Currency in Britain, 1650s

My Nan (born Lancashire, 1888, died London 1974), used to call a threepence piece a joey.

Thruppeny Joey.




I've heard that from others as well.

From an article in The Bath Chronicle....

"The penny dates back around 1400 years, mentioned in the laws of King Ine of Wessex (688-726). King Offa of Mercia introduced silver penny coins weighing 1/240 of a pound in weight, copying the denier from Charlemagne's empire. In about 735, Charlemagne's father – who had the amazing name Pepin the Short – introduced a system based on a pound of silver (livre tournois), divided into 20 solidi, each of which was worth 12 deniers, so there were 240 deniers to a pound of silver. This is the origin of the old expression LSD for our currency – the pound sign (£) is derived from a fancy gothic capital letter L, the "/" used to show shillings evolved from the old-fashioned "long s" which looks like an f, and pennies were represented by the letter d. Two shillings and 6 pence were written as 2/6d."


http://www.bathchronicle.co.uk/Remembering-days-joey-tanner-thrupenny-bit/story-11327700-detail/story.html

Joey? (I thought that was baby kangaroo.)
je ne vous comprends pas

In German (mainly in Germany and Austria) we had had various terms from the past used for the current money ... before we got the Euro. Archaisms nowadays, but unknown to the younger generation even in the 80's/90's of last century.

I've been to England for the first time in 1963, as a fourteen year old. I had had no difficulties with the different money system (we've learnt that in school). But I was astonished that a Florin was two bob

Double n in thruppenny. Oops.

Also, there seemed to be two ways to pronounce thruppence.

One with the proper u sound, as in tub.
The other with a short oo sound, as in hood.

I've often heard it pronounced like "thrippence".
A thrippeny bit.

Riches almost beyond the dreams of avarice, to a child in the '40s.