# Remembering 'money'.



## Olly Buckle (Sep 30, 2013)

I was tempted to put this in 'humour', but it is all true.

Three score and nine years, even I have to admit that is getting on a bit, but I mix with a few youngsters. A ‘young’ friend (well young to me, he’s in his thirties), an old friend, (he’s in his mid seventies), and I were talking and it transpired that the youngster had no idea what pre-decimal money looked like, it sparked reminiscences of pounds shillings and pence  

 “I loved it the way it used to confuse Americans, they would just hold out a handful of change with a bewildered look”. 

It was simple really, there were twenty shillings or two hundred and forty pence in a pound; twelve pence to a shilling, and the penny was divided into quarters. There were advantages, twelve is a magical base number; ten is five sixths of it, nine three quarters, eight two thirds, six is half of it, four a third, three a quarter, and two a sixth, that means that six shillings and eight pence, six and eight as the shopkeeper might ask for, was a third of a pound, and thirteen and fourpence two thirds; it was also quite a lot of money.

The original names ‘pound’ and ‘penny’ were given in the Middle Ages because a pound was the value of a pound weight of silver and the penny, also silver, weighed a penny weight, a two hundred and fortieth of a pound. The value dropped a bit over the next five hundred years or so, and cupro-nickel coins started to be issued in George VI reign, though, when I was a boy, there were still sterling silver coins in circulation from the time of George V. By then five bob in silver, or cupro-nickel, weighed an ounce, which was convenient for checking scales, and meant that the worth of a pound had dropped from sixteen to four ounces of silver. It was worth a quarter of the amount, not a bad inflation rate for 500 years when you consider what happened over the next fifty or so, an ounce of silver is currently (September 2013) worth about £13.50p, so you would get a little over 2 grams for your pound.

Five bob, by the way, was common slang for five shillings, which for a long time was roughly equivalent to the dollar, and sometimes referred to as that, Five shillings was also a crown, a strange foreign unit that no Englishmen ever used, but to show we harbour no unreasonable prejudice we did use half-a-crown, often called ‘alf-a-dollar, a coin worth two shillings and sixpence and a little larger than a florin, which was called a two bob bit if you weren’t posh. 

The coins I remember, in ascending order of value, were a farthing, with a picture of a wren on the back and worth a quarter of a penny, a halfpenny, pronounced ‘haypnee’, with a ship  on the back, and a penny with Brittania; they were the coppers. All the coins had a picture of the monarch on the front, and still do. There was a threepenny bit, ‘thruppence’, that was hexagonal and made of bronze, I think, with a portcullis on the back. Then it went on to the silver, there had been a silver threepenny bit but that had dropped out of circulation. As a boy I sometimes saw them on someone’s mantelpiece, saved as a curiosity, but in my day tendered silver started with sixpence, then a shilling, two shillings and the halfcrown. Five shilling coins were issued for very special occasions, like Winston Churchill dying, and became collectors pieces worth more than face value, you can discount them as tender. Ten shillings was a note, brown.

It was all easy as pie, three basic units that were simple fractions of each other, twentieths and twelfths, and the lowest denomination split into halves and quarters. There were coins for the main denominations, with extra ones for halves and quarters and a two shillings and a two and a half shillings, which represented a tenth and an eighth of a pound. This modern system is so ‘samish’ it can be very confusing sometimes, a decimal point is only a little black dot and it doesn’t look very different in one place or another.

The money was worth something then, most people don’t buy and sell silver, but fruit salads and blackjacks, the cheap, kids’ sweets, sold singly rather than by weight, were all eight a penny. You got two for a farthing, the smallest coin, you would have got four for a halfpenny and forty eight for sixpence, or ninety six for a shilling, and a massive one thousand nine hundred and twenty fruit salads for a pound. There were thirty five kids in my class, that would have been fifty four sweets each and thirty over for the teacher! 

Another thing about an everyday currency system like that and no calculators, some people may have been illiterate, but very few were innumerate.


