# "Dollars" in Victorian England? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 29, 2019, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636 "2019-01-29T21:06:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/41 "2019-01-31T13:15:14Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > For reference, the names of American coins, as stamped on them, are “One Cent”, “Five Cents”, “One Dime”, “Quarter Dollar”, “Half Dollar”, and “One Dollar” (sometimes “$1”). The [Liberty Head nickel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Head_nickel) had no denomination at all, just a Roman numeral V on the reverse. When they were new, some enterprising grifter gold plated some and passed them off as a new half-eagle. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/42 "2019-01-31T20:37:35Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I was in England the summer of 1995. The temperature hit 87 and the newspapers were screaming that it was the hottest day since Queen Victoria lost her virginity or something like that. > > Remember, England doesn’t have air conditioning. Or ice. I was there in August 2003 actually… it got to 101.3 F in Kent, and IIRC in Oxford where I was, it got to about 97 or so. It was fucking miserable. People were saying stuff like “Remind you of home?” because I’m from Texas. And I’d reply “No! We’re not savages, we have air conditioning!” I was actually talking about it being a nice summer day in the Midwest (which it isn’t; it’s a lot hotter than that in many places), and pointing out that it’s more of a late spring temperature here. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2019, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/43 "2019-01-31T23:21:21Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I was in England the summer of 1995. The temperature hit 87 and the newspapers were screaming that it was the hottest day since Queen Victoria lost her virginity or something like that. I spent the summer of 1976 hitchhiking around England. That was the year of the worst drought in three centuries, and the temperature hovered around 90 F on most days. I was in cutoffs and short sleeves most of the time, so it didn’t really bother me. There was none of the near triple-digit humidity you get in large parts of the US during summer. I spent April though May in Scotland, where it rained every rotten day. I’d look out the window and think “How can there be a drought in Britain?” Then I went south in June and _ **BAM** _ the grass turned brown the other side of Newcastle. I also got way too much sun on the Isle of Man and spent the next two weeks peeling badly. Things changed drastically the second weekend in September, with a huge storm coming in out of the Atlantic. I was at Land’s End, and damned near froze to death hitchhiking back to Brechin to retrieve my cold-weather gear. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2019, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/44 "2019-02-01T01:57:51Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > I spent the summer of 1976 hitchhiking around England. That was the year of the worst drought in three centuries, and the temperature hovered around 90 F on most days. > > I was in cutoffs and short sleeves most of the time, so it didn’t really bother me. There was none of the near triple-digit humidity you get in large parts of the US during summer. > > I spent April though May in Scotland, where it rained every rotten day. I’d look out the window and think “How can there be a drought in Britain?” Then I went south in June and _ **BAM** _ the grass turned brown the other side of Newcastle. I also got way too much sun on the Isle of Man and spent the next two weeks peeling badly. > > Things changed drastically the second weekend in September, with a huge storm coming in out of the Atlantic. I was at Land’s End, and damned near froze to death hitchhiking back to Brechin to retrieve my cold-weather gear. I also went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that trip. One of the performances was in an attic. I almost passed out from the heat. Definitely not a drop of rain anywhere that I ever saw. ---
**Author:** ![bwolf65](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dc4da7/32.png) [@bwolf65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bwolf65)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2019, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/45 "2019-02-01T21:36:06Z")
> [@Cayuga](#): > > I’ve been American just about my whole life, and my understanding has always been that “one cent” and “five cents” are the values of coins that are named “penny” and “nickel.” They just don’t have the name printed on them — in their current forms, anyway; I don’t know about earlier designs. I’m looking at a “dime” minted in 2014 right now. On the reverse (i.e., “tails”) side, it reads: “One Dime” It does not actually state the value of the coin anywhere on either side. I remember helping some befuddled Brits try to feed a parking meter once. ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2019, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/46 "2019-02-01T22:35:23Z")
