Dear Pink, I am rereading all of the Classics from High Scool and College.
Dickens, Etc.  Can you tell me what the values are of the types of
money mentioned eg. Quid, ha'penny, farthing, Guineas, Pounds, Bob,
etc.  Please limit your answer only to British Literature.  I'm tyring
to understand what a pound would have been in Victorian Times as
opposed to now.  Thak You so Much.

---

Clarification of Question by ajbuck-ga on 19 Apr 2004 12:30 PDT

Oh Yeah, Shillings too, and all those other pesky names they have.  Love Ya

This has been quite a learning experience. Although I've been exposed
to these terms in British literature for many decades, they were all
quite vaguely defined in my mind until now. I have never left the
United States, and I confess that the currencies of other countries
have tended to fall into my mental category of "exotic unknown
quantities." The same mental storage-unit contains other items such as
"atomic numbers of all elements heavier than oxygen," "measurements of
Anna Nicole Smith," and "amount of wood a woodchuck would chuck if a
woodchuck could chuck wood." If I were a rabbit, all of this
information would probably be filed under "hrair."

Here's a very simple breakdown of older British monetary units, as I
understand them:

The pound sterling ("pound," or "quid") is the base unit (the term
originally referred to a troy pound weight of sterling silver). Prior
to the decimalization of British currency in 1971, there were 240
pennies (or "pence") to the pound. A ha'penny was half a penny, or
1/480th of a pound. A farthing (or "farden") was one-quarter of a
penny, or 1/960th of a pound. A shilling (or "bob") was one-twentieth
of a pound, or 12 pence. A guinea was one pound plus one shilling (21
shillings, or 1.05 pounds). The guinea was considered a more
prestigious unit with which to pay 'gentlemanly' debts: you might pay
a chimney-sweep or tradesman in pounds, but you would pay a poet or
artisan in guineas. I cannot help but wonder which currency would be
used in compensating a courtesan. ;-)

====================================================================== 

Here you'll find's an excellent rundown on the relative values of
predecimal British coins, complete with links to photographs of the
items discussed:

Predecimal: British Pre-decimal denominations
http://www.predecimal.com/predecimaldenominations.htm

======================================================================

Photographs and relative values are also available on this page:

H.N. Veals & Son: Old Coins
http://www.vealsjewellers.co.uk/coins.html

======================================================================

"Since Pepys's day, the pound has not been formally devalued - its
reduced value being due to inflation (For comparison, the French Franc
had two zeros removed in the 1960s). Thus the 'l' of the Diary is
equivalent to the '£' of today. The pound consisted of 20 shillings,
each shilling consisting of 12 pence ('d'). Thus there were 240 pence
in the pound. We also had the 'guinea' which was 21 shillings, but
this was no longer a separate coin or note by 1970. In about 1970, the
pound was decimilised so that one pound is now 100 pence. The shilling
became extinct. One 'new penny' is worth 2.4 'old pence' and one
shilling was worth 5 new pence. (pence being the plural of penny. I
believe that in USA and Canada, one cent is often called a 'penny').
With the 'old money', there were many colloquial terms. Quid = pound
(still used); bob = shilling; florin = 2 shillings; farthing = 1/4
penny; ha'penny = 1/2 penny; crown = 5 shillings (or 60 old pence or
25 new pence); 1/2 crown = 2.5 shillings. I'm sure there are more, and
I'm sure many British readers know this without thinking - but
hopefully this is useful to some. The UK should by now have replaced
the pound with the Euro, and will do in time - but that's another
story!"

The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Annotations
http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1660/02/06/index.php

====================================================================== 

Regarding the spending-value of these British monetary units in
various literary periods, I've found several useful citations online.
Copyright restrictions prevent me from posting more than a brief
snippet from each source; you may want to click the links under the
excerpts to read these article in their entirety.

======================================================================

"To convert values from 1450 to 1995, multiply by 234. If an item cost
one penny in 1450, it should cost just over a pound today if it has
not changed in value. A loaf of bread is cheaper today than in 1450.
The change in value from 1914 to 1995 is a factor of 50. If Henry
Ford's Model T cost $750. In 1914, the equivalent should cost about
$37,500 today.

A labourer's wages in 1640 was about 3 shillings per week. By 1850,
male factory workers were making about 30 shillings per week, and coal
miners similar amounts, though their wages rose and fell with the
demand of coal. An agricultural labourer was making about 10 shillings
per week in 1850."

