Not wanting to interrupt the lovely flow of memories in the Alistair Cooke thread, I post this here. What is this, please, jheem? Or anyone?

Thanks, Jackie. I was going to ask the same question. I'm guessing it has something to do with monetary units?

Probably miscaptialized it, but l == pounds (from libra), s == shillings (for solidus), d == pence (for denarius). It's the old monetary system in the UK before 1970-something. Maybe 1969. First saw the term in Finnegans Wake. I don't think I heard my dad use the term, but by then the other LSD had taken hold of the public's imagination. 12 d to the shilling, 20 shilling to the pound, 21 to the guinea. Pound is also called a quid, shilling a bob. There used to be a 10-bob note (which Mean Mr Mustard had up his nose), now there's a 50 p coin. Prices used to be written with a slash (or virgule) for the shilling: e.g., 5/6 (pronounced 5 and 6) for 5 shilling, 6 pence.

Ooh--L for pound?? When they were divided into twelfths? Good, Anna--my mind had fixated at the drug, and got no further.

EDIT: 14 seconds. Sheesh. :-)

Uncle's capitalisation was correct - Lsd. The letters were even used at times as a colloquialism for money. "Now let's talk about the Lsd".

Five pounds, one pound and ten shillings were the values of the notes in common use while there were coins for two shillings and six pence, two shillings (sometimes called a florin - an older name for it), one shilling, six pence, three pence, one penny, a halfpenny and a farthing (quarter of a penny) which, along with the threepenny bit, disappeared before the others. The threepenny bit was thick and heavy and I assume that is why it alone was called a 'bit'.

When I was a boy, the two and sixpenny coin (known as half a crown) was given the slang description of 'half a dollar', giving some idea of the exchange rate at about that time - or rather, I suspect, just prewar.

Is that all clear?

This should be in the retronym thread.
[idly whistling whilst looking chalantly up in the air-e]

This should be in the retronym thread. Nuh-uh. 'Cause the other's LSD, not Lsd.

Alt,0,1,6,3 = £

or either option + 3 = £

[FAldage NiPICKers' LEague]
>This should be in the retronym thread. Nuh-uh. 'Cause the other's LSD, not Lsd.

I read that as "pre-decimal Lsd" :as opposed to: "Lsd"

Part of the problem is that post-decimal it's just L (or Lp). The s is gone and the d is converted to p.

Lp

you still have those? we just usually listen to CD's...

Yeah, cygne, marfack I do have Lps. Even lissen to one ever wonst in a wiler.

[FAldage NiPICKers' LEague] Good pick-up, m.

the d is converted to p. Þ Thanks, you-all--I have really enjoyed this!

The British £sd denominations were reflected throughout the Commonealth, except that by the time I was old enough to register it, the farthing was long gone and the halfpenny was being withdrawn. The fruits of inflation, I guess.

Our threepenny bits (yep, we called 'em "bits" as well) were physically proportional to their value in relation to the sixpenny piece (i.e. smaller). Me muvver used to wrap 3d bits up in silver foil and cook them into the Christmas puds for us to find. High excitement! Later on, when the 3d bit was headed in the same direction as the farthing, it became 6d pieces. The half-crown was a big, heavy coin and most kids liked having one because it felt like "real money".

Then in 1967 it was all change and we decimalised and money became pretty ordinary!

Boring even. Who *needs it?

The antipodes decimalised before we did, of course. Our decimalisation was (i think) in 1971 - might have been '72.

In the days before there was very much automation of arithmetic, the strange number system of £sd meant that many people - even most of 'em - were quite good at mental arithmetic.
Anyone who was dealin with money - especially with change in shops, as I did in my youth - learned a whole load of conversions and tricks.

There were 240 pennies to a pound - that was the base
(if you worked in the garment trade, you got to know that a guinea [£1/1/0 or 1 pound and one shilling] was 252 pence - few other trades used the guinea after the war)
and you soon worked out the number of pence in each shilling:-
2/- = 24d
3/- = 36d etc etc

half-a-crown (2/6) was 30d (this was one of the most useful coins in the range, btw!)

8 half-crowns = £1
(for some reason, 7/6 was known in the fruit and veg trade as "three half-crowns" [pronounced "free 'alf-crahns"]: No other combination of half-crowns was known in this manner)
Half-crowns were also known as "half-a-tosheroon" (no idea why) or "Half-an-Oxford" A crown - five shillings [obsolete post-war] was, as previously noted by dixbie, called "a dollar" and "Oxford Scholar" is the rhyming slang - hence the slang for 2/6.


100 pence is 6/8 (six-and-eightpence)

8/4 is a third of £1.


All of this knowledge was essential if you were going to work out whether you were getting a bargain or being sold a pup. Especially at 5 am in the Veg market!!
I have lost the ability to work out in, my head, how much 1 orange costs from a box of 263 at £1/3/6 the box, but that also was an essential ability in those pre-electronic, pocket-sized calculator days. Oranges came in a variey of sizes, but only one size of orange box, so you got all sorts of different "counts" per box.
But I can, at a pinch, still perform, in my head, fairly simple multiplication and division sums in £sd. (It's much easier to do after some LSD - but the answer is usually wrong.)

Pfranz speaks of his ma wrapping up threepenny-bits in silver foil: The 3d pieces up until the '50s (I think) were silver (known as "Joeys", for some reason!)- tiny little coins of real silver until about 1920-something, then cupro-nickel thereafter, like the sixpenny-piece. My Ma just bunged 'em straight in the mixture - I've still got about half-a-doz of them, stored away!

Y'all out there will never realise the pleasure it has given me to deal with the old currency again! Thanks for the original Q, Jackie

The threepenny bits were also a fascinating looking coin: bronze with 12 sides. (I have one somewhere in the old coin collection.) The one and two shilling coins still circulated in the '70s, but I think they disappeared by the early '80s, replaced with smaller coins.

http://www.gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/units/money.htm

yes, the gold-coloured 12-siders were a very distictive coin - but they weren't called joeys - that was purely for the little round silver ones - which co-existed with the 12 siders for many years.
And you are quite correct about the shilling and two shilling pieces continuing in used post-decimalisation. Can't remember perzacly when they went out - I think it was before they introduced the new, smaller 5p and 10p coins, but I ain't sure.
The sixpence-piece continued after decimalisation for a while - probably until they withdrew the ½p coin (6d = 2½p)

The antipodes decimalised before we did, of course. Our decimalisation was (i think) in 1971 - might have been '72.

Bit late to the story, but in Oz it was 1966 - I remember this purely because my sister's claim to fame as a youngster was that she was born in the year of decimalisation.

14 February 1966 to be exact.