I loved the old money and my weekly half-crown pocket money - a big heavy silver coin that almost seemed too perfect to spend. In those days some of the coins, and the florins and shillings had real silver in them and so they wore down and became quite smooth. It was comforting to see the different designs and to trace the kings and queens - Victoria, Edward, George, George again and then Elizabeth.
The money was very heavy of course and the poor conductors on the buses used to carry a weighty satchel full of 'coppers.' I used to take the bus from the station to get me to school and I would ask for 'a penny-halfpenny half' - in those days children used to get half-fare until the age of fourteen. The farthing (quarter penny) had gone by the time I started to spend money - as had the silver threepenny bit - but there were still plenty about. I remember in Glasgow offering two farthings for a half-penny when we were short of change to buy some potato scones, but the shop woman wouldn't accept them. They had ceased to be legal tender as had the silver threepennies some time before. So we had the 12 sided yellow coin with daisies on it, or later a portcullis, instead.
I lived near a railway and we loved putting these old coins on the line and letting the massive steam locomotives run over them so that they were flattened and rolled out like pastry. Pennies were all right but the railwaymen used to get very cross with us for trying to flatten threepenny bits. (I don't know why they were called 'bits,' nothing else was - except, I suppose, in America where they talked about cheap things as being 'two-bit;' but I never knew what that meant either) Apparently threepenny bits damaged the locomotive's 'tyres.' Now I didn't know that a locomotive had tyres but I suppose it is logical. They must wear and if you didn't take the outside of the wheel off occasionally and replace it with a new one then the engine would be running on the spokes of its wheels. Or so anyway I reasoned. So we didn't put threepenny bits on the line and we were too poor to afford to waste silver coins in this way.
Bank notes were far bigger than they are today. They really were bank notes then and you felt proud to own one. A pound note was the size of a business envelope and the five pound note the size of a small flag. Neither carried the Queen's head (or even the King's head when the King was alive. He smoked heavily and died of cancer but it didn't stop me or anyone else smoking when I was young. Even my great aunt smoked occasionally, insisting on a cigarette called 'Passing Clouds' - made by Wills, I think, like the Woodbines, whereas my step-mother, who didn't like smoking but did so to be fashionable, smoked du Maurier after the novelist, but only at parties. My father smoked cheroots, but not very often. My aunt made me buy him a packet every Christmas. They sounded very sophisticated. But I didn't smoke any of these when I grew up. I think they had gone out of fashion by then, like the money).
You could buy a great many cheroots for £5 in those days but the Bank of England dispensed with the old £5 note because it was so easy to forge, even with all its lovely black swirly writing which made it look more like a letter or contract than a banknote. Something big, blue and square with a picture of Britannia took its place. And the £1 note was similar but in green and then there was a ten shilling note (that was half a pound) in a reddish-brown sort of colour. The notes became smaller as the money lost its value and the design changed. That's when they put the Queen's head on it - as if that might stop the money losing its value. Then the notes disappeared altogether. First the ten shillings and then the pound and today's five pound note will disappear very soon as well I imagine.
Money has lost a lot of value. When I first went to France more than 50 years ago you could get 14 francs to the pound. That would be more than 2 euros. You could get 10 deutsche marks to the pound - that would be about 5 euros and you could get 2 dollars and 80 cents if you wanted American money. I know this figure because it was fixed. Fixed that is until the pound was devalued and the figure became 2 dollars 40 cents.
I still have a collection of the old money and some of the old notes and I suppose everyone thinks wistfully of the pounds shillings and pence that we used to think so logical and which so bemused visitors from overseas. We had a lot of visitors when I was young and I felt so sad for them when a shopkeeper would demand 'three and sevenpence ha'penny' They hadn't a clue what this meant and would just hand over a note or a purse full of change and invite the shopkeeper to take whatever she wanted. So in some ways things have improved. Though the money isn't what it used to be. In any way at all.
6 comments:
The intricacies of British money enthralled me as a child reading British children's books. Our money was so boring - although not half as boring as American money. Ours was coloured while theirs was all green.
Two bits - that's 25 cents or a quarter of a dollar.
Fennie, I really loved reading this post.
Coin of the realm is fascinating to me as its physical format changes over the decades.
I have some old American coins, but my mom is the true coin collector. I can only imagine what she's got in some folders. I remember when our "silver dollar" was the elegant Christmas gift/tip to the boy that delivered the daily papers. Somewhere around here, I have a beautiful, tiny gold dollar.
And, from my first visits to the UK, I have some lovely anachronisms, including those tiny half pennies. Only this year, I realized that I had some 20 pound notes that were past their prime of exchange, and quickly took them to a local bank for some current currency.
I guess that I have always love the artistry involved in creating coins and notes, and found it interesting to see how styles change over the years.
Thank you again for writing about this topic. xo
I really enjoyed reading this post, Fennie.
One of my favourite scenes in the Merchant-Ivory version of A Room with a View is where Charlotte Lucas visits the Honeychurch family at Windy Corner and arrives without enough change to pay the cab driver. It's fascinating, listening to them all discussing the old money, but always leaves me in as much of a muddle about it as it does "poor Charlotte".
I don't have any old English money but I do keep two schnaps glasses full of coins and notes from countries visited, which has become more precious to me since the introduction of the euro and the phasing out of lire, deutschmark and other currencies.
I was just starting school when the new money came in I still remember in maths it was all about 'one new penny'...and it was a while until I realised why it was 'new'. Love the image of you laying coins on the railway line.
I'm not sure about the wheels of the locomotive, but I tut-tutted at the thought of you risking life and limb to flatten a threepenny bit!
You do write well - and such an original topic.
I remember the first time I went abroad, alone. That was in England. I was 13 years old. The money then, in 1953, was the type you mention. It was so hard for me to understand. But by the time I went to college in England I was quite used to it. I remember the large notes and still have some shillings in a box. I thought England was such a peculiar country and I fell in love with it.
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