We competed fiercely in
the collection of Farthings, Molly and me.
Even in those days when every penny counted and people had very little,
a farthing was something often easily discarded by the adults around us because
there wasn’t a great deal to be bought with them. You might think therefore that we would find
ourselves knee deep in them on occasions but that simply wasn’t the case. Farthings were of supreme importance to
children not accustomed to having regular money at their disposal because the few
things they would actually buy were things we desired. The choice for a long time was Liquorice
Wood or Locust Beans, later to be joined by Bubble Gum and each one of these
delights was almost but not quite, forbidden by my mother. Molly’s mother was decidedly more pragmatic
and did not become overly involved in such matters. Queuing up at the high counter of the news-agency
and tobacconist next to Penny, Son & Parker’s on The Hill at Northfleet
after school to choose between the available delights could be contemplated
pleasantly for most of the school day.
The child-sized coins we
clutched firmly in our hands were small and round, each one displaying a Jenny
Wren and had been in circulation since the early 17th century, production
of them only ceasing completely in the mid 1950s. There were four to a penny and when we had
more than four we felt prosperous and Molly would observe that we were Rolling
In It. Old Nan used to describe someone poorer than
we were as not having a brass farthing to their name or not having two
farthings to rub together. Conversely we
sang the rhyme Oranges and Lemons loudly and lustily, blessing our good fortune
and hoping we would find no wriggling white maggots in our locust beans. Though should we do so, their presence did
not unduly affect the consumption. Billy
Elliot, who knew a great deal said they were simply protein anyway and protein
was good for you.
We were less likely to
have Halfpennies in our pockets with them being two to a penny and not discarded
so carelessly. Molly said she didn’t care for them and in
fact they were boring and I agreed with her because I would be most unlikely to
find myself in possession of more than one at any particular time. We had heard that ships could be spoiled for
want of a ha’porth of tar and near Christmas joined in the chant wherein if you
didn’t have a penny, a ha’penny would do nicely. We understood the contraction
because we heard it all around us, no-one ever using the full enunciation. Molly’s grandmother who lived next door to
us at 29 York Road said when she was a girl you could buy an enormous warm bun
for a ha’penny, directly from the Baker’s oven.
What’s more she told us about a game she played when she was our age,
called Shove Ha’penny, played on a special board and said if they ran out of ha’pennies
they simply used pennies and then called the game Push-Penny. I thought she was
lucky to have the wherewithal to do so but didn’t say that of course.
The penny was the coin we
were best acquainted with because that’s precisely what so many everyday things
cost. You could as a child travel quite
a long way on a bus or purchase a sizeable amount of sherbet for instance. It
was inconveniently clunky unlike the sleek coins that many years later were to
replace it and there were an astonishing 240 of them to each one pound note. Old
Maudie Obee at Number 32 was said to collect pennies and store them in jam jars
under her bed and was reputed to have at least five pounds worth. That probably wasn’t true because Hilda Sims who
operated the corner shop just opposite Old Maudie’s complained that she had a
habit of paying for everything with pennies which was at times inconvenient. It stood to reason, Molly thought, that the
pennies were regularly being used up. She
certainly donated several to us every year leading up to Bonfire Night when we harangued
passers by for A Penny for the Guy actually hoping for sixpence.
The unusual and
comfortingly shaped 12-sided threepenny bit is easily remembered but most of us
will be less familiar with the small silver coin it replaced in 1947. This
was the coin often put into Christmas Puddings and fought over on Christmas Day
by siblings. Colin Bardoe maintained
that in his house three coins went into the pudding each year because his
mother couldn’t abide the fighting that went on between the boys. Old Nan stated that in their house they must
have more money than good sense then. The silver threepence was nicknamed the Joey
and often called that by our grandparents and sometimes our parents. At school we learned that originally a Joey
was the name given to the Groat which was four pence and went out of
circulation in 1855. The silver
threepence simply inherited the name.
A sixpenny piece was
generally referred to as a Tanner and as far as we were concerned was quite a
sum. I was given one for my seventh
birthday by my Uncle Edgar in a genial mood following an afternoon win at
Crayford Dogs and Barbara Scutts told me that was nothing compared with her
cousin Daisy who found a tanner under her pillow every time she lost a
tooth. Knowing nothing of this
extraordinary and fairly recent tooth tradition Molly and I simply didn’t believe
her. My Grandmother called a Tanner a
Bender and said back in her day you could bend them with your fingers and leave
tooth marks in them too if you felt so inclined. You could also easily buy enough gin back
then to finance a Bender.
