Kerryman:
...would you oblige me and go thru that funny/fuzzy math again.....
We always remember the date when we first realised that age was catching up. When my son was a kid he once asked me “Dad, were you alive when there was “old money”? Pre decimalisation, when I learned my sums(math), we has pounds, shillings and pence, written £-s-d. A guinea was a historical left-over, a sort of aristocratic anachronism, used by the professions and horse racing folk. Have your car serviced and the bill would be £sd, but have a tooth extracted and it would be in guineas.
Twelve pence made one shilling, 20 shillings made one pound. A guinea was 21 shillings (as you rightly said, pounds1.05)
So, your 125 guineas were 125 pounds plus 125 shillings. The latter sum, divided by 20 to get pounds, gives 6pounds with five shillings over, so it becomes £6-5-0. Added to the 125-0-0 gets you to your magical 131-5-0.
There is a Victorian epigram on the cost of driven shooting – “Up goes a guinea, bang goes sixpence and down comes half a crown” referring to the cost of a raised bird, cartridge and market price.
Up to the early '50s there were also farthings, one fourth of a penny. Kept us sharp, as we had to work to the base 12 in converting pennies to shillings and the base 20 when calculating shillings to pounds.
The coinage/notes in Ireland and England were interchangeable, and at par value, until we had monetary separation in 1979 and to differentiate the currencies/avoid confusion we changed to the Gaelic word of Punt for pound, (although some said it was because it rhymed with bank manager!) Ireland, with most of Europe but not the UK, later (2002) adopted the Euro.
While we are at it, the coins were:
1 penny (written 1d);
3pence,
6 pence,
1 shilling,
2 shillings - called a florin,
2 shillings and six pence - called a half crown or half dollar
Then it went "paper" with the 10 shilling note. Oh, the anticipation of a visit from my uncle, and the joy of a crisp, red, ten-shilling note. Riches indeed!
I’m off to London tomorrow, the pain of another currency. Imagine going from NY to DC and having to change money….. Back Thursday………..
Km
