As a kid, in our house there was a Saturday ritual. My Dad would give me half a crown on a Saturday morning as pocket money. I'd go to the sweet shop at no 13, Mill Hill Broadway, next to Sainsburys. I'd spend some of it and save a sixpence. The sixpence would be put in a jar, on top of the electricity fuse board. My eldest brother Laurie and myself had made a deal that we'd each put a sixpence in the jar every week and at the end of the year, we'd buy a Scalextrix set. I'd excitedly give Laurie the sixpence and he'd safely deposit it. After we'd been saing for six months, My Dad was doing some work in the kitchen and had a ladder by the fuseboard. I excitedly climbed up, with the intention of counting the cash to see how close we were to buying the set. To my horror, the jar as empty. I was mystified. I asked my brother, who laughed and said "You've been keeping me in fags for the last six months". I went absolutely mad. As was always the way, it ended in my dad giving me a hard smack bum and telling me I had to wise up. No sanction was taken against my brother. I was determined to get revenge. Later that day, an old Catholic priest who was a friend of my Dad turned up. My father, recounted the story, finding it hilarious. I was contemplating Dadacide.It seemed so unfair. The priest quoted a key passage from the new testament, where a disciple asks Jesus how many times your brother can wrong you before you are allowed to feel resentment and take revenge. Jesus replied 77 times. I was devastated. Laurie could shaft me another 76 times before I could legitimately get the hump. As is the way with me, I went off and brooded. The first thing I realised was that he'd actually wronged me 36 times. That was the number of sixpences he'd nicked. In actual fact he only had 41 to go before he was legally doomed. I decided to keep a list (he's up to 56! as he's now in his 70's I doubt he'll get to 77).
I then made a startling realisation that I also had 77 hits at pissing him off before he could bear any resentment. So I decided that what was good for the goose, was good for the gander. Whilst I was 7 at the time, he was 23 and liked to go to the pub. When he came home, he'd be sloshed. In the morning he'd sleep like a log til 10am, then go to the loo for a long constitutional. I would nip into his room and help myself to some of his cash. I had a simple rule. If I nicked the lot, he'd guess. So I had a simple rule. One coin of each denomination for 36 weeks. I wouldn't spend them. I made a hole in a teddy and hid the coins in it, under the bed. That was my favourite teddy. My Dad then decided on a little scheme for me and my sister Caroline. She was older and got two half crowns, I got one. My Dad said that every week, when the cash as doled out, he'd double what we had left.
My sister could never understand how I always had a half crown to get doubled, when the pocket money was doled out. Especially as I'd spend it immediately. One time my mum caught me in Lauries room. She said what are you doing? Being a quick thinker, I said "Laurie said he had a really interesting edition of Scientific American with big telescopes in it. I was looking for it". My mother wasn't a mug and said "but you can't read?". I said "I want to look at the pictures". She made a point of making Laurie read me the article.
As I didn't really feel too good with myself about the wages of sin, and justified it as Dad had pointed out that we have to learn the ways of the world, I decided to buy everyone really nice presents. At Xmas I had about £20 which was a huge sum in old money. As my sisters and my other brother Frank had been nice, I bought them all decent presents. Frank got a Jim Reeves Xmas Album, Catherine got a nice plant, Valerie got some nice paint brushes. Caroline got a box of chocolates. And Laurie? I got him a jar of pickled onions, a really spicy variety. He rather liked them. My mum was very inquisitive as to how I had so much cash. I explained that ever week Dad was doubling my half crown if I hadn't spent it. My mother, being a bit tight, immediately banned the practise (which Dad totally ignored). I figured that Lauries dosh had been put to far better use than if he'd simply spent it on fags. He used to moan "I can't understand why I'm always skint".
During the height of my little scheme, I got hold of a series of bank bags. I would sort the coins out into the different denominations, and different monarchs. I would keep the oldest ones and only spend the newer coins with Liz on the front. I built up a fine collection. These were the Ha'penny, the Penny, the Thruppeny bit, the sixpence, the shilling, the two shillings and the half crown. I used to sort through these. I was fascinated by really old coins. Here are my top ten, in order of preference and why.
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| Old Penny |
1. The old penny. I loved the old penny. Until decimalisation, you'd regularly get coins of up to 100 years old, with old men's images on, with big tashes. There were few of the older silver coins, as these had been withdrawn when the silver content was removed. The older they got, the darker they were. I always imagined that this was caused by the war and the bombing, although it was simply the oxidation of the copper. For me, it was how I knew when various monarchs had been on the throne.
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| thruppeny bit |
2. The Thruppeny bit. As kids we loved the thruppeny bit. It was unique in that it wasn't round. We loved the portcullis on the back of it. It seemed to be a rather strange, other worldly coin. I was also the coin you could afford a bag of crisps with. That was a highly significant amount.
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| Half crown |
3. The Half Crown. I liked the half crown as this was what I got for pocket money. It was a great big coin, I believed it was the biggest coin in the world at the time! It always looked to me as if the lions on the bottom right quadrant were trying to play the harp in the bottom left quadrant. The half crown was a very reassuring coin. You could buy almost any sweet that wasn't in a big box and you felt like you were someone if you had one!
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| Sixpence |
4. I wasn't much of a fan of the sixpence. It wasn't much of a coin. It was small and unimpressive. My mum used to put them in Xmas puddings. She blamed my conception on the one she lost at Xmas 1961. She put two in and neither turned up. Aunty Audrey came round for lunch and she also got pregnant (my cousin Anita was born). It was all the fault of those blasted sixpences. Somehow they managed to survive decimalisation for a couple of years, despite not being a logical denomination of money (2.5pence).
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| The Shilling |
5. The shilling. I didn't really like shillings. They always struck me as a rather dull coin. They also survived decimalisation and became re designated as five pence piece. Eventually they were remodelled as the annoying coin that falls through the hole in your wallet. A fittingly bad end for a dull coin.
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| The Two Shillings |
6. I especially disliked the Two Shillings piece. It was the only coin that didn't have a proper name. It also survived decimalisation as the ten pence. It was a coin that wanted to be a half crown, but didn't have the balls.
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| Ha'penny |
7. The Ha'penny. As a kid, I was an alter server. One of the perks was that you'd get a tip when you served at a local wedding. If you were given one of these, you really didn't appreciate it. This was a bad imitation of the penny. It even had the Blue Peter ship on the back (I hated Blue Peter, I was a Magpie man).
That is my highly irrational round up of old money. Did you have any pet hates for the old coins. Oddly whilst I loved/hated the old coinage, I have no real feelings at all about the awful monoculture that is modern British coinage.
---- Don't forget to make a date in your diary for The Barnet Eye Xmas party and Community awards at Mill Hill Rugby Club on Fri 14th December at Mill Hill Rugby Club at 8pm. We really hope you can come down and say Hi. Admission is Free.
Some of the old Pennies i.e.1912,1918 have letters in the date area denoting they were minted by other mints and not the royal mint e.g. KN and H
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