> [@bwolf65](#): > > I’m looking at a “dime” minted in 2014 right now. On the reverse (i.e., “tails”) side, it reads: “One Dime” It does not actually state the value of the coin anywhere on either side. I remember helping some befuddled Brits try to feed a parking meter once. A dime is a unit a money equal to one tenth of a dollar, just like the cent is one hundredth and a mil is one thousandth. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2019, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/47 "2019-02-01T22:56:42Z")
Yes but it’s interesting (and probably annoying to foreigners) that our four commonly used coins use three different monetary units to express their value. A penny is inscribed “One Cent”, a nickel says “Five Cents”, a dime says “One Dime” and a quarter says “Quarter Dollar”. Why couldn’t the last two say “Ten Cents” and “25 Cents”? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2019, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/48 "2019-02-01T22:57:39Z")
> [@glowacks](#): > > A dime is a unit a money equal to one tenth of a dollar, just like the cent is one hundredth and a mil is one thousandth. The original nickel was called a [half-disme](https://www.ioffer.com/i/usa-half-disme-1792-copy-rrr-m-0725-629411513), or half a dime. (Disme is from the French and the “s” is silent as is isle.) ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2019, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/49 "2019-02-01T23:38:45Z")
Was there a time when the British penny was nearly the same value as the American cent? Like, if the exchange rate was $2.40 -\> £1 (before decimalization, of course). ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2019, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/50 "2019-02-02T00:16:41Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > Yes but it’s interesting (and probably annoying to foreigners) that our four commonly used coins use three different monetary units to express their value. A penny is inscribed “One Cent”, a nickel says “Five Cents”, a dime says “One Dime” and a quarter says “Quarter Dollar”. Why couldn’t the last two say “Ten Cents” and “25 Cents”? The whole design of the US currency is an interesting combination of what I’d call metric thinking vs imperial (as in measurement) thinking. In Imperial systems, you have large units being any-old multiple of the small units (twelve, twenty, three … or whatever) so you’re very reluctant to drop down to the next smallest unit. It’s much easier if you’re, say, measuring distances, to talk about half miles and quarter miles than try to remember how many yards that is - recipes have quarter cups and third cups rather than translate to tablespoons. People who are fully metricated do this a lot less - nobody talks about half centimeters or quarter litres, it’s 5 mils or two fifty mils (yeah, same colloquial term for both) So the US monetary system is an interesting hybrid. It’s based on a lovely regular decimal system, just like the French had been pioneering. But they were clearly still thinking in an Imperial kind of way - a quarter is a quarter because it’s fundamental identity is ‘a quarter of the next biggest unit’ - it only accidentally happens to be equal to 25 cents. If the designers had been thinking of it as ‘a number of cents added together’ they probably would have made it 20, not 25 ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2019, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/51 "2019-02-02T01:08:38Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > I couldn’t find any real usage of Doyle’s term in an big Australian newspaper database search for this period, but the term ‘Almighty dollar’ had reasonable currency [pause for laughter]. [The phrase “the almighty dollar” seems to have originated with American author Washington Irving, but it was certainly used by 19th Century British authors prior to Doyle, notably the best-selling Edward Bulwer-Lytton.