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Glossary entry

English term or phrase:

two-and-six or three-and-six dinner

English answer:

dinner costing two shillings and sixpence or three shillings and sixpence

Added to glossary by Charles Davis
Jan 7, 2013 16:34
11 yrs ago
6 viewers *
English term

two-and-six or three-and-six dinner

Non-PRO English Art/Literary General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters
"Angela [an Italian young woman who lives in London in post-war years] also worked on some evenings as a waitress in the Italian restaurant not far from Earls Court station; she served two-and-six or three-and-six dinners. I had dinner there a few times...

the novel is british, and the setting is post-war london...
does the numbers refer to the number of people being served, or something else? i couldn't figure
Responses
5 +6 dinners costing two shillings and sixpence or three shillings and sixpence
5 +4 two shillings and sixpence...
3 two shillings and six pence
Change log

Jan 9, 2013 11:34: Charles Davis Created KOG entry

Votes to reclassify question as PRO/non-PRO:

PRO (1): David Moore (X)

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Discussion

AllegroTrans Jan 8, 2013:
And I.... ...remember buying cod n' chips in Stockport for 1/6d. Bread and butter was an extra 3d.
B D Finch Jan 8, 2013:
Expensive jam! I remember buying cod and chips in 1968, in Manchester for 1/8d, so Tony's pot of jam must have been top of the range. Of course, in Manchester the evening meal was "tea". Yes, whether the midday meal is lunch or dinner is very much about class and about whether it is the main meal of the day. Supper is a lighter meal than dinner, so you could have either supper or dinner in the evening and either lunch or dinner at mid-day.

We also had to learn our 1/3d, 1/8d, 3/4d and 2/6d times tables at school and it was useful to be able to divide a pound by 3, 8, 12 or even 16. You could also count coins by touch without looking at them because they were all such different shapes and sizes.
Tony M Jan 7, 2013:
And... ... don't let's forget that up until about the same time, the FR currency was also based on the 'livre' — it used to be the 'Tours pound' (of silver); so in fact, there was a lot more unity of currency (and indeed, other meausrmeents, like the foot, once, yard, ...) across Europe before the French Revolution came along and tried to introduce 'logic' into everyday life!
AllegroTrans Jan 7, 2013:
@ Charles Well I never. And we "awkard British" were always blamed for having "illogical" (i.e. non decimal) currency. How very interesting.
Charles Davis Jan 7, 2013:
More useless information I can't resist sharing It gave me enormous pleasure to discover, when I came to study Spanish history, that in the old Kingdom of Aragon (in whose territory I now live) the basic currency units were the libra, the sueldo (from solidus, also the source of shilling) and the dinero; there were 240 dineros in a libra, 12 dineros to the sueldo, and 20 sueldos to the libra. This lasted until the early eighteenth century, when the Bourbons arrived from France and abolished it all.
British Diana Jan 7, 2013:
a big meal is a dinner Yes, it's never called "Christmas Lunch" is it , although this meal takes place in the middle of the day or thereabouts
Charles Davis Jan 7, 2013:
I would guess that dinner in this text refers to the midday meal. I grew up in a middle class home in a South London suburb, and I clearly remember that in my childhood we called the midday meal dinner and the evening meal supper. And we certainly had school dinners, policed by dinner ladies, not lunches. I don't think "lunch" started to be widely used in my world until the seventies. I presume formal evening meals were called dinners back then (you would have had Rotary Club dinners, for example), but at home we had supper.
Tony M Jan 7, 2013:
lunch / dinner I think this was a class thing; in my working-class home, we talked of dinner at noon, tea and/or supper in the evening, and if we were lucky, our meal might have been followed by 'pudding' or 'afters'. As in many cultures where physical work was involved, the noon-time dinner was the main meal of the day.

But in more middle-class circles, one would take lunch(eon), afternoon tea, and then dress for dinner — and here, the evening meal was probably the highlight of the day.

