Show me the money!

I confess that the new coinage was not very thrilling. Our coins were substantial and had both "character" and history. The new coins were tiny by comparison and uninspired in design. But looking recently at my collection of pre-decimal coins set me thinking about how we would now view returning to pre-decimal days. The thought was not attractive! The old coinage was complicated, heavy and much of it was old and badly worn. But first, a short tutorial.

Before decimalisation, the pound was made up of 20 shillings, each of which was worth 12 pence, resulting in 240 pence to the pound. The coinage, shown above, consisted of almost arbitrary multiples of the penny.

The penny itself was not the smallest value coin. There were halfpennies and (until 1961 when it ceased to be legal tender) farthings (one quarter of a penny). Indeed, up to 1869 there were also half-farthings.

These coins were commonly referred to as "coppers" but since 1860 they had actually been minted from more robust bronze.

Moving upwards, the coins were minted in silver. The oddity is the threepenny coin. Up to 1936 this was a silver coin, but it was replaced by larger coin made of nickel-brass. In part, this seems to have been in response to complaints that the silver coin was "fiddly" to handle (much as the decimal halfpenny and 5p coin were criticised). The new coin was innovative in being the first multi-sided coin in the British coinage. Silver sixpences continued, however, to be produced up to 1945. Perhaps the most unusual role of the silver threepence was as a "prize" baked into Christmas puddings.

The sixpence and shilling are unremarkable except that the former was commonly called a "tanner" (possibly after John Sigismund Tanner (1705–75), a former Chief Engraver of The Royal Mint who designed a sixpence during the reign of George II) and the latter a "bob" (for reasons lost in history).

The next denomination, the florin, is more interesting. Worth two shillings (24 pence or 1/10 of a pound) it reflected tentative efforts to introduce a decimal coinage in 1849. The efforts failed, but the coin, which took its name from a gold coin minted in Florence in 1252, survived.

The top value coin in general use was the halfcrown, worth 30 pence, two and a half shillings, or 1/12 of a pound. This was often called "half a dollar", a nickname which comes from the use of Spanish dollars during the Napoleonic wars. These were valued at 5 shillings and being worth half of this, were "half a dollar".

Halfcrown implies a crown and there is such a coin. However, since 1902 it has only been struck as a commemorative coin rather than for day-to-day use.

These higher denomination coins were commonly referred to as "silver" but unlike "coppers" they were actually struck from 92.5% pure silver. This was reduced in 1920 to 50% silver and finally in 1947 replaced by cupro-nickel. On the verge of decimalisation, the pre-1947 silver coins were worth more for the metal from which they were made than the value they represented and many were sold to bullion dealers by enterprising individuals (myself included!) for a premium price.

Prices were shown in pounds shillings and pence (referred to as LSD - from the Latin designations librae, solidi, and denarii - and written as either £2 15s 6d or more simply as £2-15-6. Prices under £1 would usually be shown as 2/6 (two shillings and sixpence) which would be spoken as "two and six".

Complicated? I'll Say!

The final sentence above hints at the complications that a currency based on multiples of 12 and 20 brings about. Consider adding:

£7 - 14 - 11
£1 - 11 - 9

We have to add the pence (11+9=20) and express in shillings and pence (1s 8d). Write down the pence and carry the shilling, which we have to add to the sum of the shillings (14+11+1=26) and express this as pounds and shillings (£1 - 6s). Write down the shillings and carry the pound which is added to the sum of the pounds (7+1+1=9) producing a total of £9 - 6 - 8. Subtraction and division are even more mind-bending!

And all of this without a pocket calculator - how did we manage?

Big and Heavy

Pre-decimal coinage was considerably larger than its replacement. The halfcrown was 32.3mm in diameter and the penny, worth just 1/30th of the halfcrown, barely smaller at 30.8mm. When it comes to weight, however, this was seriously heavy money, perhaps best illustrated by the weight of £1 in pennies - an impressive 2.268 kg - almost exactly 5 pounds in weight. By comparison, £1 in decimal pence weighs a mere 356gms or about 3/4lb. No wonder trouser pockets seemed to be perpetually developing holes.

Worn-out!

The coinage had not been significantly re-designed since 1860 and even by 1971, you would commonly receive Victorian coins in your change. Not infrequently, particularly for the bronze coins, you would receive coins over 100 years old. That is, if you could read the date. The illustration below shows five Victorian pennies in increasingly worn condition. These coins have, overall, lost around 10% of their original weight.

Perhaps the coinage was a metaphor for post-war British manufacturing  industry, much of which had suffered from a chronic lack of investment.

Nostalgia?

The pre-decimal coinage was (in my personal opinion) far more interesting, varied and historically rooted than what has followed, but would I want to return to it? Absolutely not! For as long as we still use coins (and I confess that for me that is now pretty infrequent) I'll stick with a coinage which is light and compact and which I can handle with simple (decimal) mental arithmetic.