If you struggle to add, multiply and divide sums of money written in pre-decimal currency, then you are not alone - and you may wish to download the Excel calculator I’ve created for just that purpose.
Download the Pre-Decimal Calculator for £, s, d (Downloads in .xlsx)
With 20 shillings to the pound, 12d to the shilling, and pennies and farthings to contend with, financial calculations in “old money” are, to be honest, a complete pain. And that’s before you even begin to think about the coinage - groats, thrupenny bits, sovereigns and the like just add to the complication.
As an historian, you might, for example, discover that the wages bill for a mid-19th century company was £471 17s 3d. But how much was that a month or a week?
And if you have a column of figures to add up, are you confident you could do it without scribbling down a note of the amount carried over from column to column?
Probably not, unless you are somewhere in your mid-60s or above, or your name is Jacob Rees-Mogg (and he probably has People to do that sort of thing).
The Excel (.xlsx) spreadsheet includes a number of different mini-calculators:
- Convert £,s,d to (old) pennies
- Convert pennies to £,s,d
- Add up a column of figures in £,s,d
- Multiply values in £,s.d
- Divide values in £,s,d
The first two mini-calculators are all you really need to get by. Once you’ve converted, say, £2 10s to 600d, any further calculations are straightforward. And once you have your final answer, you can convert it back to £,s,d.
The spreadsheet is not locked, and you are welcome to have a look at the underlying formulas, or add your own. And if you accidentally delete something that breaks the spreadsheet, you can simply download it again from here.
I am, incidentally, indebted to Dr Quentin Outram for introducing me to the MOD function which made most of this workable.
Download the Pre-Decimal Calculator for £, s, d (Downloads in .xlsx)
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