What Exactly Is "Public Outcry" When It Comes To Coins?

I believe the mint was flooded with complaints on social media so to save face they overreacted in knee jerk fashion

I think a small number of newspapers made loud noises which was seen as outcry.

Probably the truth is that 99% of the pop didn't care.

#NoLadyBitsOnMy2Bits16

For the 1916 SLQ, there was no actual "public outcry". This change appears to have been made as a combination of factors: continuing artistic developments and personality clashes at the Mint, the changing political situation in the leadup to America entering WWI, and (yes) fears from Treasury over a potential outcry. But the popular histories prefer simple answers to complex ones, so the "victory for prudishness" myth continues. Search the newspapers, and you will find no editorials demanding that Liberty be covered up.

However, the Lincoln Cent "VDB" controversy was real, and widely commented on in the papers of the day. Several articles quoted un-named Treasury figures opining that the presence of such ostentatious initials might qualify as "advertising" for the engraver in question and therefore be illegal. So it perhaps should be more correctly termed "bad press" rather than "public outcry".

In both cases, the "public" neither knew nor cared.

I'm surprised that there was never a public outcry with the Buffalo nickel . ( The Bison's private extremities ) .
does anyone know anything about this . Were there some protests or cover ups that never made it passed congress ?

I think 1883 nickel coin first comes to mind as well as other 'unpopular' coins such as nickel coins in China and Korea, followed by antimony coin in China. Circulated platinum coins as well is another example. The irony is that most of them are highly desirable a century later...

In British Commonwealth coinage, there was some "public outcry" over removing references to God from the coinage, on three separate occasions in three different countries. This "outcry" was, once again, primarily played out in the newspapers, but also got mentions in parliamentary debate of the day.

In Britain, when they first introduced the florin in 1849, the issued design did not bear the traditional inscriptions "dei gratia" (by the grace of God) and "fidei defensor" (defender of the faith). Now, the florin was going to be a controversial coin in any case, being the beginnings of a planned decimalization of the pound. The removal of the references to God simply gave people another reason to dislike it. Church leaders were in the forefront of critics of the new coin. The coin ceased production and was redesigned two years later, with a much more "traditional" design, but the controversy did put further decimalization plans on hold for more than 100 years. The "Godless florin" is now a very popular collector item.

In Canada, when the new coins for the new king George V first came out in 1911, they omitted the usual "dei gratia" part of the legend (Canadian coins had never borne the "fidei defensor" title). Again there was church-led criticism at the de-christianization of the coinage and again, the Mint restored the "dei gratia" on the coinage the following year. The Canadian mint has never dared to remove "D.G." from the coinage since.

In Australia, when the first coinage for the new queen Elizabeth II came out in 1953, though "D.G." was in its usual place of prominence, the letters "F.D." (for fidei defensor) were omitted from the titles, either by accident or by deliberate choice to attempt to de-clutter the obverse design. There was much discussion about it in the papers here, and debate in parliament; some conspiracy-nutters were calling it a Catholic plot, as there was much public debate in Australia at the time over the alleged secret influence of the Catholic church in politics, and "fidei defensor" is a title recognizing the Queen as head of the Anglican church. It took some time for new dies to be prepared in London and sent over, but they did want to make sure that "correct" dies were available for the commemorative florin issued for the queen's visit to Australia in 1954. Strangely, when all references to God were removed from the coinage entirely in 1966, no-one seemed to complain.

For a non-religious example from Australia: when the $2 coin first came out in 1988, it bore the designer's initials, "HH" for Horst Hahne, on the reverse. The $2 coin depicts a (generic) Aboriginal elder, and the incuse HH monogram was placed in the gentleman's armpit - it looked like the poor chap had been branded. At a time when Aboriginal reconciliation was the politically correct dogma, this was seen as a backward step; there were numerous complaints made, mostly by the PC lobby rather than by Aboriginal people themselves (who were mostly just happy that Aboriginals were being recognized on the coinage at all), and the offending initials were removed from the coin in later years.

In short, yes, "public outcry" over coin designs can happen. It doesn't have to be rioting in the streets; governments are usually quite sensitive to any criticism of the coinage and, fearful of some kind of organized coinage boycott, are usually happy to modify the coinage to stop the complaints/bad press.

This is a wonderful topic, worthy of a bookmark. Sap and Conder are brilliant, as always.