb, 1998), was written in collaboration with Maurice Jones, whom they had met while researching the Hong Kong Plague medal at the Shropshire Regimental Museum in Shrewsbury. The Platts also conducted research on the Campanella collection of medals associated with the life of Giuseppe Garibaldi held by the Rare Books and Special Collections Library at the University of South Carolina. The results of this appeared in book form as “Here We Make Italy or We Die:” The Medals of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Risorgimento, and Modern Italy (Spink, 2018).

Continuing a relationship with the British Museum, Dr. Platt, in a discussion with Philip Attwood, former Keeper of Coins and Medals, recognized the need for an annotated catalogue of the sixteenth century English historical medals in the Museum’s possession, undoubtedly the most comprehensive such collection in existence. He and Mrs Platt then embarked on compiling one, Medals of Tudor England and Scotland in the British Museum (Spink, 2021).

Another work, Glasgow and Strathclyde Bravery Medals: Police, Fire and Civilian Awards, 1871-1996 (OMRS, in the press) is anticipated to appear in December 2022. Dr. Platt’s current project, They Fought at Dien Bien Phu, is a study of the men who participated in the battle that resulted in the end of Western colonial rule in the Far East.

Before his retirement Dr Platt served as a professor of psychiatry, associate dean for research and institute director at medical schools in the Philadelphia area. During his career Dr. Platt chaired a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) research review panel as well as serving as a member or chair of many other federal contract, policy and advisory committees. He also served as a consultant and advisor to numerous organizations, including the New Jersey Department of Corrections, and was a member of the board of trustees of Hahnemann University School of Medicine. Among over a dozen books on drug addiction and its treatment which he authored or edited are Heroin Addiction: Theory, Research and Treatment (Wiley, 1976), Cocaine Addiction: Theory, Research and Treatment (Harvard, 2000) and Relapse and Recovery in Addictions (Yale, 2001). Before her retirement Mrs Platt was a hospital nursing supervisor and manager of a research clinic for adolescent drug abusers. Her passion is art history.