Chapter 63

I have been told by the staff in our general office that it’s high time for me to make another contribution to Madazine’s pages. This request – well, it was really a demand – took me by surprise, but as it happens I did jot down what I considered an interesting note last week. It was written as a memory aid for me but my colleagues insist that it should be published, so here it is. Editor

Coinage

A German friend visited me recently and among other things we talked about currencies. He touched upon our pre-decimal coins, saying that they were cumbersome and numerous. I sprang to our defence, pointing out that we managed quite well with six of them, whereas there were eight in the Deutsche Mark system. He seemed surprised by this, so I enumerated them. Our old half-penny had been demonetised well before decimalisation, so immediately prior to the change we had the one, three and sixpenny pieces, the shilling (twelve pence), the florin (two shillings) and the half-crown (thirty pence). There was also a crown, but it was a rarity, not in general circulation. At that time the Germans had in common use pieces of one, two, five, ten and fifty pfennigs and one, two and five marks.

We wandered off to other topics, but after my friend left I gave more thought to the subject of our coins in general. I was aware that we once had a plethora of them simultaneously and felt that the peak must have been reached in the second half of the nineteenth century. On looking into the matter I found that at about the time I had in mind there was an abundance of sterling coins circulating contemporaneously. I came up with what I think is a full list, comprising quarter-farthing, one-third-farthing, half-farthing, half-penny, penny, three half-pence, three pence, four pence (the groat), six pence, shilling, two shillings (florin), half-crown, double-florin, crown, half-sovereign and sovereign. That is a total of sixteen, though the first two and the sixth were minted only for certain colonies. Still, that left thirteen in the UK at the same time.