I note that my Belgian friends refer to 'dîner' at midday too.
Tony M Jan 7, 2013:
@ Charles Oh dear me yes ** nostalgic sigh ** I too loved thru'p'ny bits — when I was very small, I went on a CND march (just after the Aldermarston rally), I was very proud with my little placard, and a passer-by gave me a lovely golden 3d bit; I was so disappointed when I realized it wasn't for me, but to go in my collecting tin ;-(

I loved those old names too: tanner, bob, florin, half-crown (and indeed crown), guinea...

@ Diana: what do you mean by "Why is it called 3d?" — are you querying the use of 'd' as an abbreviation for 'pence'? If so, it's because the original stood for 'denarius', the Roman coin that was equivalent to the later 'penny' (and cf. FR 'deniers'); the £sd actually stood for 'libræ, solidi, denarii' (or something very close to that, it's 40 years since I did Latin!)
British Diana Jan 7, 2013:
Why is it called 3d ? I'm sure I knew once. And when is a dinner at lunchtime and when at suppertime? Here in this text it is the evening meal (what I would have called supper back in the 60s in Greater London).
Charles Davis Jan 7, 2013:
@ Tony Yes, older people particularly went on converting and feeling outraged by the result for some time after 1971, I remember. The same thing happened in Spain when the euro came in, and with good reason: I remember the price of a coffee in many bars jumped from 100 pesetas to a euro (166 ptas) almost overnight. Older people still quite often convert back to pesetas, particularly with property prices (where you thought in millions, colloquially called "kilos" in Spanish in the old days).

You're right about the pence of course: now you say it, two and three/nine/eleven do sound right. Odd, though, that it's more natural to omit "pence" in some cases than in others. I suppose it's probably because three, six and nine are quarters of a shilling. "Two and six" sounds so natural that "two and sixpence" almost seems a bit false.

I just missed the farthing as legal tender, but there were still farthings around and I hoarded all those that came my way (as boys do). I loved the wren. But I was particularly fond of threepenny bits: so chunky and golden and idiosyncratically shaped, and I liked the portcullis.
Tony M Jan 7, 2013:
Anecdotal One of my former partners used to run a local 'tea shoppe', and shortly after decimalization, he was scandalized to note that a large white coffee was now 35p — "D'you realize that's 7/6d??!!" He'd be turning in his grave now if he knew that current prices are around £2 – £3!!! Admittedly the coffee is usually better these days!
Tony M Jan 7, 2013:
@ Charles Well found! Funnily enough, I was going to mention Lyons, as in the 30s my Mum used to get lunch ther for a shilling, and that included live background music!

Yes, we certainly did say 'two-and-nine', though as you say, the other pence seem to beg the addition of the pence; it sounds odd to me not to say 'two and tuppence / fourpence / fivepence / sevenpence. But oddly enough, 'two and three / six / nine / eleven' all sound fine! Remember the old '19 and 11' (19/11d), to avoid saying 'a pound' — just like '£3.99' today!

I'm happy to say I'm (just!) old enough to remember farthings, with the jenny wren on them.
Charles Davis Jan 7, 2013:
1940s prices Here's a J. Lyons price list from 1940; the page claims that these prices "apply generally also to the post WWII period". I'd say you could put together a pretty acceptable meal for two and six:

http://www.kzwp.com/lyons/tariff.htm

A cup of tea here ("The Best in the World") costs 2½d. According to this same site (on the history of J. Lyons), "a large cup of tea at a Lyons Teashop cost 2.1/2d (old pennies) in the 1950s". So it hadn't gone up since 1940.
http://www.kzwp.com/lyons/teashops.htm
Charles Davis Jan 7, 2013:
I'm old enough to remember pre-decimal currency very well, though not 1940s meal prices!

