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Pre-decimalisation money

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Well inflation has caused the smaller new coins to be worthless, and even here in Greece supermarkets round amounts up or down to the nearest 5 cents when paying your bill and have done for 15 years at least.

Maurice :cool:
 
Last week a ten shilling note was found in some old possessions. It's the first time I have actually handled a note from before decimalisation.

Ok, that's nothing to write home about (or to the forum!), but it got me thinking about the money that my ancestors would have been using.

Obviously I could 'search engine' the subject, but it's much more interesting asking the forum where they recommend that I look to find the history of money.

So if anyone could make any suggestions I would appreciate it.
Well just to add my two penorth LOL, pre decimalisation money amounts were written down as £, S, D, IE £2/19/11 or even 59/11d .......... £2.0.0 + 19/- + 11d = £2/19/11. I do hope I have got this right, memory not as good as it was.
 
The question in post#5
Calculate how to it share out £17pounds, 11shillings, and six and half pence between 3 people
I use to calculate this type of question at school with no problems ... but now ...

Here goes ...
Divide £17 - 11s - 6½d by 3

1) Divide the £17 by 3 = 5 and £2 remaining

2) At 20s in a £ = 40s remaining

4) Add 40s to the 11s = 51s

5) Divide 51s by 3 = 17s

6) Divide 6d by 3 = 2d

So each person has £5 - 17s - 2d

½d left over so what to do with it ?

I will check a bit later to see if this is the right answer ... brain ache at the moment ... :rolleyes:
 
As a former maths teacher I couldn't have put it better. Not that I ever had to teach it - decimalisation came in just before I left school and about 5 years before I started teaching.
Of course you couldn't do that type of calculation on a normal calculator. :D
 
Now that Boris has got us out of the Eu (well almost) wouldn`t it be nice if he got rid of decimal money & reverted back to the old pounds shillings & pence. It would be nice but rather chaotic! I remember when they brought out the gold looking £ coin. My late mother in law gave me a pound coin & saying, "here's a gold sovereign for you son". It wasn`t just old people who found the new decimal coins confusing, i think quite a few of us did! & as for metric, i`m still confused.
 
Now that Boris has got us out of the Eu (well almost) wouldn`t it be nice if he got rid of decimal money & reverted back to the old pounds shillings & pence. It would be nice but rather chaotic! I remember when they brought out the gold looking £ coin. My late mother in law gave me a pound coin & saying, "here's a gold sovereign for you son". It wasn`t just old people who found the new decimal coins confusing, i think quite a few of us did! & as for metric, i`m still confused.
me also smudge. 1580805235226.png1580805436579.pngthey might bring out homer dosh for us
 
As a former maths teacher I couldn't have put it better. Not that I ever had to teach it - decimalisation came in just before I left school and about 5 years before I started teaching.
Of course you couldn't do that type of calculation on a normal calculator. :D
I noticed my grandson adding up to the "base 3", just as an exercise, it dawned on me that this type of thing was what we did when we added up £sd and yards, feet and inches, but with a purpose. I'm sure Janice as a maths teacher can explain better what I am trying to say. I have somewhere a bill from early decimal days that had been manually converted to decimal, the shop keeper worked to three places of decimals, it looks quite quaint.
 
When left the army, in '68, I started work on the buses. I got into a hell of a mess with the money, I had been in Germany for three years and was used to metric currency so trying to get back to the medieval LSD was almost impossible.
 
A ten shilling note (ten bob note) was my favourite when I was young and we were all familiar with the following terms.
ha'penny, tuppence, thruppence, a tanner, a bob, two bob, half a crown, ten bob note and in the 'posh' shops guineas.
We also had to be 'brainier' to deal with it ... try the following ...
Calculate how to it share out £17pounds, 11shillings, and six and half pennies between 3 people - long division in old money.
I could do it (without calculators) when I was young. :)

An old post below


See the following
£5.17.2d (Forget the halfpenny), does anyone remember when a loaf of bread was fourpence farthing? And spellcheck has just highlighted four pence. My father (the one who was always right) was an accountant and would take the fifties/sixties equivalent of a spread sheet and literally run his pencil down the amounts adding them as he went and when he did the cross check he always balanced. I do not know how he could add the whole amounts, while the rest of us added the pennies, and carried forward, then the shillings, and carried forward etc,etc. I remember that in 1953, if you had two halfcrowns (or five shillings) left over on a Friday, it was enough for five ciggies a trip to a fleapit and half a pint. I only once had a Crown coin and had great difficulty spending it as shops and buses did not like them. Dad once came home with a white five pound note.
Bob
 
Around 1900 a housewife on a meagre housekeeping budget could go to buy some butter in the Bull Ring and one market stall was selling it at
7oz for 2/11d
but another market stall was selling at
½lb for fourpence farthing an ounce.

She would have loved decimalisation to help her make best buy... :)
ps. the first stall is charging 5d per ounce so the second is best a 4¼d per ounce, provided the butter quality is the same.
 
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Bob,You should have tried working behind the bar of the Aston Villa Supp Club on a match day in the 60-70s,It was chaotic trying to add up all the pints.We had Alist by the side of the till. 1-10 pints:yum:yum
 
Long after the decimal currency came in one of my old 'Forester' customers asked me what he could do with some old pound notes he had that he'd 'put away and forgotten about'
I took them to my bank and changed them for him, all £250 worth. :), even now my memory isn't so bad I could forget a wad of cash tucked away.
 
I used to work for a book publishers and in the early 2000's an elderly gentleman who had been living in Spain for quite a long time wrote in to ask if we could send him one of our books - that was all fine but he enclosed an old 10/- note in payment :laughing:
I think we sent him out one of the office copies as it would have been too much trouble to explain!
 
Long after the decimal currency came in one of my old 'Forester' customers asked me what he could do with some old pound notes he had that he'd 'put away and forgotten about'
I took them to my bank and changed them for him, all £250 worth. :), even now my memory isn't so bad I could forget a wad of cash tucked away.

It could be worse.

Somebody here left £20,000 in a safe that was sent away for scrap

From BBC web site

 
I noticed my grandson adding up to the "base 3", just as an exercise, it dawned on me that this type of thing was what we did when we added up £sd and yards, feet and inches, but with a purpose. I'm sure Janice as a maths teacher can explain better what I am trying to say. I have somewhere a bill from early decimal days that had been manually converted to decimal, the shop keeper worked to three places of decimals, it looks quite quaint.
There were quite a few lads from my youth who, if asked to do a maths problem at school struggled to do it either through inability or lack of interest but when asked to work out their winnings on a 5/- each way 3 horse accumalator bet, could give the correct answer in seconds!
 
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