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Those whose wages were fivepence an hour were paid the princely sum of 16/8d. for their week's hard labour, and those whose rate was fourpence-halfpenny 'picked up' 15/. And yet there are people who have the insolence to say that Drink is the cause of poverty. And many of the persons who say this, spend more money than that on drink themselves every day of their useless lives.
The same state of affairs prevailed with regard to the unskilled labourers in the Council's employment. Private employers could get that class of labour for fourpence-halfpenny or fivepence an hour, and yet the corporation paid fivepence-halfpenny and even sixpence for the same class of work. Councillor Grinder seconded. He said it amounted to a positive scandal.
Since writing that note I have discovered another proof of the contempt with which that coin was treated: 'Christian, the wife of Robert Green, of Brexham, Somersetshire, in 1663, is said to have made a covenant with the devil; he pricked the fourth finger of her right hand, between the middle and upper joints, and took two drops of her blood on his finger, giving her a fourpence-halfpenny.
She shook her head impatiently, and made him no other answer. One moment more, however, and she started up, threw her arms about his neck, and cried triumphantly, "It's buttons! fourpence-halfpenny I paid for buttons!" "Papa," said my sister Effie, one evening as we all sat about the drawing-room fire. One after another, as nothing followed, we turned our eves upon her.
The sole object in the chamber was a coarse print of a well-known informer of the year '98, 'Jemmy O'Brien, under whose portrait was written, in Atlee's hand, 'Bought in at fourpence-halfpenny, at the general sale, in affectionate remembrance of his virtues, by one who feels himself to be a relative.
The largest soul that was in all England; and provision made for it of "fourpence-halfpenny a day." Yet a giant invincible soul; a true man's.
The Grenadier was not an expensive hotel, for in the morning when I paid my bill for bed and breakfast, I found that the accommodation cost me fourpence-halfpenny.
"You have extravagant ways, I am afraid," he said. "This is fresh butter." "That piece only cost fourpence-halfpenny," she said, gravely, "and the little you eat you had better have good." "Fourpence-halfpenny!" he repeated, and fell into profound meditation, from which he broke with a sudden return of anger. "What a double-dyed villain and robber that infernal woman has been!
He defended Garrick, too, against the common charge of avarice. Garrick, as he pointed out, had been brought up in a family whose study it was to make fourpence go as far as fourpence-halfpenny. Johnson remembered in early days drinking tea with Garrick when Peg Woffington made it, and made it, as Garrick grumbled, "as red as blood." But when Garrick became rich he became liberal.
Murdstone, and begins, 'If I go into a cheesemonger's shop, and buy five thousand double-Gloucester cheeses at fourpence-halfpenny each, present payment' at which I see Miss Murdstone secretly overjoyed.
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