British currency, old and new

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Over in the Rumourmonger Airfix Jaguar thread there has been a discussion about prices of Airfix kits in days of yore, with the prices given in an odd notation.   I commented that it may be confusing to our friends from around the world and it seems that is indeed the case. 

 

Rather than go totally off topic in the Jaguar thread, I've decided to post an explanation here.  This allows me to talk about yet another of my obsessions - numismatism!    

 

Since 15 February 1971 the UK (and Ireland incidentally) has had decimal coinage.  The unit of currency is the pound, which is divided into 100 pence.  "Pence" is the plural of "penny".  This is similar to the way most currencies are arranged.   However, before that date the situation was totally different.  The pound was divided into twenty shillings and each shilling was divided into twelve pence.  There were a total of 240 pence in each pound!  Confused yet?    

 

The formal method of writing down a price of something was to use the format £ s d, for example one pound, three shillings and six pence was written as £1 3s 6d.   However, people are inherently lazy and there was a shorthand used for amounts less than a pound.  Two shillings and sixpence was written as 2/6 while any amount that was a whole amount of shillings had a dash to represent the pennies.  Three shillings was 3/-.

 

There were a lot of slang terms for various amounts.  A shilling was commonly referred to as a "bob".  Ten shillings (half of a pound) was "ten bob".  Five shillings was officially known as a "crown" but was almost always referred to as "five bob".  Oddly enough, 2/6 was called "half a crown".   There were coins for five bob and half a crown (the five bob coin was rarely used) as well as for other amounts.  There was a coin for three pence ("thripny bit" which had twelve sides, was minted in brass and introduced in 1937), one for six pence ("sixpny bit", round, minted in silver and smaller that a thripny bit!).  There was a two shilling coin known as a "florin", but withdrawal of this began in 1967.  Smaller than a penny were the halfpenny ("ha'penny pronounced "haypny" withdrawn in 1969) and quarter penny ( "farthing" withdrawn in 1961).

 

There was also a four pence coin known as a groat, but there were withdrawn in 1856.  However, there are modern groats which are stuck as part of Maundy money.  Maundy money are special coins which are given my the Monarch as symbolic alms on Maundy thursday and are very highy prized by collectors. 

 

It may be confusing but the study and collection of these coins is fascinating, especially as most of the coins which were struck in brass had originally been struck in silver!

[bootneck]

There was also the silver threepenny bit.   Fractioned prices on labels looked like this  3/6½d  for  three shillings and sixpence halfpenny.

 

cheers,
Mike

[scautomoton]

A couple of WW2 books I have mention that it was easy to catch foreign spies because they didn't understand the currency, so gave themselves away quite easily

[Whofan]

I may be misremembering, but back when the pound was worth 4 US $, I am sure a half crown was also called half a dollar, because 4 dollars equalled a pound equalled 20 shillings, so 1 dollar equalled 20/4 shillings, or 5.

 

2/6 is half of 5 shillings, so the nickname half a dollar for 2/6 was born.

 

Edited February 13 by Whofan

[bentwaters81tfw]

I have an 1844 half farthing.

[Whofan]

7 minutes ago, bentwaters81tfw said:

I have an 1844 half farthing.

 

Is it literally, a farthing cut in half, or an actual half farthing coin?

[bentwaters81tfw]

Full coin

[Ratch]

6d was a tanner round these parts.

[Enzo the Magnificent]

22 minutes ago, Whofan said:

 

Is it literally, a farthing cut in half, or an actual half farthing coin?

It's a half farthing coin, last struck in 1856.   There were also third farthings, last struck in 1885 although there were special issues for Malta in 1902 and 1912.  Quarter farthings were struck in the mid 19th century for Ceylon.

[Enzo the Magnificent]

34 minutes ago, bentwaters81tfw said:

I have an 1844 half farthing.

 

Jealous!     That's a very nice coin.

[pigsty]

You missed out the guinea.  21 shillings, not actually a coin since about 200 years ago, but you'll still find it in things like the names of some top-flight horse races.

[Viking]

..and the use of 'd' for pence stemmed from Roman times when the 'denarius' coin was of similar use/value.

[Hunker]

Never heard of 'thripence'. It was thrupence or thrupny bit as far as I can remember, least that was how it was pronounced.

[Enzo the Magnificent]

2 hours ago, bootneck said:

Fractioned prices on labels looked like this  3/6½d  for  three shillings and sixpence halfpenny.

 

Let's put things into context here.  In the mid '60s a ha'penny could get you a quarter of pear drops and a bar of Five Boys chocolate. 

[Admiral Puff]

And in Australia - Three-pence was a "trey", sixpence was a "zack", and a one-shilling coin was a "deener" or, as in the UK, a "bob". We had our own nicknames for the notes as well. I'll post them when and if I can remember them.

4 minutes ago, Enzo the Magnificent said:

 

Let's put things into context here.  In the mid '60s a ha'penny could get you a quarter of pear drops and a bar of Five Boys chocolate. 

Yes, but more importantly - how much was a quarter of dolly mixture?

[Nocoolname]

I was born after decimalisation but the elder members of the family still talked the language of ‘bob’ and shillings leaving me bewildered. 
 

I remember the introduction of the 20p piece and the replacement of the pound note with a coin but what most excited me at the time was that pound could get me three Airfix blister pack models with change enough for a quarter of toffee crunch. 

[Enzo the Magnificent]

1 hour ago, pigsty said:

You missed out the guinea.  21 shillings, not actually a coin since about 200 years ago, but you'll still find it in things like the names of some top-flight horse races.

 

46 minutes ago, Viking said:

..and the use of 'd' for pence stemmed from Roman times when the 'denarius' coin was of similar use/value.

 

31 minutes ago, Hunker said:

Never heard of 'thripence'. It was thrupence or thrupny bit as far as I can remember, least that was how it was pronounced.

 

All of which shows how fascinating numismatism can be! 

[Enzo the Magnificent]

1 hour ago, pigsty said:

You missed out the guinea.  21 shillings, not actually a coin since about 200 years ago, but you'll still find it in things like the names of some top-flight horse races.

 nodnodnod   The final issue of guineas was in 1813, however there were a lot of counterfeit coins of this date. The last guinea issue that we can be sure of was from 1799.

 

Sadly. I have no guineas in my collection.   A gold guinea coin costs about £800...   That's twice as much as a modern sovereign.

 

[Fukuryu]

Thank you very much @Enzo the Magnificent and all that contributed. I can't say I have a full grasp of the system yet but now I know where all those strange notations with slashes and dashes come from.

 

Since you seem to like your coins very much (a sentiment I can fully understand, being of a collector mind myself), care to share a few pics?

 

Regarding the spy thing, given the stereotype of Germans being very rational and logical, I am inclined to believe it! (no offence intended to the German BMs, of course!). I know I would have been caught the first time I tried to pay for something.

[Hunker]

But at the same time there were Poles, Norwegians, French, Dutch etc in England who also didn't know the currency very well so for every spy that was caught they must have also caught 10 allies 😄 

[treker_ed]

I was born on the cusp of the two systems. However... I had 4 older brothers, 3 of whom were old enough to use the old L S D system of money in the UK. I grew up listening to them using those denominations when even talking about decimal money!!! 

Regularly I would hear two bob, thrupance, ha'panny and 10 bob. Even now many, many years later I still use 10 bob referring to 50p coins. For those still unaware of the amounts... 12 old pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound, so 240 pence to £1. So in the modern decimal 50p is 10 shillings, a shilling being a bob.

Sadly, my eldest brother is no longer with use having passed away from lung cancer just over 5 years ago. He would have been around 68 years old if he was still with us, so well versed in the old coinage.

[Alfisti]

I had a bit of a dilemma in the early 70's.I was stationed in Germany,so had gotten used to converting Marks back into £SD to roughly work out what it cost.Then GB went decimal,so when on leave,I had to convert German Marks to old GB coinage,then try and convert that to the new decimal stuff.Very confusing at times as maths was never one of my forte's,especially when down the pub with a few sherberts inside me.

