Saving the copper ........ a 5/- bag from sometime in the 1940s

Saving the copper, date unknown

Now there will be those who mutter this is not really much to do with history.

But there I would disagree, because it is one of those small everyday objects which are so part of our lives that we give them no significance.

I came across this one in a collection of material from my dad.

It is a paper money bag for the National Provincial Bank and would have been used to bag pennies, halfpenny and farthings.

Now I don’t have a date but it will be before 1971 when we went decimal and adopted a new set of coins junking the old pounds shillings and pence.

Before 1971 the pound was made up of 240 pennies with 12 pennies making a shilling and 20 shillings making a pound.

All very bewildering for any one born after 1971 but pretty clear to me and those who can also remember Five Boys chocolate bars,  drinking Kia-Ora orange at the pictures, and Rin Tin Tin.

The National Provincial Bank had a long history starting up in 1833 before becoming the National Westminster Bank in 1970.

All of which gives little clue to a date for the bag except for the request “IN VIEW OF THE APPEALS MADE FOR THE ECONOMY OF PAPER WILL CUSTOMERS KINDLY RETURN ALL THESE BAGS TO THE BANK FOR RE-USE.”

Hotel Regina, