[TR] Brit Money Definition

[Michael Marr]

Actually, a UK hundredweight is 112 lbs or 8 stone.  There are 20 cwt to the 
ton (2,240 lbs in the UK, sometimes called the "long ton" to differentiate 
it from the short ton, or 2,000 lbs, as used in the US).  When I was a 
little boy in the fifties, the coalman would deliver coal in cwt bags.  The 
bags were stacked vertically on the coal lorry and the coalman would lift a 
bag on his shoulder, carry it through the "passage" to the back garden and 
dump the coal in the coal bin.  My dad would order 20 cwt at a time (never a 
ton, always 20 cwt) and my job was to count the bags as the coalman dumped 
them.

By the way, back then I would be given a threepenny piece ("thruppeny bit") 
every Thursday as my pocket money, for which I could buy a comic (the Dandy 
or the Beano) and four blackjacks, which were licorice flavored soft candies 
that sold for a farthing each.  Thursdays were pretty damn close to heaven.

Mike

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <KingsCreekTrees at aol.com>
To: <wsb1960tr3a at att.net>; <triumphs at autox.team.net>
Sent: Saturday, October 24, 2009 8:30 PM
Subject: Re: [TR] Brit Money Definition


> A hundredweight (abbreviated to cwt--always lower case for some reason), 
> is
> one hundred pounds. Why that one is so complicated when all the other UK
> measurements are so simple, I have no idea. The use of cwt has dwindled to
> virtually nothing now, mostly because weight (with the exception of the
> weight  of human beings) is metric, so as not to mix the two different 
> systems.
> I guess  a hundredweight equaling a hundred pounds was too complicated.