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you still have those? we just usually listen to CD's...
formerly known as etaoin...
OP
the d is converted to p. Þ Thanks, you-all--I have really enjoyed this!
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!
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
http://www.gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/units/money.htm
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)
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.
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