The money issue

[mightymads]

I can’t recommend enough The Victorian House by Judith Flanders. Among the abundance of material on various topics of everyday life, it includes a brief note on the currency system of the time. I researched a bit more for this post.

Prior to the current system we have been using since 1971, the money used by the Victorians had been kept much the same for around 300 years and was built upon a system that has been in existence for over 1000 years. Decimalisation of British currency had been a hot topic for over a century, but in the 1960’s an enquiry was launched to further examine it. In 1966 it was announced that the old system of money should be decimalised and in 1967 it was passed into law.

In the Victorian Era and prior to decimalisation the pound sterling was divided into 20 shillings, with each shilling further divided using 12 pennies.

From 1817 the Victorian coins were minted using Gold and Silver. The gold coins were worth £1 and ten shillings and were known as “Sovereigns” and “Half Sovereigns”. 5s was called a “Crown” and made of silver. A full shilling, sixpence, threepence and fourpence were also minted as a silver coin. Lesser valued coins were made of Bronze from 1860, previously from copper which included the penny, halfpenny also known as a “ha’penny”, farthing and a quarter of a penny.

Banknotes were also used in the Victorian times alongside the coinage. By 1853 the banknotes were also featuring printed signatures which instilled more confidence in their use. (victorians.co.uk)

Pounds, shillings and pence were the divisions of the currency, with pounds represented by the £ symbol, shillings as ‘s.’ and pence as ‘d.’ (from the Latin denarius).

‘One pound, one shilling and one penny’ was written as ‘£ 1.1.1’. ‘One shilling and sixpence’ was referred to in speech as ‘One and six’ and written ‘1/6’. One shilling was made up of twelve pence; one pound of twenty shillings, i.e. 240 pence.


Pennies

A guinea was a coin to the value of £1.1.0. It was not circulated after 1813, although the term remained (and tended to be reserved for luxury goods).

A sovereign was a 20-shilling coin, a half-sovereign a 10-shilling coin.


Sovereigns

A crown was 5 shillings, half a crown 2/6, and the remaining coins were a florin (2 shillings), sixpence, a groat (four pence), a threepenny bit (pronounced ‘thrup’ny bit’), twopence (pronounced tuppence), a penny, a halfpenny (pronounced hayp’ny), a farthing (a quarter of a penny) and a half a farthing (an eighth of a penny).


Crowns

Pictures from katetattersall.com

Comments

[rachelindeed]

Oh, this is really helpful! I recognize references to money in Victorian literature but it all just blurs together for me and I tend to guess at whether it's a lot or a little amount just based on context. But it's nice to finally know that a crown is less than a sovereign!

Also, I now have "Feed the Birds" from Mary Poppins stuck in my head. "Feed the birds, a tuppence a bag; tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag!"

[mightymads]

I’m very glad you find it helpful! Same with me: I tend to get lost in that currency system, so this post is a quick cheat sheet for me also ;)

[senmut]

I know that growing up in it would have made it make more sense to a person. I'll definitely have to refer back here!

[smallhobbit]

Believe me, decimalisation didn't half make calculations easier ;)

[mightymads]

I can testify, though, that for a foreigner it’s an absolute puzzle :D