The Newspaper Project

A New Biographical Dictionary

There is so much in this, but every time I read it I just keep saying, “half a crown was a lot of money in those days!” to myself.

A New Biographical Dictionary

To explain this: when we were younger, we had a Ladybird abridged version of “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, which came with an accompanying cassette tape. At the point near the end of the story when Scrooge tasks the boy to go order the prize turkey, the book and tape both informed us that “half a crown was a lot of money in those days!”

Excerpt taken from: Caledonian Mercury, 4 Jan. 1800. British Library Newspapers, accessed via National Library of Scotland membership.

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