The thing about British money is that the pound is the standard, the govt measure of value BUT often it did not exist in the actual currencey of the day. Weird huh? Spain also had a govt currencey which often was not available in the coinage either. There is a special name for this money which Donald Platt might remember as he came across it in the reseach for his novel.

I’m updating your privileges to author so you can “do it.”

DLKeur

Re - pounds, guinea, pence and all… it was my understanding that the guinea coin was actually worth 21 shillings (rather than the pound, which was 20)and when I read near-contemporary writers like Dickens and Thackeray, etc, it is always coins they are throwing around.

In our own dear United States, paper money was also not very much used at that time either - one of the popular coins in circulation was Spanish gold reales (I think) for which there were no small-change equivalent, so they might be cut into eight pieces, or ‘bits’. Hence the slang ‘two bits’ for twenty-five cents.

…to both Celia Hayes and PDR Lindsay on saying what needs to be said concerning this subject, and not just about historicals, but anything. I shudder and cringe when I read or listen to folks including animals — pigs, horses, whatever — in their story, even self-supposed “experts” because, really, they ain’t got no clue. They wouldn’t know a lip chain from a twitch, and would confuse the one with the other, never mind that an ergot isn’t a disease, but a part of the anatomy, and that sidesaddles are one of the most secure saddles a person can ride…and one of the most dangerous because they are nearly impossible to escape from in an emergency, especially when riding a panicked, runaway while wearing a full length riding skirt.

I mind sloppy research so much, not only because people believe what they read, but also because it is a form of cultural vandalism, especially when a writer writes about a country other than their own. And sloppy research covers a range of things, one of which is not going far enough but taking surface things without double checking.

I am still trying to get this through the heads of a group of American romance writers, who call themselves historical writers, and who write about Britain 1800-1815. They insist that people waved pound notes about and used them as they themselves would use their own dollar bills. Despite giving them the Bank of England statement ‘The first fully printed notes were issued in 1855′ they refuse to accept what most British people understand, that notes in the form of paper money, are recent, but the pound is, and always has been, the official currency used as the govt financial standard. However that did not mean there was always an actual pound coin. Indeed in 1800 it was the guinea coin which was the money of the day, along with a plethera of coins ranging from a farthing, ha’penny, tuppence, thrupence, a groat, a tanner, a shilling, to a crown and some weird tokens and overstamped coins.

The paper notes issued by banks in 1800 as one or two pounds were not like today’s dollar bill, but were temporary, used to relieve the gold shortage, and were more like a postal order/money order than the paper money we are used to. They were given in exchange for banker’s drafts and used by the govt.

The sticking point for those romance writers is that they’ve researched old documents and keep finding pound values in statements, newspapers, wills etc of 1800. Because their cultural experience is with simple dollars and cents they cannot or will not make the leap to understanding that whilst the pound value was always used officialy in fact the coinage of 1800 did not include a pound coin but a guinea coin. Nor do they make the leap to seeing how all the little bits of money can be used to make guineas and half guineas, even a pound.

Research, as you rightly say, is more than skimming the internet or reading the online documents at the Old Bailey.

http://marvadasef.com/contactus.aspx

I have a couple other books you could get if you win the drawing. “First Duty” is my YA science fiction. “Tales of a Texas Boy” is also available in a variety of sizes.