[Mr T]

Being born in 1954, I was well used to LSD (the money, not the drug). I have had much fun explaining predecimal to my offspring, born in in 1994 and 1996. My daughter refuses to believe in the thrupny bit, and my son just shakes his head at the apparent complication of it all. I think part of it is not appreciating what inflation has done to the currency over the years. 

Farthings disappeared when I was young, but remembered finding some at home, they had a wren on them, which I thought appropriate at the time. The other thing about predecimal coinage was how long some lasted, particularly pennies. Late Victorian and Edwardian issues regularly used to show up in change. 

[bentwaters81tfw]

13 hours ago, Enzo the Magnificent said:

Over in the Rumourmonger Airfix Jaguar thread there has been a discussion about prices of Airfix kits in days of yore, with the prices given in an odd notation.   I commented that it may be confusing to our friends from around the world and it seems that is indeed the case. 

 

Rather than go totally off topic in the Jaguar thread, I've decided to post an explanation here.  This allows me to talk about yet another of my obsessions - numismatism!    

 

Since 15 February 1971 the UK (and Ireland incidentally) has had decimal coinage.  The unit of currency is the pound, which is divided into 100 pence.  "Pence" is the plural of "penny".  This is similar to the way most currencies are arranged.   However, before that date the situation was totally different.  The pound was divided into twenty shillings and each shilling was divided into twelve pence.  There were a total of 240 pence in each pound!  Confused yet?    

 

The formal method of writing down a price of something was to use the format £ s d, for example one pound, three shillings and six pence was written as £1 3s 6d.   However, people are inherently lazy and there was a shorthand used for amounts less than a pound.  Two shillings and sixpence was written as 2/6 while any amount that was a whole amount of shillings had a dash to represent the pennies.  Three shillings was 3/-.

 

There were a lot of slang terms for various amounts.  A shilling was commonly referred to as a "bob".  Ten shillings (half of a pound) was "ten bob".  Five shillings was officially known as a "crown" but was almost always referred to as "five bob".  Oddly enough, 2/6 was called "half a crown".   There were coins for five bob and half a crown (the five bob coin was rarely used) as well as for other amounts.  There was a coin for three pence ("thripny bit" which had twelve sides, was minted in brass and introduced in 1937), one for six pence ("sixpny bit", round, minted in silver and smaller that a thripny bit!).  There was a two shilling coin known as a "florin", but withdrawal of this began in 1967.  Smaller than a penny were the halfpenny ("ha'penny pronounced "haypny" withdrawn in 1969) and quarter penny ( "farthing" withdrawn in 1961).

 

There was also a four pence coin known as a groat, but there were withdrawn in 1856.  However, there are modern groats which are stuck as part of Maundy money.  Maundy money are special coins which are given my the Monarch as symbolic alms on Maundy thursday and are very highy prized by collectors. 

 

It may be confusing but the study and collection of these coins is fascinating, especially as most of the coins which were struck in brass had originally been struck in silver!

But have you got a nine bob note?

[pigsty]

5 minutes ago, Mr T said:

The other thing about predecimal coinage was how long some lasted, particularly pennies.

The original 5p and 10p coins were the same size and weight as the old shilling and florin, and the 2p was nearly the size of the old penny, so the older coins lasted a long time.  And twice in the last few years I've found a sixpence in my change when I was expecting a new (smaller) 5p.  UK-style coins turn up in other odd places too.  For instance, I've got 5 Kenyan shillings at home, which are a dead ringer for the original 50p.

 

Funnily enough, from where I'm sitting I can see the Thrupenny Bit Building in Croydon (No.1 Croydon, officially).  It actually has eight sides to each floor, and 16 when you allow how for alternating floors are built, which only goes to show.  There are claims it was renamed the 50p Building when decimalisation came in; I suspect that never really stuck.

 

so 244 pence to £1

240 pence, not 244.  I mean, come on, counting in base 244?  That would be silly.