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## words (Sep 30, 2013)

People like us who remember such things are ready for recruitment by "grumpy old" 
Didn't we feel rich on the rare occasions we owned a ten bob note as kids! 
What about a sixpence the tooth fairy put under your pillow for a tooth? 
I wonder what inflation has done to that?

Reminiscing about the old money, reminds me of an old story about a time when a penny could actually buy something, and shopkeepers actually served you.

A kid walks into sweet shop.

 " A ha'pe'th of bon bons mister!" he said to the shopkeeper whilst pointing up at the long row of sweet jars adorning the high top shelf of the shop. The shopkeeper replied curtly peering down at his young customer: 
" A ha'pe'th of bon bons *please*, if you don't mind".  

So the shopkeeper goes to the storeroom, collects his small ladder, he carries it in,  leans it to, steps up a few steps, and reaches for the jar, brings it down, unscrews the lid, empties a few into the weighing pan, takes one a way to make the weight, tips some into a paper bag, (remember those?), screws the lid of the jar back on, carries the jar up to the shelf, climbs down again,  folds up the ladder, puts it back into the storeroom. He. closes the door and asks the lad for the halfpenny, rings it up on the ancient till, opens the draw , drops it into the till, slams it shut,and says "next!!"

By this time two more youngsters have joined the growing queue. 
 The next kid then says the inevitable:

" A ha'peth of bon bons, too,  mister!" he said to the shopkeeper, who replied again: " You mean PLEASE!".

And with a sigh, the shopkeeper goes back into the storeroom, collects his small ladder, leans it to again, steps up again and reaches for the jar, brings it down, unscrews the lid, empties a few into the weighing pan, adds a couple to make the weight, tips them into a  bag,screws the lid back on, carries up to the shelf, and then he thinks.....

So from the top of the ladder, and before he puts the ladder away, pauses and says to the pair of eyes staring up at him from  the last little person in the queue.

"You don't wan't a ha'peth of bon bons too, do you son?"
"No mister!" was the instant reply.

So, relieved,  he climbs down, folds up the ladder, puts it back in the store room, closes the door, asks the previous lad for the halfpenny, rings it up, opens the till, drops it in,and then says to the last one:

"So what would you like, then son?"

"I wan't a penn'rth of bon bons instead, mister"


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## Divus (Sep 30, 2013)

Olly & Words - Guys we are getting old.       I can even remember : DOS.  AMI~PRO. & WORD PERFECT


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## words (Sep 30, 2013)

Divus said:


> Olly & Words - Guys we are getting old.       I can even remember : DOS.  AMI~PRO. & WORD PERFECT



Shudders at the thought of 8 inch floppies!
Worse still ,what about sinclair calculators? and before them log tables!


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## Blade (Sep 30, 2013)

My money memory goes back to the days when a penny (1 cent piece) could actually buy something. The Canadian penny was removed from circulation earlier this year for being a nuisance and costing 1.8 cents each to make and distribute. Back in the day you could buy 3 candies with one but in 2013 there was literally nothing.

Ironically the $0.01 still exists electronically in the bank account and debit and credit cards worlds although cash purchases are now rounded to the nearest 5 cents.




words said:


> and before them log tables.


I think, that outside school, log tables would make you stop and think twice about whether the problem really needed to be solved.:applause:


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## qwertyman (Sep 30, 2013)

I thought this was going to be about Martin Amis's fantastic novel...sucker punched. I've swapped cynical for gullible...sigh.

I remember when I first read 'Money', 1985. I've just read it again brilliant and it only cost me £2:95.

Heigh ho!


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## philistine (Oct 4, 2013)

Great read, Olly. 

Can it not also be pronounced 'hay-penny', with a slight 'uh' in the 'penny'? Also, 'threh-penny' in the same fashion? If not, I'd like to have some strong words with Charles Laughton, if it were at all possible.


