New on eBay, a trade token (‘unofficial farthing’) revealing the name of a Stoke bookseller and printer.

Apparently in the book Unofficial Farthings, 1820-1870, so that gives the broad date-range. In the 1840s he was a printer in the High Street, Stoke-upon-Trent and published engraved Views in the Potteries. A “William Dean” was owner of the Staffordshire Potteries Telegraph newspaper, which produced 125 issues from 1852 to 1855, which seems likely. The Engineer (June 1865) later reported that a “WILLIAM DEAN, Stafford Street, Longton” in Stoke-on-Trent had been given leave to proceed with a patent application for a method of printing from wood-blocks.