in the money
A BUTCHER'S #13
A BUTCHER’S hook/look (Cockney rhyming slang)
smooth
This 1861 penny (next to a penny/cent for scale) is so smooth and feels so good - it has been worn completely flat with use. Only the year and faint suggestions of Victoria & Britannia are visible.
Holding this coin (that I actually received in change when I was a kid), it’s hard not to think of the 1934 book by Marguerite Yourcenar - A coin in nine hands which has such a great, simple and effective structure/plot: the tracking of one coin’s passage over the course of a day, through the hands of nine people - including an aging artist, a prostitute, and a would-be assassin of Mussolini.
It’s almost impossible to imagine where this coin has been and through whose hands. It ain’t no bitcoin.
Before you think that I’m 100years old (I’m not!) - these coins were actually legal tender until 1971 in England when decimalization came in. There were 12 of these in a shilling, 20 shillings in a pound (an incredible 240 in £1)
spending a penny
writing this has reminded me of something …… in England, to ‘spend a penny’ used to be a common euphemism for going to the toilet. This was a polite way for women to say they needed to ‘go’. Why? The stalls in the public Ladies were locked with a penny coin slot to open. The Gents urinals weren’t locked.
At London’s Great Exhibition in 1852 a man named George Jennings, a Brighton plumber, installed his so-called ‘Monkey Closets’ at The Crystal Palace, causing great excitement as they were the first flushing public toilets anyone had ever seen, and during the exhibition 827,280 visitors paid one penny each to use them. For ‘spending a penny’, they received a clean seat, a towel, a comb and a shoe shine.
Though public toilets really became popular only after Mr. Thomas Crapper (of course) developed some improvements to Jennings’ initial flushing mechanism, which promised ‘a certain flush with every pull’
What’s interesting is how once common phrases like ‘spending a penny’ can just fade away as their point of reference changes, or disappears. This one would mean absolutely nothing to most of the population now.
taste
For a while now I have been ‘collecting’ bizarre Italian/ Chinese made slogan T-Shirts in English. Things will probably/may change with AI. We’ll see.
I love Nature…Expensive Car, Jewelry and Money
postcard world - another cent spent
and a very odd message from grampa
Dear Heidi, arrived in good condition and practically broke after spending my all ($1.37) on you. Regards to all, Grandfather - Dec 9th 1937
Fascinating!