A joke of the time was that the Brits thought the problem with Yanks was that they were “overpaid, oversexed and over here.” The Americans replied that the British troops were just sore because they were “underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower.”
Mills are used in tax policy, too.
AFAIK this went on until decimalization. I once read an early interview with Paul McCartney in which he said his violin-shaped bass guitar cost sixty guineas, going on to say he could afford a better one, but he was a skinflint.
No, I think a ton is 2000 squid.
Britain, remember?
2,240 squid to the tonne.
UK to USA money is easy!
1 Guinea is 21 shillings, thus worth quite a bit more than 1 pound, which was 20 shillings.
Each shilling consisting of 12 pence, of course.
One pence consisting of 4 farthing naturally.
In US money, this was about 2/3rds of a $5 half-eagle, thus $3
(not to be confused with an indian head, which was $3… except when it was $2.50)
Of course today a 1921 one-pound note is worth about $54, unless you have the actual note, in which case it is worth about $200, depending on condition.
see, easy!
What’s really annoying about this is that a mill is an actual unit of currency, as well as an amount of a annual property tax levy per dollar of taxable value. There’s no reason to think when someone says that the new millage proposal is 2.9 mills that it would inherently mean 2.9 mills per dollar of taxable value paid annually; that’s just how it’s come to be used. My example there also shows that they definitely don’t keep to even mill numbers, which means that the entire point of using mills, and not cents or simply dollars, is kinda irrelevant. But kept on almost certainly because of the people who think that .02 cents is the same as $.02, and so they keep talking about things in mills because that’s what people understand. If they instead talking about it in terms of $2.90 per thousand dollars of taxable value, people would probably be up in arms despite it being the same thing.
Also to note is that the rate is per taxable value dollar, not per dollar the land is actually worth. At least in Michigan, the taxable value can only go up so much per year, although it otherwise would be equal to the State Equalized Value, which according to my mother the retired commercial real estate professional is one-half of the actual value of your home. Personally, I take this whole “one half” thing to mean that if you had your house sold at a sheriff’s sale for lack of payment, they’d probably only get one-half of what you’d get if you had some time to find a reasonable buyer. And since that’s what the state would get if they had to seize your home over unpaid taxes, that’s what they use in assessing the taxes. At least, again, in Michigan.
I understand this was once about the size of a sheet of letter paper. Was a five-pound note still that big in 1921? I’m just curious.
Not that people use checks much anymore, but I wonder if you could write a check for a thousand dimes instead of a hundred dollars, and the bank would honor it?
Don’t forget “mill levies” which are a property tax expressed in mills: A mill in that context is $1 tax for every $1,000 of assessed value.
As is customary in these things: Maybe.
There’s an old urban legend (maybe true, maybe not) about someone painting a check on the side of a living cow and a bank honoring it. That may or may not have happened, but the fact is that a check is just a simple financial instrument which only needs basic information to be valid. The pre-printed forms banks issue are merely a convenience for both you and them; they have a number of cunning features to aid automatic processing, such as magnetic ink in an odd typeface to allow non-OCR scanning of the routing and account numbers, so a bank would be unhappy if you came in with dozens of checks on scraps of paper, but that’s between you and your bank or other financial institution. Similarly, a store doesn’t have to take a valid but irregular check, but a store also doesn’t have to take a fifty dollar bill, or a fistful of pennies.
According to the UCC, which isn’t law but has been widely used as the model for state laws, a check is a draft (other than a documentary draft) payable on demand and drawn on a bank, or a cashier’s check, which, since those are issued by banks, are going to be of a standard form because that’s how banks are; a documentary draft is “a draft to be presented for acceptance or payment if specified documents, certificated securities or instructions for uncertificated securities, or other certificates, statements, or the like are to be received by the drawee or other payor before acceptance or payment of the draft.” I’m sure someone, somewhere, actually uses those things. I further note that the definition of a check doesn’t mention that a payee must be specified; this seems to indicate that if none is named, it’s a bearer instrument, payable to whoever has it.
They were never that big:
The first £5 notes were introduced in 1793 as a reaction to the war against France and the shortage of gold. The notes were 195 x 120mm (about 7½ x 4¾") in size and were produced in black ink on white paper, later becoming known as the “White Fiver”. These notes were left relatively unchanged (with the exception of some size fluctuations) until 1945 when a metal thread security feature was introduced for the first time.
The White Fiver, which had shrunk somewhat by then, was removed from circulation in March 1961
Just because I remember this, the story of Patrick Combs:
He gave back the money and is now a motivational speaker.
See post 81.
I think what the writer meant was there were 240 pennies in a pound.
12 pennies (p) in a shilling (s) and 20 shillings in a pound (£).
To get even more difficult there were:
4 farthings = 1 penny
3 pennies = threepence (obviously, but there was a coin)
6 pennies = sixpence " " "
4 pennies = 1 groat (last used in the 16th century)
3 groats = 1 shilling (12 pence)
2 1/2 shillings = 1 half-a-crown
2 half-a-crowns = 1 crown
4 crowns = 1 pound
1 pound + 1 shilling = 1 guinea.
Britain adopted the decimal system almost fifty years ago but myself and folks my age (71) can still instantly add, divide, and multiply in the old currency
I’m 71 and British; but I can’t – never could. Can’t instantly do all that stuff “in decimal” either: I’m self-confessedly hopeless at arithmetic.
Once upon a time, schoolchildren were made to memorize their multiplication tables up to at least 12 x 12, which was obviously handy when dealing with duodecimal currency.
At my school, we went up to the 16 times table - for ounces in a pound.
And some of us had the old-style exercise books with all the measures listed on the back - rods, poles and perches included. But that’s really going off topic.
According to Wikipedia, the groat was issued in Britain as late as the middle of the 19th century. And in British Guiana (now Guyana), until they decimalized in the middle of the 20th century.
My bolding above – now going really wildly off topic: I live in Birmingham, England – setting for the gangland epic concerned. A local firm which makes various pork-based “nibbles” (a favourite snack here in England’s West Midlands), has cashed in on the popular television series, by launching a line which it calls “Porky Blinders”.
I’ve tried to do a link; but can only suggest Googling “porky blinders pork scratchings”: among the first “hits” therefrom, is a headline “Images for porky blinders pork scratchings”. The furthest-left of the pictures shown immediately below said headline, depicts the matching cartoon. I just find the drawing, showing a pig in menacing pose and 1921 gangster garb, marvellously silly…