One linguistic point I've been pondering is whether "two (or three) and six", without "pence", was just used for sixpence. I mean, we certainly said "two and six", but I'm not at all sure we said "two and four" or "two and nine", for example; I think we would always have said "two and fourpence" or "two and ninepence", but it was a long time ago and I'm not sure any more. What do others think about this?
Tony M Jan 7, 2013:
Post-war inflation My parents moved to the South of England from London in 1952, the house they wanted to but then cost £600; by 1962, it cost £6,000; and by 1972, it had reached £60,000. Of course, property inflation over that period didn't exactly track the general cost of living.

One of my earliest cost-of-living memories was a ½ lb pot of Roberston's strawberry jam in our local International Stores that cost 1/3¼d — that would have been around 1962, I guess; so in just 10 years or so, a small pot of jam had reached half the cost of a full meal!
Terry Richards Jan 7, 2013:
dessert/desert I lost it when they stopped calling it "pudding" :)
Tony M Jan 7, 2013:
Hi Terry! Hope you find that oasis soon ;-)

The other way round, I've always dreamed of being washed ashore on a dessert island ;-)

I would say these prices were about average, as you say, for a bog-standard English caff of that period. Since most EN meals would have been only 2 courses, your suggestion that the 3/6d meal maybe includes and extra course seems plausible to me; though since 'starters' weren't especially common in those days, I'd say likely to be soup or somesuch.
Terry Richards Jan 7, 2013:
Was that cheap for those days? In 1960 you could buy a candy bar for three pence that now costs me a Euro. So the dinner would cost 10 candy bars or 10 Euros which is a cheapish dinner now but add in another 10-15 years of inflation and I don't think 2/6 (another way of writing two and six) would have been that cheap.

If you look at http://www.unstatistical.com/?p=34 inflation was not high between 1948 and 1960 so I'm roughly estimating that these were 12 and 15 Euro dinners.

Not unreasonable for a fixed price menu at a back-street restaurant. THe higher priced meal probably included soup and a desert.

Responses

+6
4 mins
Selected

dinners costing two shillings and sixpence or three shillings and sixpence

This refers to the old British currency of pounds, shillings and pence (12 old pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound). So two and six was two and half shillings, and three and six was three and a half shillings. Equivalent respectively to 12-1/2 and 17-1/2 new pence (though prices have gone up a lot since those days!).

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 6 mins (2013-01-07 16:41:38 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

This is quite a useful page on the subject. The currency changed in 1971:
http://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questi...
Peer comment(s):
agree Edith Kelly : I am giving you my agree because the first person answering did not mention the three shillings and sixpence bit, so the answer is incomplete.
9 mins
Thank you very much, Edith :)
agree David Moore (X) : I have to agree, for your concise explanation and good reference.
11 mins
Thanks very much, David :)
agree Andy Watkinson : It always felt better to be given "half a crown" than "two and six", even though they were the same.
29 mins
Yes! This is making me very nostalgic. A half crown was a really nice big satisfying coin. Thanks, Andy :)
agree Tony M
30 mins
Thanks, Tony :)
agree katsy
57 mins
Thanks, katsy :)
agree AllegroTrans : £. s. d. I remember it well.
2 hrs
Me too, and with great affection, which seems to be a common feeling. Probably nostalgia for our lost youth. Thanks, Allegro.
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "thanks"
+4
3 mins

two shillings and sixpence...

It refers to the price
Peer comment(s):
agree Jack Doughty : Very cheap, even for the late forties
1 min
I wasn't sure if that was cheap then or not. I'm too young to remember :)
agree James A. Walsh
2 mins
agree David Moore (X) : I don't believe Jack remembers the late 1940s - that's not "very cheap", for those days; probably about standard..
9 mins
I think you are right - see my discussion entry.
agree Tony M : Yes, 2/6d would have been about standard for a cheap caff, and the 3/6d meal would have been real luxury (perhaps 3 courses, including soup?)
25 mins
Something went wrong...
3 mins

two shillings and six pence

and three shilling and six pence

would be my guess

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 4 mins (2013-01-07 16:39:01 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

shillings
Something went wrong...
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