What Does It Mean?: Money
http://dansmith049.tripod.com/WDIM/WDIM_17.html

======================================================================

"American readers wonder about monetary equivalents, such as the
answer to the question: 'O.K. just how much money would Mr. Darcy's
£10,000 a year be worth in today's U.S. dollars?' The answer is - we
can't say with any real accuracy...

Venetia Murray in her wonderful book on the regency period - An
Elegant Madness - says that a rough estimate would be to multiply by
50. So Mr. Darcy's £10,000 a year might be the equivalent of £500,000
in today's British money (roughly $775,000). The Economic History
Services query service (http://www.eh.net) indicates that £10,000 in
1800 would have the same 'purchase power' as £384,622 today, which,
when converted to American dollars, is roughly $600,000 a year.

Another source puts the exchange rate between dollars and pounds in
1800 at five dollars per pound (it is now between 1.5 and 1.6 dollars
per pound). If we take Mr. Darcy's £10,000 and convert it into 1800
dollars at the 1800 exchange rate, then ask how much purchasing power
$50,000 would have today, the answer is slightly more than $700,000
per year."

All About Romance: Crowns, Pounds and Guineas
http://www.likesbooks.com/money.html

======================================================================

"In the 1850s and 60s the standard rate paid by Dickens for
contributions to his weekly periodicals Household Words and All The
Year Round was half a guinea a column or a guinea a page. His staff
members were generally paid five guineas a week. In the early 1850s,
before he worked for Dickens, Wilkie Collins was paid five-eighths of
a guinea a page for his work in Bentley's Miscellany. That odd amount
was worked out from the rate of ten guineas for a printed sheet of
sixteen pages. Per word, both amounts were similar...

The coinage reflected the principal divisions of the money and added
some of its own. A gold coin worth £1 was called a sovereign and the
half sovereign, also in gold, was worth ten shillings. These coins
were first minted in 1817 as a response to the rather uncertain value
of earlier gold coins. Both were current throughout Victoria's reign."

Wilkie Collins: Money and Coinage in Victorian Britain
http://www.wilkiecollins.demon.co.uk/coinage/coins.htm

======================================================================

From a page of questions and answers about Victorian money and its
equivalents today:

"...Specific occupations have been featured in various books, but I
don't know of any magisterial work containing all this crucial
information. Servants, who had all living expenses taken care of,
earned as little as £10/year, and the sign of being (or having become)
a member of the middle class was having at least one servant. Some
poor vicars at mid-century earned as little as £40-50/year.

Dale H. Porter's fine new book on the Victoria Embankment, London...
contains valuable materials on the development of engineering as a
profession and provides some information about wages for workers and
professions at particular dates. As a rough guess, then, I'd say that
for most of the Victorian era, a pound then might buy $100 today."

Victorian Web: Wages, the Cost of Living, Contemporary Equivalents to
Victorian Money
http://www.victorianweb.org/economics/wages.html

======================================================================

An "historical tidbit" from Linda Needham, author of historical romance novels:

"For a number of reasons it's nearly impossible to translate the value
of consumer items in the 1800's into a 2001 economy. One reason is
because of the relative size and wealth of our modern middle class in
comparison to the smaller, more struggling middle class of earlier
times--and because an average middle class family didn't buy carriages
in the same way we buy cars. It helps to know that a family had to
make a minimum of 200 pounds a year in order to afford a
maid-of-all-work. Here are a few examples to help put prices into
perspective. Please note that the pence is designated with a 'd' -
meaning 'denier' a very old word. Go figure!

Superfine frock coat ...... £2/10s
 [ . . . ] 
Gold rimmed spectacles .... £2/8s 
 [ . . . ] 
Stilton cheese ............ 1s/pound
 [ . . . ]  
Sherry .................... 15s/gallon 
 [ . . . ]  
Seasoned Feather Beds ..... 18s to £5" 

New and Used Books: Decoding the Quid
http://www.newandusedbooks.com/features2.cfm?feature_element=30

======================================================================

This .pdf document published by the House of Commons provides more
information than you are likely to desire concerning the pound's
purchasing power from the 18th century to modern times. Here you'll
find tables, charts, graphs, and text to explain and/or obfuscate
nearly every question that is likely to arise on the subject:

"This paper presents a price index covering the period 1750 to 1998 to
illustrate the way in which the purchasing power of the pound has
changed over the long-term. Over the period as a whole, prices have
risen by around 118 times. Thus one (decimal) penny in 1750 would have
had greater purchasing power than a pound in 1998. Since 1945 prices
have risen in every year with an aggregate rise of over 22 times. By
contrast, prices were lower in 1939 than in 1919."

