15 thoughts on ““Betcher a Tanner!…”: Understanding Pre-Decimal British Currency

  1. Jason S. Ganz says:

    VERY well researched, correct lexicography for a financial dictionary, and a short, but very enjoyable read. LSD wasn’t even made as lysergic acid diethyalmide until 1938.

    Jason

     
  2. Tony Blowes says:

    The symbol -/2 does this mean two pence (tuppence)
    Would love to know
    Tony

     
    • scheong says:

      Hi Tony,
      Currency was expressed as the following (‘L’ used for the pound sign, since I don’t have one):

      L2 6s 3d = Two pounds, six shillings & thripence.
      4/2 = Four shillings & tuppence.
      5/- = Five shillings (no pence).
      3s 6d = Three shillings and sixpence.

      To my knowledge, “-/2” was not a recognised way of writing currency. It would’ve been written as “2d”, for “two pennies” or “tuppence”.

      You did occasionally have denominations written as: “1/2d” or “1/4d”. These were for the ha’penny (half-penny) and the farthing (quarter-penny) respectively.

       
  3. Matt says:

    Anyone who found it confusing (apart from tourists, maybe) must have been a bit of a dullard. The system is no different to feet and inches. So easy even the village idiot could use it with no probs.

     
  4. Beverly says:

    just 2 things to comment on……………… I was always led to believe that a Guinea was in fact £1.1s is this incorrect?
    AND ………………2/- is the way to write 2 shillings so maybe Tony just got it back to front?!

     
    • scheong says:

      Hi Beverly, thanks for reading. I always read that a Guinea was a pound sterling, but I might be wrong. I’m not sure. All my research told me as much.

      Tony was asking how two pennies (“tuppence”) was expressed. As far as I know, pence, in the absence of all other denominations, was just expressed as ‘d’. So tuppence was ‘2d’, sixpence was ‘6d’ etc.

       
  5. Nobby says:

    Brings back some memories, although I remember the three pence coin being called a Threepenny bit. Plus, I believe the change to decimal was overnight and retailers rounded up all the prices causing a bit of an outrage at the time, short lived however.

     
    • scheong says:

      Hi Nobby,

      I’ve heard of both Thripence AND threepenny bit as well, but thripence seemed to be more common, so I included that one instead of the other.

       
  6. Tony Dean says:

    The Guinea was originally a One Pound gold coin worth 20 shillings silver (struck from gold mined in New Guinea), but with relative market fluctuations the price of gold in it went up to 21 shillings worth of silver – thus in the early 19th century it was replaced by a smaller gold “Sovereign” of 20 shillings. The older larger Guineas circulated for a long while alongside the slightly smaller Sovereigns. All the gold disappeared during the Great War when notes replaced higher value transactions – however, the Professions always had charged their fees in Guineas rather than Pounds (sovereigns) and continued to do so. Snobby or pretentious shops, apeing the professions, often advertised their prices in Guineas as an oblique way of saying to the masses that their custom was not welcome – “well-to-do only please!” This unbelievable practice continued into my youth in the 1960s, until swept away by the social revolution (and pending currency reform) of that decade!
    Does anyone know the origin of calling a sixpence piece a “Tanner”? Was it the price one paid a tanner to do some work perhaps in medieval times? Who knows?

     
  7. Simon says:

    Apart from the original term describing the old gold Guinea piece, the term “Guinea” came to mean one pound plus one shilling,
    often used as a bargaining trick to ‘seal the deal’

     
  8. J thornley says:

    I would be interested to find out the mean of “tanner” can you help? please.

     
  9. Jackie Carter says:

    A threepenny bit was called a joey,a guinea was £1 and 1 shilling,as Tony said it was originally £1 but very quickly became £1.1s.od,…..in the sixtys it was still fashionable for thing to be priced in guineas…very posh !

     
  10. Jim McHugh says:

    No such word as thripence – it was thrupence, or thrupenny bit.

     

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