How did it work, how could you workout what change to give if somebody bought something from you?
We actually inherited the system from the ancient Romans - this way of counting money was around for thousands of years.
People just remembered how many pence were in a shilling, and how many shillings were in a pound because they used the system every day.
The answer is this: practice makes perfect.
It's not actually that hard either, with 12 pence to the shilling, dividing that up, or subtracting is super easy. Same with 20 shillings to the pound. Both 12 and 20 are very easy numbers to add, subtract, divide and multiply. In many ways easier than 100.
It was even reflected in the symbols for pounds, shillings and pence, £, s and d, from the Latin libri, solidi and denarii, with the pound sign being a struck-through “L”.
This is also why English systems of measure are still widely used even into the age of metrication. We only really need to remember a handful of fairly simple conversion factors (12 inches to a foot, 16 ounces to a pound, etc). Most of the really nasty conversion factors you hear about are for conversions that we rarely actually need to do.
12 inches to a foot, 3 foot to a yard, 2 yards to a fathom, 11 fathoms to a Gunther's chain, 10 Gunther's chains to a furlong, 8 furlongs to a mile. Easy
Also 100 fathoms to a cable and 10 cables to a nautical mile
Yeah, but most of those are the "nasty" conversions. Most of the time it's just going to be 12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard then jumping to either 5280 feet or 1760 yards to a mile, skipping fathoms, Gunther's chains and furlongs. And if you're going to list the ones in the middle you gotta do the endcaps: 3 barleycorns to an inch, 3 miles to a league - though this in particular was wildly inconsistent, 3 miles to a league was the usual English definition. And of course at sea a league was 3 nautical miles instead, because why not.
It's mass and volume that are fucked because they diverged after the American Revolution. Mass is derived from the Roman uncia, almost identical to the modern ounce, which was one twelfth of a libra, a Roman pound. In the British system there are 16 ounces to a pound, 14 pounds to a stone, 8 stone to a hundredweight and 20 hundredweight to a ton. The stone went out of style with the Americans and so the hundredweight being 112 pounds didn't sit right, so they ditched the stone entirely and redefined the hundredweight to 100 pounds and kept the ton at 20 hundredweight. So a British ton is 2240 pounds and an American ton is 2000 pounds. To make matters worse after the metric system was invented someone realized that 1000 kilograms was about 2205 pounds and instead of calling it the rational name of a megagram (the mega- prefix was only added to SI in 1873) that jackass decided to call it a metric tonne. So now there's three units pronounced "ton" that are all different from each other.
Then there's volume. Volume is a nightmare. Because originally, a gallon was different depending on what you were measuring - an ale gallon was different from a wine gallon was different from a beer gallon. The Brits standardized the gallon in 1824, defining it as the volume of 10 pounds of water at 62°F - I wonder where they got the idea? This works out to roughly 4.54 litres - they tweaked the definition in later years, which altered the gallon at less significant digits. Each British gallon is equal to four quarts, each equal to two pints, each equal to four gills, each equal to five ounces - fluid ounces, that is. In the imperial system, the density of water is 1.0022 ounces per ounce at 4°C.
The Americans weren't part of that standardization, so they just picked a gallon and ran with it - in this case, Queen Anne's wine gallon, defined as the volume of a cylinder 7 inches in diameter and 6 inches in height if you approximate pi as 22/7 (no, seriously). This ends up being exactly 231 cubic inches, or approximately 3.79 litres. Each American gallon is equal to four quarts, each equal to two pints, each equal to two cups, each equal to two gills, each equal to four ounces. In an interesting coincidence, the American and British ounces only end up differing by about 1.15 mL, with the American ounce being about 29.57 mL and a British ounce being 28.41 mL On the flipside, a British pint is 20 ounces rather than the American 16. In US customary units, the density of water is 1.0432 ounces per ounce at 4°C.
Saved for reference.
Also, the physics teacher in me is amused at how "ounce per ounce" is a thing, and it's value isn't one.
Probably borrowed it from the metric system - 1 kg is the mass of 1 liter of water. The temperture factor matters because water expands with temperautre (the minimum volume being a about 4¨C)
It's all crystal clear to me now
You missed rods ¼ of a chain, or 16½ feet.
Allotments are still measured in rods or poles in the UK. Most allotments are 5 poles / rods, which is 125 sq meters or 25m ( about 5 rods) by 5m ( 1 rod).
Ah, the old "rod, pole or perch"?