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## Trilby (Oct 4, 2013)

Well guys, you're beginning to sound like my grandfather who had sayings like...

'I can remember when you could get half a dozen boxes of matches for a halfpenny and you could buy a pennyworth of bacon.' Aaaaa! the good ol' days.

At school, I was taught LSD (pounds, shillings and pence) - yds ft and ins (yards, feet and inches) and lbs and ozs (pounds and ounces) etc. With the exception of money, I still see things in these weights and measures. I can visualize what; 5ins, 2ft, 6ft or 2yrds - 2ozs, 6ozs or 1lb looks like, whereas when it comes to metric weights and measures, I have no idea. When I think of a meter, I imagine a yard with an extra 4ins.

Talking of old money, when I was a child we may not have been rich, but we didn't have to take on a mortgage to buy a lobster - prosperity! We didn't know when we were well off :king:!

Edit - afterthought;

The new half pence was near enough equivalent to the old penny, but we did away with that. The new pence is as near as damn it to two and a half old pence- so really we no longer have anything that corresponds with the old penny.


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## philistine (Oct 4, 2013)

Trilby said:


> Well guys, you're beginning to sound like my grandfather who had sayings like...
> 
> 'I can remember when you could get half a dozen boxes of matches for a halfpenny and you could buy a pennyworth of bacon.' Aaaaa! the good ol' days.
> 
> ...



I'm not entirely clued in as to the particulars of old money (though thanks to the ravings of my grandfather, I suppose I'm better informed than most young ruffians!), though I have a good understanding of both imperial and metric. I think having a working knowledge of both can be quite useful, rather than relying on one system for one measurement, and another for a different kind.


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## Kevin (Oct 4, 2013)

> “I loved it the way it used to confuse Americans, they would just hold out a handful of change with a bewildered look”.


 Yes, that would be me. Enjoyable read. We used to have something like that but it was just odd names for amounts. "Two-bits" was one of them, which meant .25 ( a quarter of a dollar) at least I think it did. That sort of thing is lost.


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## Gumby (Oct 4, 2013)

Yes, count me as one of those confused Americans. In fact, my eyes tend to glaze over when any crunching of numbers is discussed. However, I've no problem in the grocery story keeping tabs on how much I'm spending.  

Really enjoyed this, Olly.


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## Divus (Oct 4, 2013)

In old money; half a crown was two and sixpence or 30 pence which equalled 60 half pence or 120 farthings.                                                                                                                 The big thing was that you could buy something with a 2and6 pence silver piece and be given change.                                                                                                                         What can you buy today for an eighth of a Pound?      Dv


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## Pluralized (Oct 6, 2013)

Really enjoyed this, Olly. What a convoluted system we humans created for commerce, made all the more ludicrous by decades of steep inflation and devaluation. One of my favorite tunes has a line, "What would your mother think, if she heard my guineas clink..." Now that was saying something, when you had coins to clink together. "Value" has become very watered-down across the board, hasn't it?

Thanks for sharing this!


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## Gargh (Oct 6, 2013)

This reminded me of playing old-fashioned arcade games with the ginormous decommissioned old pennies at Wookey Hole when I were a young lass, aye... wonder if they still do that? It also, for some reason, had me ruing the death of commas in the numerical expression of thousands and upwards. I'm only 34, when did getting old start so early?!!


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## Blade (Oct 6, 2013)

Gargh said:


> I'm only 34, when did getting old start so early?!!



Only very recently as a ripple effect of _Future Shock._ Because things change more rapidly 'new ' and 'different' appear in the environment more readily thus giving you added opportunity to perceive change and thus seem old. No big deal, you are still only 34.:joker:


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## Olly Buckle (Oct 6, 2013)

Thanks for the comments everyone, it is good to know you all seem to have enjoyed it to some extent.


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## philistine (Oct 6, 2013)

Divus said:


> What can you buy today for an eighth of a Pound?      Dv



The affection of a homeless guy?


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