On 15th February 1971, after five years of planning by the Decimal Currency Board, Britain abandoned this medieval currency system and converted to a new decimal system based on pounds and new pence.
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Memory Post – Decimalisation
This entry was posted in Age of Innocence, Arts and Crafts, Childhood, Growing up in the 1950s, History, Literature, United Kingdom, World Heritage and tagged Culture, currency, Decimal Currency, Hillmorton Junior and Infant School, History, Life, pounds shillings and pence. Bookmark the permalink.
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Funnily enough I mentioned to Michaela & Mum this morning that it was the anniversary of decimalisation today. My first job was working in a Chartered Accountant’s practice. I started in July 1973, which meant that the first several hundred sets of accounts I worked on, straddled the conversion date, meaning all the maths were half and half, so to speak. That was a good introduction to my fledgling career!
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I was never any good at maths. Decimalisation through me a life line!
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Oh my goodness, my brain hurts just trying to understand all these different monetary amounts. I can see why the system was simplified. I did enjoy learning about the old system, though, as I was familiar with words like ‘shilling’ and ‘pence’ but didn’t know exactly what they were.
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Did I mention that a silver threepenny piece was called a Joey?
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I’ve still got my Dad’s “Decimal Points” long play record – “to help you cope with the problems of decimal currency”. It says on the back: “Listen to it at home. Then decide how you are going to arrange to train your staff.”
It’s been propped up here in my office for two years waiting for me to write a blog post about it.
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You must do it, you must!
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ps I added up the lsd amounts easily.
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Show off. Have you got a maths degree?
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no, my first job was in an office where we had to do it everyday for real
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I was working in my first job at the Halifax building society so we had loads of after work courses. I also worked in my dad’s shop on a weekend and many folk were awfully confused. I don’t think it helped that we still had sixpences and shillings in circulation.
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I was working during holidays at the local council in the payroll section. Decimalisation made it a whole lot easier!
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I remember!
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I’ve heard talk that the Brexiteers are taking us back to lbs. and ozs., pints and quarts, will they try to de-decimalize the money too? I know which side I’m on when the barricades go up!
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I remember decimalisation well. I was a student at the time, and food shopping, in those largely pre-supermarket days, would involve lots of chats with little old ladies who needed the youngsters to commandeer their purses and pay for them. And I still like to frighten myself to death by saying things like ‘It costs WHAT? It was half a crown in my day.’
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4 black jacks for a penny!
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Fascinating. I knew there had been a change from something to something awhile back, based on references in my reading, but this really cleared it up.
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