Nobody uses most of those is the point. If i get around to writing novels in my Six Worlds setting, they are a set of overlapping length measures, falling into 3 or 4 separate systems, each one hexal. Six seeds to a n inch, six inches to a push, 6 pushes to a yard. 6 barleycorns to a thumb, 6 thumbs to a foot, six feet to a fathom. Etc
I think it was rare, the thing these days is that a lot of those conversions are done in school in science in a way that just wouldn't occur in Victorian times or prior. I can't imagine foot lbs coming up in education 100 years ago, newton meters certainly do now.
I can't imagine foot lbs coming up in education 100 years ago
It did and still does in parts of engineering in the US. The slightly confusing part is that "pound" can be a unit of mass or force, depending on the context.
I don't think any imperial electrical units ever took off, though, and they also have a lack of units for dealing with extremely large or small quantities.
Force was always measured in foot-pounds so science classes taught it as a measure of work
We actually inherited the system from the ancient Romans - this way of counting money was around for thousands of years.
It comes from the Carolingian monetary reforms of the late 8th century.
It does - and was common across Europe. The tricky part is that actual currencies in use diverged, so by later medieval times they kept records in notional currencies (eg livres tournois in France - a 'pound' that had no coin) and converted as needed.
Worth noting here the basics in dividers/prime factors;
10 has two(we are ignoring 1 as everything divides by 1 and 1 isnt a prime) - {2,5} so it divides by [1,2,5,10] - four things.
12 has three - {2,2,3} - so it divides by by [1,2,3,4,6,12] - six things.
20 has three also {2,2,5} - so it divides by [1,2,4,5,10,20] - six things also.
Using things based in 12s or 20s are therefore 'more' subdivisible than something based in 10s.
However given we use a base-10 numerical digit system(the hindu-arabic numerals fibbonacci brought over ie [0-9] ) we sorta moved over to a metric system with time based around 10s presumable because it's a quicker scaling. To multiply or divude by 10 you just add a zero/jump the decimal point left and right. It's easier going from 1 to 10 to 100 to 1000 than it is going from 1 to 12 to 144 to 1728 etcetera.
Using 10s just scales easier/better as we need bigger and bigger things even though 10 was less divisible than 12 or 20 etc. You could argue the 20 system kinda half works with the 10 system though given 10 is a divisor of 20(tho going 1 to 20 to 400 to 8000 also gets clunky and almost scales TOO much too soon).
I think something like that, anyway. I speculated a lot of this.
So I guess all of our measurement systems would have turned out better if we'd adopted a base-12 numerical digit system rather than base-10!
A number of old systems were actually base-12 systems, iirc. Our timekeeping is still in 12s too, for example.
You could actually also count 12 on just your four fingers - count the knuckles. Then you can use the other hand to count the multiples of 12 you have so far up to 48 or 60. Maybe you could even do it up to 144 but I dunno if people ever did that.
Both 12 and 100 divide in half twice before you get to odd numbers.
Probably better to compare 10 and 12 or 100 and 144.
12 divides in half twice before an odd(6,3) as does 20(10,5) whereas 10 only divides once before an odd(5).
You just learned the conversions like you do how many ounces are in a pound and the like
You had pounds, shillings (1/20 of a pound) and pennies (1/12 of a shilling, so 1/240 of a pound), and also half pennies and farthings (quarter pennies)
“NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system:
Two farthings = One Ha'penny. Two ha'pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). Once Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.
The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.”
Terry Pratchett
Thank you - I was hoping to find this.
Came here to post this, not disappointed.
As a child, I thought more in terms of the coins themselves rather than the denominations they represented. A halfpenny, a penny, a thruppeny bit, a tanner, a florin, a half crown and a ten bob note were all things in their own right that were all simple multiples and fractions of each other. If you had two half crowns, you had five bob. Three half crowns in your pocket meant you had 7s/6d. That could buy you a stout leather belt with an onion hanging off it, which was the style at the time.
10 bob is still used in British slang for 50p.
I have never heard anyone use 10 bob to mean 50p. Even among my older family members that remember pre-decimilisation.
I had a couple of residents who used it decades ago. They were in their 80s in the 1990s.
Haven't heard it since.
Wow!
Common in Lancashire and Merseyside, though mostly amongst older (not necessarily elderly) people now.
Southerner?
From Manchester. My family are Newcastle and county Durham based
Oh that's surprising. I'm over Leeds way and it's fairly common over here.
Yorkshire's always a little bit behind the rest of us ;)
It's crazy the way that perception has affected people.
Was at an older relatives funeral this year where it was mentioned in the eulogy that he'd been a promising academic but after a careers advisor told him he'd never be taken seriously because of his accent and a struggle with elocution lessons financially it seemed like he'd just resigned to it.
