A question for my British readers: 1/6d?

[randy_byers]

Does the phrase "1/6d tickets" mean anything to you? This is from Steve Stiles' TAFF report. He is on a double-decker bus with Bill Burns, and he writes, "A conductor came up and asked us our destination. Two 1/6d tickets were purchased, and I wondered at that as it seemed that there must be easy ways to beat the system, getting more mileage for your money." Steve doesn't remember what 1/6d means (or meant), and I've never run into it before.

Comments

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

What year was it? If it's sufficiently old I'd guess it's 1 shilling and sixpence for the fare.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

It was 1968. Is "1/6d" the proper notation for "1 shilling and sixpence"?

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I *think* so. But ask someone who was around then for a more certain answer! I understand it would probably be phrased as "one and six" if spoken.

[ajr.livejournal.com]

Yep, dates and notation all fit. Decimalisation didn't happen in Great Britain until 1971.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Yep, date matches, IIRC correctly we went decimal in 1971. In the vernacular it would be said, "1 and sixpence."

People would know that the 1 related to a Shilling.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

Or even just "one and six".

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

one and sixpence = A shilling and sixpence - now 7 1/2 new pence. hah :-)

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

It was the way of denoting the three-tier money system that was in existence before the UK adopted a decimal system in 1971. Sterling consisted of pounds, shillings and pence: a pound comprised of 20 shillings, a shilling comprised of 12 pence (at the time of the change then worth 5 new pence). One shilling would be written as 1/- and pence were annotated with a 'd', therefore 1/6d was one shilling and sixpence (7.5 pence). Confused yet?

More on shillings at Wiki here.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not even going to try to understand; I'll just accept that it's correct!

Thanks to all.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

'slash' meant a lot more different things a few years ago than it does now. In the l/s/d system of notation it meant "and", so £3/19/11 meant "three pounds, nineteen shillings and eleven pence", i.e. a penny short of four pounds. See this table of old Meccano prices, for example. In the same way, prices are now typically £3.99, or "three pounds and ninety nine (new) pence".

The slash was also used as an abbreviation in ways it rarely is today. In engineering, "m/c" was still an abbreviation for "machine" when I was a turner, but "u/s" for "unserviceable", or broken beyond repair, is something I know of only through the memoirs of older engineers, or memories of wartime forces slang.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

u/s is still very much in use today in aviation – we use it all the time at work. Also a/c for aircraft.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

I bet that's the influence of old RAF hands.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Over hear, you see A/C for airconditioning. Then of course there's also AC/DC ...

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

That should be, "over here you may overhear the A/C," ahem.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Oh, I just realised, a context in which you would see a slash and not be even slightly fazed by it is in dates: you say 9/11 and so on.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Very useful link. I was wondering what the 'd' was for. It's because the penny corresponds to the old Roman denarius. The shilling is a solidus.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

The answer to Steve Stiles's unspoken question is "yes, there were ways to squeeze more miles out of your ticket" and as schoolchildren, we did it all the time. Grown ups were expected to be a bit more honest than that.

It was something of an honour system, and would be unlikely to survive in our own relentlessly commercial corporate age. Some bean counter would inevitably notice the potential for petty cheating and flip out, demanding that systems be put in place to squeeze the last drop of shareholder value from that ticket, ignoring the fact that those systems ultimately cost effort and real money, and don't actually increase the real revenue per passenger mile earned by the bus route as a whole by one brass washer.

A similar dynamic is now working its way through the entertainment industry, as record companies crack down on "pirates" in an effort that will eventually return them not a single cent more than they currently enjoy.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

The next sentence in Steve's report: "Bill replied that indeed there were a few deadbeats now and then, but an occasional spot check, recently instituted, had all but discouraged them."

And the non-decimal monetary systems wasn't the only difference in those bygone days: "By then my mind was fairly reeling with new and radical concepts, but the biggest surprise was yet to come — Burns producing a cigarette and calmly lighting up. It seems that you can smoke on public transportation, and the buses were well enough ventilated so as to prevent stuffiness. I puffed contentedly on a Newport while wondering about spitting, littering, and creating a public disturbance."

Never a smoker!

[(Anonymous)]

As I've told Randy in email, Steve's TAFF report is a somewhat fictionalized account of the actual events. I have never smoked!

Bill Burns

Re: Never a smoker!

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

It's too late, Bill. The particular way LJ is read means that probably no one who has already read this thread will come back and read it later. Now everybody on my Friends List thinks you're a smoker! Of course, once we publish Steve's report, everybody who reads it will think so too. If nothing else, you are a smoker in fannish mythology!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I'm one American who remembers the pre-decimalization British currency, so I understood Steve's abbreviation even if he no longer does. This notation went down the drain with the old currency in 1971; you wouldn't use it after that, and the current notation uses a decimal point and no "d", more like the notation of US currency. Which was the idea: foreigners found the 20-shillings-to-the-pound, 12-pence-to-the-shilling very confusing, not to mention all the other terms like "guinea" and "half crown" which referred to various odd quantities.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Or, as you know, bob.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

I still occasionally refer to the new 50p piece as a "ten bob bit", because we used to have a ten bob note when we had the old money.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

He shoots! He scores!

[dougs.livejournal.com]

In the book auction at the 1993 Eastercon, when Brian Ameringen and Roger Robinson were the auctioneers, at one stage Brian picked up a trilogy of seven paperbacks and then accepted bids that were multiples of seven. They were sold for a guinea, or 21/- (one pound five pence in new money).
Roger took the next lot, and only accepted bids voiced in the old money -- I think it went for five eagles (£1/13/4, or just under £1.67 in the new money).

[jerrykaufman.livejournal.com]

I knew it, too. As I recall, the Mad Hatter has a price ticket in his hat band written in the s/d style.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Yes, he does. "In this style, 10/6" = ten shillings sixpence, alias 10 1/2 shillings.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

This is all wonderful stuff, but it turns out that if I had read Steve's report more closely, I would have seen he explains the notation early on. All of this great discussion results from a failure in my reading comprehension! Hm, maybe I should post dumb questions more often. (Stop your tittering back there!)