Old British money - what does L stand for?

[Liz from Lancs]

Have come across this in Scottish and English documents. A small letter l next to an amount?

Anyone know if it means pounds?

Thanks.

[ozgirl]

Yes, L was used for pounds. - L S D = Pounds shillings and pence.

[Liz from Lancs]

Linda - I learn something every day on FTF . Had forgotten LSD...many thanks.

[Uncle John]

Don't get it confused with the other LSD - or perhaps you have!!

[Liz from Lancs]

Now now Uncle John...Being born just after the war, I should have known LSD but never tried drugs although I did grow my hair and skirts long at one point in the seventies .

[wulliam]

Libra Solidus Denarius
Gold Silver Bronze

I think!

[Olde Crone Holden]

Libra means a pound weight and 240 (silver) pennies weighed a pound.

OC

[JudithM]

Libra Solidus Denarius
Gold Silver Bronze

I think!

Partly right - those are the latin words that LSD stand for but are names of coins/money amounts not the words for gold silver and bronze (which would be aurum, argentum and aes)
There was a roman bronze or copper coin called an aes and the silver denaius was worth 10 of these.

[Sue at the seaside]

It just came to mind as I was writing on another thread, we also use Librae as pounds in weight, but abbreviated to lb! How is anyone ever meant to guess that lb is pronounced "pound"? At times like that you have to feel for people whose second language is English!

[wulliam]

I wonder whether 1 lb of silver (or gold?) used to be worth £1??

[Olde Crone Holden]

Well, yes, it was - 1lb of silver was made into 240 coins, so 240 pennies made 1 lb of silver, lol. It has always been an offence to deface coinage, but people used to cut bits out. Also, the vast majority of the population didn't use standard coinage and there were many local variants of coinage before about 1500.

Gold standard wasn't introduced until the 16th century (I think), probably about the time banking started.

OC

[Liz from Lancs]

Really interesting contributions...thank you...does anyone know when we stopped used L and started using £ sign for pounds?

[JudithM]

The £ sign is an L in old handwriting, but with the cross bars to indicate that this is used as an abbreviation. I've come across it in old (18th century) wills but don't know how long it has been used.

[Olde Crone Holden]

I have seen Wills and inventories pre 1500 which use "l" after a sum of mony, so 20l would mean £20. I think the crossbar and putting the L in front of a sum of money,(rather than after it) came into being again when formal banking started and currency was regularised, at least for formal and commercial use.

I should have said above, that the expression "The pound sterling" is from the fact that a pound of money had the value of a pound weight of sterling silver, but of course it is many a century since we had silver pennies.

OC

[Christine in Herts]

I read somewhere that "Sterling" came from "Easterling" - a reference to silversmiths who'd come from lands further east - like Holland.

The cross-line (sometimes doubled) is often used for currency abbreviations e.g.:
€uro
£ Libra/Pound
$ Dollar (not quite sure what the background to that one is - probably in Wikipedia!)
¥en

Christine

[Olde Crone Holden]

Christine

That may be correct. Sterling was used to describe silver before it was used to describe money. Sterling silver is silver which has a legally required amount of silver content and I think (from memory) silver was legislated long before currency.

OC

[Liz from Lancs]

The £ sign is an L in old handwriting, but with the cross bars to indicate that this is used as an abbreviation. I've come across it in old (18th century) wills but don't know how long it has been used.

Thank you Judith and for everyone's contribution...been v. interesting.

[grumpy]

As a pure aside. If I type a dollar sign (upper case 4) e.g. $ $ $ does it come out as a pound sign on an English computer or as

a dollar sign ? Our keyboards do not have the pound symbol on them any more.

[Olde Crone Holden]

Whatever you type on your keyboard comes out as whatever you typoed on your keyboard, lol.

You probably do still have a £ sign, you have to fiddle about with caps lock I think, to get it. My keyboard doesn't have a dollar sign.

OC

[Uncle John]

I'm sure a techie will be along to give you the Alt + 4 digit number to get these symbols on any keyboard.