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First off, the price: £36 was much more than "£1,600 in today’s money". A railway clerk made £2 12 0 in a week in 1917, (less than £10/month if I did the shilli
by tgv 10mo ago
First off, the price: £36 was much more than "£1,600 in today’s money". A railway clerk made £2 12 0 in a week in 1917, (less than £10/month if I did the shillings and all that properly), which makes the scooter price the equivalent of 3.5 months, which is £7,000 at the lowest end of today's London North Eastern Railway salary range. The fact that the picture has Lady something in it, suggests it was more of an upper-class thingy.
Second, the scooter may not be new, the cluttering certainly is. Look at that empty street!
- soared 10mo agoAgreed - though street is AI generated from a close up image but it’s unknowns better it was actually empty or not :(
- gambiting 10mo ago>>A railway clerk made £2 12 0 in a week Made how much? I have no idea how to parse this
- RobotToaster 10mo ago£2 12 shillings and 0 pence. A shilling was 1/20th of a pound. 12 pence were in a shilling (so 240 pence in £1)
- gambiting 10mo agoAlright, thanks for explaining - but is that a standard way of writing this? Why not write £2 12s 0p?
- zeristor 10mo agoI guess tripping on LSD L being pound, libre S being shilling D being pennies, I’m guess denari because someone went to grammar school
- gerdesj 10mo agoS for solidus (Latin again). The pound symbol £ is an L. The names are way older than grammar schools. The way to write and "pronounce" a sum is like this: £2 3/6: "two pounds, three and six". There are lots more "rules": 1d is a penny, 2d is tupence and 3d is thrupence, 1/2d is a ha'penny (pronounced something like "hayp-knee"). So 2 1/2d = tuppence, ha'penny. For good measure you also have terms such as: "ha'perth" (half penny worth). So: "For want of a ha'perth of tar, the ship was lost" which is what your ISO9000 system should be all about.
- fennecbutt 10mo agoWell traditionally a price might also be said as "two and six" or so. I believe written as just 2/6 as you put it. A £ was a lot so guess didn't see most of the time.
- RobotToaster 10mo agoAnother way to look at it. At that time a £1 coin was a gold sovereign, one of which is worth £800 today. Which makes it £28,800.
- gerdesj 10mo agoI remember when the pound coin was first minted and I am 55 years old. In 1915 or so, a single pound (GBP int al) was a banknote ie paper money and was thus until the coin took over in the '80s I think it was. The pound coin is not made of gold. A gold sov. is something completely different. However "sov" is a nickname or perhaps a euphemism for a pound (GBP).
- RobotToaster 10mo agoYou're too young to remember then ;) A sovereign was officially the pound coin from 1817 until 1931, when gold convertibility was abolished. Although it slowly vanished from active circulation from the beginning of WWI. (On a similar note, in 1919 the silver coins were actual sterling silver with £1 being approximately 113g of sterling silver.)