Remembering Old Money By Ted Bruning


Brish, and born in the 1950s or earlier? Congratulaons! You’re a genius at mental arithmec! There are no studies, surveys or stascs to prove this, but it stands to reason: you needed a brain from IBM just to work out your change!


Here’s a simple test for anyone under 50. On Friday you go out with £1.17.4. Harry buys a pint of mild for Alf at 1s 2d, a bole of sweet stout for Mabel at 10½d, a pint of bier for you at 1s 5d, a packet of crisps at 3d and a dark rum for himself at 1s 8d. Later, it’s your round and the same again but no crisps and Harry has a double. Later sll, the fish man comes and you have a poke of shrimps at 4d; then you pay 2d for a War Cry although you never actually read it. At chucking out me you buy a bole of Guinness to take home, 1s 9d (1d back on the bole). So, have you got enough le over to see Saints at home tomorrow and buy a pie and a Bovril at the ground?


And that’s why we had decimalisaon.


People think, wrongly, that Britain was decimalised on April 15th 1971, or D‐Day as the press dubbed it. The real D‐Day was March 1st 1966 when the Chancellor, Jim Callaghan, officially announced that the Government had accepted the report of a commiee of enquiry (now more than two years old) and that a currency that was, in essence, more than 1,200 years old would be scrapped in five years me.


The announcement marked the end of a long, slow march towards decimalisaon. When the Decimal Associaon was founded in 1841 many people saw it as another manifestaon of that extreme raonalism that demanded a 13‐month year and one universal language. But it at least succeeded in geng a new coin minted from


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1849 onwards: the florin, worth two shillings (10 to the £). The florin, though, failed to alter our percepon of the pound and shilling as the base units of currency. We were used to working with bases 12 and 20, and that’s why Britain was so good at arithmec. (The above example is simple subtracon: imagine you were a wages clerk making up weekly pay‐packets for 100‐odd workers all of whom worked different hours at different rates!)


Another reason why the old money had to go was that it was so BIG! Have you ever seen it? You needed a gusset sewn into your change pocket for all those farthings, halfpennies, cartwheel pennies, 12‐sided threepenny bits, tanners, bobs, florins and half‐crowns otherwise it would wear a hole in it in days.


Sll, there was a lot of resistance; and only when South Africa and Australia took the lead did Harold McMillan authorise the commiee of enquiry in 1961. Once Mr Callaghan had made the formal announcement, though, things moved quickly. The Decimal Coinage Act and the Decimal Currency Board came in 1969 along with the 50p piece. The new 5p and 10p came in 1970 and were the same size as the shilling and florin they eventually replaced. The only real change on D‐Day itself was the introducon of the new 1/2p, 1p and 2p, although even then the old coppers remained in circulaon unl August.


Was it worth it? A lot of people struggled, thinking that 6p was the same as 6d when of course it was closer to 1s 2½d; but my 23‐year‐ old daughter is astonished and appalled that we put up with a system that mixed not only base 12 and base 20 but also fracons of the basic unit for so long. Sll, we were brilliant at mental arithmec!


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