British Money

Beats me! :wink:

It depends on the era.

Since 1975, British coinage is "metric". One pound equals 100 pence; one shilling is now the name of a coin (not sure if 5 or 10 pence)
A British friend (who told me how much he weighed in "stones", never on pounds or kilos) said the change was legal robbery.

Before that, 1 shilling was 12 pence; 5 shillings was one crown. So one crown was 60 pence; half-crown, 30 pence. 240 pence (20 shillings or 4 crowns) made a pound.
One guinea was, if I recall correctly, 252 pence. That is, one pound +one shilling. So, half-guinea was 126 pence.

If you ask me how I learned that, those were calculations I had to make to understand Karl Marx's examples in "Das Kapital".

Thank you

I had no idea the Brits had gone metric with money. I'm reading a novel about post war England called "I capture the castle" by Dodi Smith. I have always been mystyfied by the money system in the British Isles, this explanation helps a lot.

I find it interesting the Ameircans and British still haven't converted to the metric system as a whole. I say that as a fairly common canadian who still uses both systems for this or that depending on what I'm measuring.
Ceili

Hi ceili,

fbaezer is pretty well spot on, to be exact it went like this:

farthing = ¼ of a penny
halfpenny = ½ of a penny
Penny
Threepenny bit = 3 pence
sixpence = six pence (known as a "tanner"
shilling = 12pence ( ashilling was known as a "bob"
florin = two shillings ( two bob)
½ crown = two shillings and sixpence known as "half a dollar"
crown five shillings ( known as "a dollar")

ten bob note = ten shillings
pound note = 20 shillings or 240 pence


The reason that five shillings was known as a dollar was that at the time (1950s) or thereabouts, there were four american dollars to a pound sterling.

A typical maths question for a ten year old in the 1950s would be this simple addition:

£ s d
1 10 6
2 11 4
3 16 9

£ s d
7 18 7 answer (seven pounds eighteen shillings and sevenpence

Long division was a ******* nightmare.

Ceili, have a gander at this:



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

I remember it well - and mental arithmetic with sums like that as well! - maths never was my 'thing'

What is a quid then? 5£ maybe???

Auughhhh! I thought we had it tough in school, we changed from learning the imperial system to metric smack dab in the middle of my education.

An aside: weight - is a stone = 14 lbs.
Verra confusing this whole conversion thang.
Thanks,
Ceili

Ok... read the article, 1 pound = 1 quid I get it, nicknames for money.
We have that here in Canada too. We call the One dollar coin a loonie because it has a Loon on it. So the two dollar coin is called, yup, you got it the.......twoonie.
Ceili

Hurrah for the Loonie-Toonie Store in Vancouver!