It Used To Be Change In Your Pocket...the At The Bottom Of A Deep Draw And Now Its Worth More Than Its Face Value

[manxchatterbox]

Nice piece in the FT supplement to-day about IOM coins being collectable...

 

 

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c33cb868-c69b-11d...00779e2340.html

 

Promise in coin of the smaller realm

By Peter Temple

Published: April 8 2006

[Declan]

It Used To Be Change In Your Pocket...the At The Bottom Of A Deep Draw And Now Its Worth More Than Its Face Value

 

Yeah if you had lived between 1709 and 1839.

 

Still the bit about rioting when the Manx Currency was pegged to the English one is interesting. Does anyone know more about this?

[Frances]

try www.manxnotebook.com - go to search engine and enter [copper riots]

[Declan]

Ha!

 

I should have known to look there, I suppose I'm slipping into the bad ways of MCB and getting other people to do my research for me!

 

From Frances' site I did find this rather amusing -

 

"Let not dissension and insubordination deprive Mona of her Legs."

 

And so say all of us!

[the mo beats experience]

"Let not dissension and insubordination deprive Mona of her Legs."

Isn't that Slipknot?

[willstain]

I'm sure there was something about this in the new manx history book. Basically as the English Shilling was made up of only 12 pennies, and the Manx of 14, the people thought they were losing 2 pennies in every pound.

 

 

 

Manx Maths? 40 pennies surely?

[Gladys]

Just an aside, but does anyone know why old money wasn't decimal (i.e. divisible by ten)? It just seems odd to have any system of counting that doesn't go in tens, you know, ten fingers and all that, and why 12 or even 14? Same goes for old imperial measures, why 16 ounces to make a pound but 14 pounds to make a stone?

 

Usually the old system of measurements was linked to some ergonomic/practical standard; a yard was from your nose to the end of your outstretched arm, an inch is roughly the distance of the last joint on your thumb to the tip and an acre was the area of land that could be ploughed in a day. All sensible quantities (if not too accurate) that you can measure without reference to any other standard than the average human! But the sub-division of money and weights has always been a bit of mystery.

[Chinahand]

I don't know about 14 and 16, but 12 is mathematically a more elegant number than 10 ... hence its use to tell the time!

 

Halfs, thirds, quarters, sixths and twelths are all divisiable to an integer, something that isn't true for 10. It makes dividing the day into units much simpler and saves any problems with fractions!

[Frances]

why 14 ? - see www.manxnotebook.com/history/14pence.htm

[fatshaft]

what's a deep draw?

[Frances]

er ?

[Frances]

er ?