Also, curiously, known as a “tickey” in South Africa before we got our own currency.
My mom once told me of visiting the UK at a time (pre-decimalization) when the exchange rate was about $2.4 to the pound (and hence, a pence was a cent). So the prices of all small things looked perfectly normal, but the prices of large things looked way off.
“Pence” is plural, equivalent to “pennies”, so “one pence” is incorrect.
Speaking of plurals, the slang terms “quid” and “bob” are both singular and plural. You wouldn’t say “three quids”, for example. The same goes for some other slang terms like “nicker”, which also means “pound”. In informal use, “pound” itself is also often used as a plural.
It’s so simple, so very simple
That only a child can do it![indent][indent]-- “New Math”, Tom Lehrer, 1965[/indent]
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Thruppence and sixpence each day, just to drive to my baby.
So are ha’penny and tuppence just cockney portmanteaus of ‘half-penny’ and ‘two-pence’? Trouble & strife, Bob’s yer uncle, guvna’… 
Seriously, how the hell did the Brits ever conquer the damn world thinking like that.
It’s a mystery.
I made a three week trip to Nigeria in 1971, when they were still using the pound - shilling - pence currency. It’s amazing how fast one can start thinking in another currency under a total immersion situation. In fact, when I returned to the U.S. I found myself, for a few days, automatically translating our decimal stuff to the British system.
It’s a mystery the United States is still a world power with the outdated system of measurement we still use here.
I only dimly remember decimalisation (I was three years old at the time), but it still offended me when a recent McDonalds advert (this one, in fact) claimed ‘one bob’ was one pound.
Under the LSD system, a shilling was 1/20 of a pound, and a florin therefore was 1/10 of a pound. Shillings and florins were still being used as 5p and 10p coins (they were the same size and shape) until the new, smaller 5p’s were introduced in 1991.
Bah!
Grandpa Simpson:*** “My car get thirty rods to the hogshead and that’s how I like it!”***
They were all to busy working it out themselves while we took over.
Actually, you’re not far off.
Something not covered yet is the way prices were expressed in shillings and pence. Five shillings and fivepence for example would be said as five and six and written 5/6.
I was at school when the change happened and we were drilled in the new money. Also afaik every household was issued a conversion chart and every shop displayed one. For a period before and after the conversion prices on goods were given in both currencies.
Old people had the most difficulty, probably because of sight and cognitive deterioration, it was quite common for them to just dump change into a shop assistant’s hand and ask them to take what was owed. One pair of elderly shopkeepers simply cashed up in old money on the day before the changeover, left the shop and never returned. After they died about thirty years later the frozen in time shop was rediscovered and is now a museum.
Rampant inflation in the years following decimalisation pretty much destroyed any sense of continuity over the value of money. Your chocolate bar costing 6d, sixpence, in old money in 1970 (2 1/2p) would have cost 20p (4s) by 1980.
They charged an extra penny? What a con.
The thrupenny bit was copper (I suppose actually bronze) and dodecagonical in shape (12 sided). Earlier, up to 1937, it had been a small silver coin, similar to, but I think a bit smaller and thinner than, the American dime. These would still very occasionally turn up in circulation in the 1960s.
The silver sixpence (tanner) was a bit larger and thicker than the American dime (though not so thick as the nickel), and in very common circulation. It was commonly used for slot machines and , I think for that reason, continued to be legal tender (value 2.5p) and in circulation for several years after the 1971 decimalization, although I don’t think they continued to be minted.
Florins (silver two shilling coins, a bit larger than a US quarter) continued to circulate after decimalization as 10p coins, and the new 10p coins (which I think were also already in circulation as florins before decimalization) were the same size and shape). Likewise, pre-decimalization shillings continued to circulate as 5p coins. (More recently, though, the size of all the coins has been reduced. The current 5p coin is smaller than the old sixpence.) However, until shortly before decimalization, the half-crown (worth 2s 6d), slightly larger than the florin and close in size to the old penny, was more common in circulation than the florin.
According to Wikipedia the farthing ceased to be legal tender at the end of 1960. I am a bit surprised it was so early. I can remember using them when I was a child. You could buy one Fruit Salad or Blackjack chew for a farthing.
No they were used by everyone, not just cockneys. The terms pony (£25) and monkey (£500) are largely confined to cockneys, though. (Or were until TV shows like *Minder *popularized them.)
Has anyone mentioned “nicker” used, like “quid”, to mean pounds? These are mass nouns, not pluralized, so £500 would be “five hundred nicker” or “five hundred quid”, although you can also say “a quid” (I don’t think “a nicker” is common). “Nicker” is probably largely just a cockney or London term, but “quid” is more universal.
…if by “copper” or “bronze” you mean yellow brass - the only brass coin we had in a mixture of copper and “silver” (really cupro-nickel by then). The old threepennies - up to George V - were real silver; my dad still has one or two about the place.
I’ve mentioned before that the old coins had a long lifespan - there were certainly pennies and halfpennies about the place from the late 1800s, worn very smooth in some cases but still recognisable. The silver coins were absentees though as they had long since been recalled for the precious metal. These days, even pennies and 2p aren’t solid bronze; they’ve gone the way of cheap-ass foreign money, and are just plating over still baser metal. Le sigh.
You remember right about the cross-circulation of the 5p and shilling equivalents. 5p and 10p came in circulation in 1968 as shilling and two-shilling coins, with the 50p following a year later as an alternative to the ten-shilling note (half-sovereigns were long gone 
).
Ah yes, silver threepennies and sixpences. Grandmothers used to bake them into Xmas puddings as surprises for the kids. Modern alloy coins don’t work for that purpose -I guess they are too reactive to the chemicals in the pudding. So grannies keep a stash of the old coins around just for Xmas each year, but they have to collect them to recycle for the next year. Cute custom.