Inflation: Inflation: the Value of the Pound 1750-1998
http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-020.pdf

======================================================================

This page is devoted to the history of the British penny: 

The Story of the British Penny
http://www.24carat.co.uk/pennystory.html

NOTE: Had it not been for the site linked above, I would never have
known that many British citizens call the decimalized penny the "new
pee." I have not been so astonished by an item of information since
August of 2003, when I learned that most penguin ploppings are pink
(see Google Answers Question #240878 for more on that subject):

Google Answers: What Color is Penguin Poop?
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=240878

======================================================================

Here's a handy online calculator that will convert the purchasing
power of British money from 1264 to 2002:

Economic History Services: How Much Is That Worth Today?
http://www.eh.net/hmit/ppowerbp/

======================================================================

My search strategy in locating this information consisted of
individual Google Web Searches using the name of the monetary unit
(such as "a shilling is" and "a quid is"), plus broader searches using
these search strings:

Google Web Search: "purchasing power" + "british pound"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22purchasing+power%22+%22british+pound

Google Web Search: "value of british money"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22value+of+british+money

Google Web Search: "british" + "pre-decimalisation OR pre-decimalization"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=british+pre-decimalisation+OR+pre-decimalization

Google Web Search: "pound sterling" + "history OR historical"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22pound+sterling%22+history+OR+historical

Google Web Search: "pound sterling" + "victorian"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22pound+sterling%22+victorian

======================================================================

Thanks for an enjoyable and educational quest! I hope my findings meet
your needs. Please let me know if anything is unclear, or if you'd
like me to target my research in a specific area. I appreciate your
having requested me by name, and will be pleased as punch (pink punch,
of course) to offer further assistance.

Best,
Pink

Dear Pink, Looks like I've hit the Jackpot (no pun intended) with your
most comprehensive answer.  These terms have also vexed me for
decades, and I have never been able to put them in context to today's
standards.  The Tresure Trove (again, no pun intended) of answers and
resources will be eternally helpful.  On another note, Sublime had
answered a very complex question I had and I got to wondering "Who are
these people" ?  Well, I read Sublime's profile which in turn led me
to your's, and I was amazed at the depth of this whole facet of
G*****.  The amount of time and research that you put into this just
for me has left me floored. It is deeply appreciated, and I have given
you a five-dollar tip, which I guess would be an American Guinea,
because you truly are an artisan, or even better ;)  Thanks, AJBUCK

Many thanks for the interesting question, the five stars, the nice
tip, and (most of all) the kind words. It was truly a pleasure to
assist you. If all my customers were as literate and pleasant as
yourself, I would be... please forgive my final wordplay... tickled
pink. :-)

~pf

To add to pinkfreud's excellent answer. You may also come across the following:

a tanner: a six pence coin

a yennep: a penny;  flatch-enorc: half-a-crown - this is slang from
the Victorian underworld and itinerants. I recall seeing it in one of
Dickens' books and my father telling me - not that he was a criminal
or an itinerant!
http://www.victorianlondon.org/words/criminal.htm

three penny piece also known as a threepenny bit or thrupenny bit:
three pence coin.

half a dollar: half a crown coin

Thanks for the trip down memory land to pre-decimal days.

answerfinder-ga

Brilliant! (as usual)

Prior to Decimalisation in 1971, everything was expressed in £sd
(Pounds, Shillings and Pence) and everyone had to learn to calculate
using these three different bases.

So, Account Books used to have three columns, viz:

              £       s      d

Item 1        1      11      2
Item 2        2      19     11
             ---     --     --
Sum           4      11      1 
             ---     --     --

And, of course, multiplication was even harder.

To further complicate matters, we used Imperial Measures which had
their own bizarre systems.

Why did we make things so hard for ourselves?

And why did we persist with them for so long?

Bryan

>> Why did we make things so hard for ourselves?

>> And why did we persist with them for so long?

Dunno. The United States still stubbornly resists converting to the
metric system. Clumsy old habits die hard.