Not trying to say anything by that, just something your comment brought to mind.
I'm mostly joking, but there is some truth in it linguistically. Yorkshire is pretty much the only place in the world where you will hear people say "thee" and "thou" without it being ironic or a biblical reference (I don't know if it's still common, but my granddad's N Yorks friend was still using older pronouns into the 00s). All I'm saying is if there is a part of the country where outdated slang is still common, I wouldn't be surprised if it was Yorkshire.
I do think accent based prejudice is going away somewhat now. I have a friend with a thick Leeds accent who is now pursuing a career in academia, so hopefully what happened to your older relative is a thing of the past now.
I used to work in a bank (within the last 10 years), we could take a ten bob note and give you 50p for it as that was the value decided when the exchange happened. Not that we ever did as it was more valuable as a collectors item.
A fair few of the older generations definitely called 50p ten bob.
I'm not saying no one uses it, but I've never heard it, and the comment I responded to made it sound like it was common even among people who never saw a shilling.
I thought bob's your uncle.
Bob’s your aunty’s live-in lover.
And Fanny is your aunt.
Sixpence also called a "tanner".
so, at heart, their were three values you needed to understand: the pound, shilling and the pence.
the pound was the major unit, originally a literal pound of sterling silver, and as such a very large sum, far larger than was needed for most everyday usage. it was divided into 20 Shillings, each of 12 pence (so 240 pence in a pound). prices were normally written pounds/shillings/pence, so "£2/2s/6d", with D for pence form the latin Latin *Denarius (*becuase pretentious englishness)
why those numbers?
Long story short, 240 is a number than can divided a LOT of ways, being a multiple of 1,2,3,5,10,12,24, 30, 60,120 and a few others i skipped over. the point is that you could subdivide that pound very precisely with whole numbers, which made getting exact change much easier without having to start trying to work out fractions of a penny (though for a long time half-pennys and other smaller coins were A Thing for very cheap items).
their was also the guinea, which originally was a pound coin but cast in the equivalent value of gold, but as the price of silver and gold fluctuated the values diverged, with the gold coins value rising much higher, before settling on a value of 21 shillings. becuase they were gold, they tended to be retained by the nobility so the term is often associated with the upper classes (horse race prizes were awarded in guineas, etc)
all the various names (crowns, farthings, threepence etc) are just nicknames for various denominations of pence and shilling coins (ie the crown was a 5 shilling/60 pence coin, the half crown was 2s6d/30 pence, etc). you'd just learn to recognise them, same as you can tell all the modern coins you use today apart, and just be good at quick mental math.
that said, the British currency system was famous for tripping up foreigners, who'd often give up and hopelessly hold out a hand of coins and let the retailer take what they were owed.
Guinea is a name still used as a quirky way to say there's a 5% commission somewhere in there.
And a lot of the names are copied from other people besides the Romans, hence some names being familiar around Europe.
A pound was worth a lot more at the time. You only really needed to worry about shillings and pence.
But even if you didn't, suppose something is £1, 5 shilllings and 8 pence, and thy pay £5 you can count the change back to add up to £5
We consider the goods to be worth £1, 5s, 8d
Count up pennies do it's a round number of shillings. Count out shillings until it's a round number of pounds. Count out pounds until it's worth £5
It's not that complicated. There are 20 shillings in one pound, and 12 pence (plural of "penny") in a shilling.
If anything about it is complicated, it's the individual coins and notes and their various nicknames, e.g. a "crown" was a five-shilling coin, a four penny coin was called a "groat," shillings were nicknamed "bob" and pounds were nicknamed "quid" (this latter survives today) but this is not significantly different than any other monetary system, e.g. knowing that a "dime" is a ten-cent US or Canadian coin.
Not that complicated? Try long division of pounds, shillings, and pence. I was taught this in Form 1 (~US seventh grade). Once I mastered that, there was no long division problem that could faze me.
Lindybeige did a video a few years ago, trying to convince us all that the old system was the best system. IMO, he failed, but it's still a good video: https://youtu.be/R2paSGQRwvo.
Everyone else has done a great job of explaining the system, but there's one thing worth mentioning: the predecimal system had 12 pence in a shilling, and base 12 is a much easier system for mental arithmetic. 10 can be divided by 2 and 5, but 12 can be divided by 2, 3, 4 and 6. That means you have a much better chance of being able to multiply or divide a sum and not need to work out fractions.
