Are these wages given in pounds or shillings? Are they per week or per year? (see image)
Hello! I'm looking into my gg-grandfather's wages in the UK in 1914. He was a boilermaker in the shipping industry. (He worked for the Steamship Department of the Great Central Railroad.) I found a list of wages (see the image below) in 1914 England but nowhere does it indicate anything about what the numbers mean.
Are these wages given in pounds, shillings, or something else? Are they indicating the wages per year, per week, or something else? I've searched everywhere in this book and nowhere does it help the reader understand this. I'm hoping someone here might be able to help me!
Thanks!
This is taken from page 48 of the book available at this link: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t7kp84s78&view=1up&seq=52.
Answers
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at the bottom of the page it has Trade Union per hour etc
but cannot help with the type of currency could be shillings back then
Interesting document thanks for posting
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Oh boy, a numismatics question! This made my day and that is how nerdy I am.
Lowercase "d" on this page is the abbreviation for the British penny (plural "pence"). (The "d" actually comes from the Roman Empire's denarius coin--the denarius continued to be used as an accounting unit even after the fall of the Empire, and the term found its way into early English monetary notation.) So for example, on the top of the page, a bricklayer in Manchester was earning 10.5 pence an hour.
Before 1971, when the UK decimalized its currency, twelve pence made a shilling. The notation for shillings and pence was [shilling amount]/[pence amount]. So if your great-great-granddad was, say, a rivetter in Barrow, he would have been making a respectable 37 shillings and 6 pence an hour.
I hope that helps!
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Thank you!
The footnote regarding rates per hour refers back to the bricklayer's wages only, doesn't it? Or is it general for the entire page, do you think?
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Thank you!
Isn't the pence specification only for those earlier trades be ause they're listed as an hourly wage? Or is the pence unit supposed to carry on for the entire page?
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my guess is it is for any trade union job
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So 40 shillings per hour in 1905 would be almost $300 per hour in 2020. That seems awfully steep... 🤯
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I agree
something is not right
may be certain job just like today pay a lot better wages
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Well, the "/" in a shillings amount denotes that there is also a fraction of a shilling involved, noted in pence. It's the equivalent of the decimal point dividing dollars and cents in US money. So 37/6 shillings was 37 and 6/12 shillings, and since a British penny was one-twelfth of a shilling, that means there were also 6 pence involved. A shilling amount noted as n/-, as you see on these pages, meant that the amount could be expressed all in shillings with no pence remainder, like the US $5.00 even.
If you were describing a monetary amount purely in pence, with no shillings involved, you'd note the pence amount as nd., such as 6d., 2d., etc. (Notice that none of the pence amounts are a number higher than 11--because once you reached 12 pence you'd note it as a shilling instead.) Note that the halfpenny was also a unit in use back then (with its own coin, even), which is why many of the pence have a "1/2" in the number. So it looks like even those who weren't working hourly wage sometimes weren't being paid an even shilling rate--although none of them had halfpennies in their wages.
I hope that makes sense!
As for your concern that those hourly wages seem a bit steep, I agree! I took a look at the footnotes on the original page, and it looks like those in the metal trades were being paid piece rate. The rates listed here are for each individual piece they completed, not how long they were working. The rates look unusually high compared to the other occupations, because it would take the metalworkers a comparatively long time to finish each object they were working on.
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Teresa
What would 10/- be in the 1880's ?
Would that be pence or pounds ?
This was a weekly wage for my g grandmother
Thank you
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That would be shillings--she was paid 10 shillings a week for her work. Pounds were the next highest denomination; 20 shillings made a pound. Pounds have their own monetary symbol, £. Any number with a forward slash after it can be assumed to be a shilling amount. The slash sign actually comes from the old long s, because like the British penny, the shilling was abbreviated s. from the Roman solidus coin.
To write out an amount that involved pounds, you would use the notation n£. ns. nd. (First pounds, then shillings, then pence. If there were no pence you would instead write a - dash in the pence place.)
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Teresa
Thank you for the explanation
not a lot to raise a family on back then
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