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almighty_dollar) ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2019, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/52 "2019-02-02T12:43:31Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > _This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy._ > > This is from the 20th printing of the original British paperback edition (the one with the weird stripey cover). On the one hand, British currency is not predominantly green; on the other hand, he is talking about an entire planet whose economy is dominated by a nation that uses currency that is mostly green. Green has frequently been used as the colour for UK banknotes. When the original radio series was broadcast, the green Pound Note was in circulation in the UK. First episode broadcast 8th March 1978, about the same time that [this design](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/images/banknotes/withdrawn/1-1960-973002.jpg?h=359&la=en&mh=359&w=364&hash=9DE5D53626A4EF918824395C324AACA99EC2F171)was changed to [this one](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/images/banknotes/withdrawn/1d-1978-19950104.jpg?h=359&la=en&mh=359&w=356&hash=2012628F3AD77B17152BCF7B0D43D388E922F470). Since the abolition of the pound note, the £5 note has been green or blue/green. I very much doubt that DA was thinking of American currency. Metaphors that use green for money are well understood over here. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2019, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/53 "2019-02-02T22:01:06Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > How about dollars in Elizabethan England? > > That now Sweno, the Norways’ king, craves composition. Nor would we deign him burial of his men Till he disbursed at Saint Colme’s Inch Ten thousand dollars to our general use. -_MacBeth_ > > Here, Shakespeare is clearly indicating the they’re getting paid by a foreign king, and those are literal (if an anachronism for the period in which the play is set) dollars. In the Doyle quote, he’s employing a common idiomatic trick of replacing the local currency with a foreign one, the way an American might substitute pesos or sheckles for dollars when talking casually about money. “Daler” were the main coin in the Dano-Norwegian kingdom from 1544 until the Scandinavian countries went metric and started using “kroner” in the late nineteenth century. So in this specific quote Shakespear could have been referring to Norwegian coins. (Although he probably didn’t.) ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2019, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/54 "2019-02-02T22:07:58Z")
Shakespeare uses the word in _The Tempest_, too: > [@](#): > > The Tempest, Act II, Scene 1 > > ``` > Gonzalo: "When every grief is entertain'd that's offer'd, Comes to th' entertainer - > > Sebastian: "A dollar." > > Gonzalo: "Dolour comes to him, indeed: you have spoken truer than you purpos'd." > > ``` ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2019, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/55 "2019-02-08T09:36:41Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > So the US monetary system is an interesting hybrid. It’s based on a lovely regular decimal system, just like the French had been pioneering. But they were clearly still thinking in an Imperial kind of way - a quarter is a quarter because it’s fundamental identity is ‘a quarter of the next biggest unit’ - it only accidentally happens to be equal to 25 cents. If the designers had been thinking of it as ‘a number of cents added together’ they probably would have made it 20, not 25 Wall Street only went to “decimal points” sometime since when I worked in finance. Before that, when stock moved by 1 point, it was 12.5c. 1 bit. 1 bit of a piece-of-8. One bit of a Spanish Dollar. A quarter of a dollar is, in the old American expression, 2 bits. As in “For 2 bits I’d…” ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2019, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/56 "2019-02-08T22:39:48Z")
Aha! An opportunity to talk about the history of European coinage! You’d be amazed how infrequently this comes up in conversation. To expand on **Nava** ’s post, _thaler_ is a term for a type of large silver coin minted in Central Europe, starting in the 1530s. The first came from silver mines near the Czech town then called “Joachimthal” (now Jachymov). The coins were called _Joachimthalers_, and were popular enough that other principalities began minting similar coins and calling them _thalers_. Eventually this spread to the Low Countries, who struck a few types of what they called _daalders_. One of them was the [_phillippus daalder_](http://https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.numisbids.com%2Fsales%2Fhosted%2Fpecunem%2F015%2Fimage00893.