For example, what is £70 in modern money divided by 9? Not an easy calculation. Your best guesstimate is likely to just divide it by 10 (£7) and add a bit as you're not dividing it so much. About £8.50 maybe?
What is 70 shillings divided by 9? Well 9 is 3x3 and a shilling can be divided by 3 so let's do that. 1 shilling divided by 3 is 4 pence, so 70 x 4 = 280 pence. 240 pence is a pound and 36 pence is 3 shillings leaving 4 pence left over, so £1/3/4. Now, what is £1/3/4 divided by 3? £1 is 20 shillings and we already said a shilling divided by 3 is 4 pence so that's 20 x 4 = 80 pence. 3 shillings divided by 3 is obviously 1 shilling, or 12 pence. 4 pence divided by 3 is 1 penny and a third. So 80 + 12 + 1 and a bit, which totals 93 pence and a bit. 30 pence is 2 and a half shillings so 93 pence is 7 shillings 9 pence.
That may seem a bit long winded but we've just calculated something which would seem very hard to do in our current system to less than a penny's accuracy, and someone used to doing this in their head could probably do it in 10 seconds or less.
Numbers like 12, 20, 24 and 60 are known mathematically as Abundant Numbers - the sum of their factors is greater than the number itself. Very useful for finding fractions without needing decimals. It’s why these numbers popped up all the time in counting systems such as money and time.
Great addition, thanks
One thing we all learned in about Grade 3 was how to do multiplication and division of Pounds, Shillings and Pence.
Briefly, it was doing division in Base 10, then Base 20, then 12, all in one series of operations. Same with multiplication, but converting to the next base, and carrying.
If you could get your 9-year-old brain around that, then Quantum Maths was easy....
Same way you know how much change you get today. By knowing how many of each currency unit makes up the next one up, and subtracting. We just had three units instead of two. It really wasn't hard to anyone brought up in it.
Plus there were some really common price endings, and you quickly get very used to how much change they make. 6s 8d (1/3 of £1) say, and 2s 6d ("half a crown", 1/8 off £1). You knew from frequent use that the sub-$1 parts of your change were 13s 4d and 17s 6d; no calculation involved.
Although it is hard work to get someone used to the old system to tell you this a pound was the wholly irrational 240 pennies.
A shilling (Bob) was 12 pennies and so there were 20 of them in a pound.
A half crown was two shillings and 6 pence.
When people try to defend this as being entirely logical due to the number of possible divisors I ask why then our entire numbering system used by humans is base 10 and why it makes sense to invent systems with arbitrary and inconsistent bases.
I am aware that computers use binary, octal and hexadecimal.
In England, we used the Roman numeral system for a long time, and our money system was well established before the use of the Hindu-Arabic system was fully adopted at the beginning of the 18th century.
I am not seeing a link between Roman numerals (effectively base 10) and base 12/ base 240
Yeah, it's not the base of the numbering system that's the issue, it's that we write our numbers (and writing also influences thinking) with a positional system where division and multiplication by the base (so, 10 in our case) is trivial, so the advantage of decimal units starts to outweigh the disadvantage, which is that there are more situations in everyday life when we need to divide something by 3 or 4 than by 5 or 10.
It was taught in primary school math classes so everyone grew up knowing how to handle it.
I'm old enough that my lessons included farthings - a quarter of a penny - which only ceased being legal tender in 1961.
You had to be slow and methodical to get it right.
Anyone interested in the topic should watch the LindyBeige video:
And he's great
It's essentially the same kind of math you'd do with time. If I leave at 10:45 a.m. and it'll take 4 hours 40 minites to get to my destination, when will I arrive? 14:85, but that's not a time, so carry the extra 60 minutes into the hour and you get 15:25, or 3:25 p.m. in the 12-hour clock.
Same basic principle behind that and "if this costs 10 shillings 9 pence and that costs 4 shillings 8 pence, how much do they cost together"? 14 shillings 17 pence, but there are only 12 pence in a shilling, ao subtract that from the 17 and carry it over into the shillings column - 15 shillings 5 pence.
Converting everything down into shillings is always my first step, it's a much more useful base unit than the pound in most eras.
My grandfather was still converting back to pre-decimalised currency in the late 80s.
He’d say something was “three and six” and you’d have to work out from context if it was £3.60 or 42p.
He wasn’t scientific about it.
Most people were, until they got used to the new system. I was 16 when we swapped over. People knew how much a shilling "was", whereas "5p" didn't mean much. And when most everyday goods like groceries cost under a pound (which was the case) it's way easier at first to intuitively grasp the relationship between, say, 1s and 13s, than 5p and 65p. People going to the butcher for a joint of beef for the Sunday roast and getting a price in new money wanted to know whether they were getting a fair deal.