The long-gone shilling
piece, often known as a Bob, was a coin with a long history, first appearing in
England around 1550. The actual word
Shilling is believed to come from the Anglo-Saxon Scilling meaning division and
that word itself can be traced to Old Norse.
None of this was particularly interesting to us as children as we rarely
found ourselves with a shilling to spend.
In school we learned that there were 20 shillings to a pound and that
pounds, shillings and pence were written as Lsd standing for Libra, Solidus and
Denarius. The reason was never
explained to us but we easily absorbed the intricacies of pre-decimal currency
and became familiar with Florins, Half Crowns and ten bob notes unlike the future
trickles of American tourists visiting the area primarily on the trail of Pocahontas
but eager to investigate brass rubbing at St Botolph’s. Betty
Haddon, politely showing one of these visitors around the church was actually
given a ten shilling note which proved they didn’t entirely understand the
value – or so it seemed when she showed it to us.
A large, shiny Half a
Crown or Half a Dollar was what red-faced uncles fresh from celebratory
sessions at The Queen’s Head pressed into the palms of recently born babies. On
these occasions my Grandmother would extricate the coin as soon as was possible
to ensure it was indeed Half a Dollar and that he wasn’t being Tight Arsed by
substituting Two Bob. The infants whose
palms had been crossed had each and every one of them to give up their wealth
to their parents who made the important decision as to how to spend it. Aunt Maud said that didn’t matter because it
was to bring the babe good luck and the luck stayed with them for life.
There
were eight Half Crowns in a Pound and the Pound Sterling itself was usually
called a Quid which is a word that has been in use for several hundred years
and over time variously described the Guinea or Sovereign. Where Quid comes from is hard to determine
but most likely it is from the Latin phrase Quid Pro Quo which means Something
for Something or This for That. The origin of the term Sterling also has
uncertain origins and one theory is that it comes from a silver Saxon coin
which was called a Sterling and there were 240 Sterlings in one pound weight of
silver. No one knows for sure even now and
we certainly didn’t in the 1940s.
All this once familiar coinage
and currency has long since disappeared and been replaced by a system
infinitely more convenient. Very few of
us carry actual money around with us these days and having a purse full of
pence is hard to get your head around.
Nevertheless how we would have loved that that very tiresome situation
back in those post war days. Cold
hard cash was extremely hard to come by and we were certainly not in the habit
of receiving pocket money so we had to devise other ways of accessing an
income.
Returning glass bottles for money was wide
spread, very popular and fiercely competitive with Tizer, lemonade and beer
bottles much sought after. Boys were
generally more successful than girls in this endeavour and would sometimes
scale fences to get to little enclaves of dumped bottles in the properties of those
with More Money Than Sense. Girls like
us were more likely to knock on doors and politely ask the householder if there
were bottles to return. This was at
times only variably successful and sometimes we were told to bugger off because
they were quite capable of returning their own bottles thank you very
much!
Some boys had a good
business going in shoveled horse manure which could be sold on to keen
gardeners at a penny a shovel’s worth and until 1952 or 53 there were still a
reasonable number of horse-drawn carts around.
Molly’s brother Georgie wondered why dog droppings couldn’t be sold on
in much the same way because it had to be admitted that the pavements and alleyways
of Northfleet were beleaguered with the waste of local pets. Owners only rarely seemed to take their dogs
for formal walks and even when they did so paid scant attention to their toilet
arrangements but most animals roamed freely, making whichever corner suited
them their place of choice. Wisely we
did not give serious attention to Georgie's idea.
Another scheme and one that seemed much more
exciting and somehow daring was checking Button Bs. Very few homes had telephones so red
telephone kiosks were a familiar feature near bus stops and outside shops. To make a call you inserted two pennies and
pressed Button A. If no-one was home you
pressed Button B to get your money back but often people forgot to do so. Regularly
checking local kiosks was definitely a worthwhile undertaking and on one
occasion resulted in us securing six pence.
However, this was definitely not
a regular occurrence and in the long run discarded farthings were much more
reliable.
No comments:
Post a Comment