In 1971 the UK was thrown into confusion. The "straightforward" pounds, shillings and pence (£sd) was converted into "decimal". So instead of having a £ which was divisible by 2 and 3 and 5 it went down to being divisible by just 2 and 5. Calculation in dozens became very hard.

The pound had been made up of 20 shillings and each shilling was made up of 12 pence. If you go back far enough you would hear of farthings. These were quarter pennies and two made a halfpenny ¹

£sd

Why £sd? Well this is down to the Romans. Pound money has the same root as pound weight. Libra - the scales star sign is also from the same stable, metaphorically speaking, so we find pounds are written in shorthand as lb or £ ². The s of £sd is not simply shilling. That would be too easy. The old Romans paid their legions with salt. S represents saltam - we still use salary to talk about someone's earnings. And the d for pence? Well that is Roman again and stands for denarius a coin the Romans used and is referred to in the Bible as in the: "Should we pay taxes to Caesar?" "Tell me whose head is on the coin?" discussion³.

Talking £sd

The currency had its own set of language rules and they had probably taken a long time to develop. The slang words for £1 still exist such as quid but there were lots of other words for the subdivisions of a pound, which with decimalisation slowly began to disappear.

Farthing

Starting at the little end there was the farthing. The quarter penny. This ceased to be legal tender in the 1950s

Halfpenny

The halfpenny, often written ha'penny, was comparatively a big coin - about the size of a modern two pence coin. When talking prices something costing ten and a half pence would cost tenpence ha'penny.

A penny was always a penny and never a pence. This description came after decimalisation and was a result of the confusion of people not being allowed to use the word shilling.

Penny

Everything was "new pence" and people, in their confusion, slowly slid into calling a new penny a new pence. Remember, nobody ever said twelve pence before (other than in humour or error - the sort of thing a young child would say and cause people to smile) so all of the numbers of pence above eleven were totally alien. Saying 99 pence sounded ridiculous. Even in maths problems the teacher might say a boy had 35 "pennies," how much did he have? The answer was of course two and eleven⁴. The word "new" was the hook that people clung to. It meant that we could properly differentiate between real money (£sd) and the new fangled intruder - New Pence. Aside - The word "New" remained on the coins until 1982. A few 1983 2p coins accidentally had the word "New" on them when the word "Two" should have been used. ⁵

The shorthand for pounds and pence became £p so now the p did stand for penny. This also became adopted as the way of referring to the coins so a two pence piece is commonly referred to as a "two p," a five pence coin is a "five p" and so on.

Shilling

A shilling was commonly referred to as a bob. So two shillings would be referred to as two bob, except that two shillings was a comparatively modern invention being one tenth (decimal!) of a pound and so had to have a special name. The two shilling coin was officially a florin - but it was very rarely referred to as a florin. There was a 10 shilling note⁶ colloquially called a ten bob note.

Pounds

These remained the same - but people had difficulty believing it.

The coinage

Farthing, halfpenny, penny, threepence (pronounced thruppence the coin was called a "thruppenny bit" ⁷), sixpence (also called a tanner⁸), shilling, two shillings (Florin), Half Crown (Two shillings and six pence⁹), a crown (five shillings¹⁰).

The Guinea

Just to make everything easier we also had a Guinea. This was twenty one shillings, or a pound and a shilling. Guineas were what you had your bill calculated in if you went to a professional such as a lawyer. It basically inflated the bill by 5% without sounding as if they were doing it. So 20 guineas was actually £21.

Some examples

If you are thinking of writing pre 1971 dialogue for a play or film you may want to know what people said when referring to money. Here are some examples to get you started:

Example 1

Teacher to pupil, "Johnny, I have thirty pennies in my purse. How much do I have?"

"Two and six, miss."

"The pennies are very heavy to carry. What is the smallest number of coins I could change this into?"

"One, miss, a half crown."

Example 2

In an office, "And how much do you charge per hour?"

"Five..."

"Pounds?"

"No, guineas."

"Guineas? You fancy yourself a bit, don't you?"

Example 3

In a shop, "And how much are these?"

"They're on offer, madam. They're nine and elevenpence ha'penny."

"Couldn't you just say ten bob and have done with it?."

"Ha-ha! Madame is so drole."

Example 4

Teacher to pupil, "Johnny, one egg is tuppence how much for a dozen eggs?"

"Easy! Two bob, miss."