(It didn't help that a "new penny" wasn't an exact amount in old currency, either. Seeing a price like 27p - 5s 7.2d in old money - was tricky if you didn't have a mathematical brain.)
Mind you - "three and six" is unambiguously "3s 6d". You simply didn't speak his language.
Three and six in old money wasn't worth 42p in decimal currency. 42p would have been roughly 8 shillings and 5 pence in old money, or 8s/5d.
"Three and six" means 3 shillings and 6 pence. That was written as 3s/6d. Or just 3/6.
1 shilling was a 20th of a pound, so a shilling became 5p.
There were 12 old pennies in a shilling, so an old penny was worth a 12th of 5 New Pence, or approximately 0.4166666667 New Pence (Aaaaagh!).
So...
3 shillings = 3 x 5p = 15p
6 old pence = 6 x 0.4166666667 = 2½ New Pence
15p + 2½p = 17½ New Pence
So "Three and six" was worth 17½ p.
I was 14 when we switched over and I'd never had a problem understanding pounds, shillings and pence, or with the new decimal currency, but as soon as I try to explain the conversion, it seems to get complicated.
The basic rules were simple:
1 New Penny was worth 2.4 old pennies.
5 New Pennies were worth 1 old shilling.
10 New Pennies were worth 2 old shillings.
50 New Pennies were worth 10 old shillings.
I don’t think he was converting with the values in mind, just the numbers. So 42p would be 3/6; 36p from the 3 shillings, 6p left over.
Pre-decimalisation pence were "d" not "p". "£sd". 42d. 3s 6d.
If anyone of that generation said "42 pence" for the first few years at least, they almost certainly meant "42d". "42p" was almost nvariably "42 new pence" for quite a long time.
Thank you - at least one person got it.
Absolutely no one would have called 3s/6d 42 pence.
We started calling the New Pence a Pee pretty soon. So we said 50 pee. Pennies (or pence) had never been called that before, so it was easy to distinguish.
Thank you for answering a question I didn't know I had since 1992. I overheard a kid whining on a boat who pleaded with his mom to get an M&M's: "But mum, it's only 22 pee!!"
I just found it curious at the time that he'd say "pee" instead of pence, and today I learned that there is a whole history behind it!
I was remembering from 40+ years ago - you are taking this far too literally.
Okay. I'm enjoying this trip down memory lane, that's all. Please don't be offended.
Derived from the Latin name of the penny - denarius.
Well, if you want to show off... 8-)
"s" originally comes from the latin solidus, not "shilling";
the "£" symbol is a stylised "L" from the latin libra (the Roman pound weight);
the £sd system was in use at one point in most of Europe (it simply lasted longer in Britain);
and there weren't, always and everywhere, the same numbers of pence to the shilling (it was the Normans who standardised what later became the UK onto 12 pence to the shilling).
So he was taking 3/6 and calling it 42 old pence? Crazy guy!
Hey! We're talking pre-decimalization here. He was crackers.
I think they meant 42d. Which it was. But no-one would have done it that way.
This is exactly what Americans sound like with their non metric.
You are being far too literal about this. I’m talking about a very old man translating a - frankly baffling - ancient currency system into a modern decimal one.
I don’t need correcting.
I'm not trying to correct you. I'm just trying to get my head round his thinking. Do you think perhaps he might have been willfully winding you up? How old were you at the time?
He was a clever man, and quite the wordsmith, so I think he probably enjoyed using the old system for the new money in a way which was obviously wrong but still understandable.
I remembered it because I noticed the momentary “look” between my mum and gran, so he was probably winding all of us up.
You're doing that because you're not used to the system. When it was still active, people would have thought you rather backward if you'd needed to do that. With a little practice it really isn't the best way.
Well, yes - it's unfamiliar to me and I only use it when I'm reading Victorian literature. But for people who are totally baffled by it, it's a good starting point.
Sure.
How often are you having to work out shillings and pence?!
... if you must know, I'm a Sherlock Holmes nerd and "how much is that in real money?" comes up a LOT in discussions
Fair enough, as you were!
Oh, just like pounds and ounces for this American. 1 lb 6 oz plus 2 lbs 11 oz = 3 lbs 17 oz = 4 lbs 1 oz. Makes perfect sense to me now.
I actually learned to use this (as an American) many years ago. (Novels/trpgs) I just can never remember which one has 12 and which one is 20. But because of your comment I can now remember that little one has least.