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.numisbids.com%2Fn.php%3Fp%3Dsale%26sid%3D668%26cid%3D16865&docid=s_lWNUJVe3_d5M&tbnid=scnfLBB1nm_h_M%3A&vet=10ahUKEwj0gfzjl63gAhVrU98KHY6cADUQMwhHKAYwBg..i&w=1500&h=727&safe=active&bih=948&biw=1920&q=phillippus%20daalder&ved=0ahUKEwj0gfzjl63gAhVrU98KHY6cADUQMwhHKAYwBg&iact=mrc&uact=8) so named after the then-ruler of the Netherlands, Phillip II of Spain. _Daalder_ entered Spanish as _dolaro_, and was applied to the silver [eight-_reales_](http://https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiHv-jZma3gAhURheAKHR9PCqYQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mullencoins.com%2Fblogs%2Fentry%2Fthe-historical-importance-of-the-spanish-piece-of-eight&psig=AOvVaw1fAvFXE4pbDnM8-Vto2eTE&ust=1549751837549334) coins they struck at their mine in San Luis Potosi, in Bolivia. This coin had wide circulation throughout all the colonies of the Americas, including the English ones; at the time of the American Revolution, Spanish dollars were by far the most common coin in what became the U.S., which is why Thomas Jefferson proposed adopting them as the new nation’s currency, rather than the very scarce pounds, shillings, and pence of the U.K. See, I knew all the times I reread Porteous’ _Coins In History_ would pay off; I’ve never had the opportunity to make an entire message board’s eyes glaze over at the same time > [@Aspidistra](#): > > The whole design of the US currency is an interesting combination of what I’d call metric thinking vs imperial (as in measurement) thinking. > > In Imperial systems, you have large units being any-old multiple of the small units (twelve, twenty, three … or whatever) so you’re very reluctant to drop down to the next smallest unit. It’s much easier if you’re, say, measuring distances, to talk about half miles and quarter miles than try to remember how many yards that is - recipes have quarter cups and third cups rather than translate to tablespoons. People who are fully metricated do this a lot less - nobody talks about half centimeters or quarter litres, it’s 5 mils or two fifty mils (yeah, same colloquial term for both) > > So the US monetary system is an interesting hybrid. It’s based on a lovely regular decimal system, just like the French had been pioneering. But they were clearly still thinking in an Imperial kind of way - a quarter is a quarter because it’s fundamental identity is ‘a quarter of the next biggest unit’ - it only accidentally happens to be equal to 25 cents. If the designers had been thinking of it as ‘a number of cents added together’ they probably would have made it 20, not 25 The Spanish dollars/pieces of eight that circulated in the British colonies[could and were cut up for small change](http://https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiIjIz2ma3gAhXmT98KHZ-1AIIQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fbhp%2Fpiece-of-eight-coin&psig=AOvVaw1fAvFXE4pbDnM8-Vto2eTE&ust=1549751837549334) – which was rare and desperately needed in the Colonies – thus “pieces of eight”, and “two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar”. My WAG is that the American quarter is a linguistic fossil from a monetary unit that was quite literally a physical quarter of a larger coin. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2019, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/57 "2019-02-09T14:02:44Z")
Speaking of old coins, behold the [Maria Theresa thaler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresa_thaler), in circulation yet today, nearly 140 years after the old gal’s passing. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2019, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/58 "2019-02-09T17:51:45Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > My WAG is that the American quarter is a linguistic fossil from a monetary unit that was quite literally a physical quarter of a larger coin. Probably. But it was also a [term already in use in Britain](https://www.etymonline.com/word/quarter#etymonline_v_3153) and so one easy to move over. > [@](#): > > The coin (one fourth of a dollar) is peculiar to U.S., first recorded 1783. But quarter could mean “a farthing” in Middle English (late 14c.), and compare British quadrant “a farthing” (c. 1600), and classical Latin quadrans, the name of a coin worth a quarter of an as (the basic unit of Roman currency). ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2019, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/59 "2019-02-09T22:44:27Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > To expand on **Nava** ’s post, _thaler_ is a term for a type of large silver coin minted in Central Europe, starting in the 1530s. The first came from silver mines near the Czech town then called “Joachimthal” (now Jachymov). The coins were called _Joachimthalers_, and were popular enough that other principalities began minting similar coins and calling them _thalers_. The word “thal” means - and is cognate with - the English “valley”, or vale, so when we get out or wallets, we are pretty much spending vallers. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2019, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/60 "2019-02-09T23:00:49Z")
> [@Penfeather](#): > > The word “thal” means - and is cognate with - the English “valley”, or vale, so when we get out or wallets, we are pretty much spending vallers. Yes, Joachimsthal is the “valley of St. Joachim”, just as Neanderthals were first discovered in the valley of the Neander. Didn’t know _thal_ was cognate with _valley_, though. Makes sense. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636.md?page=4)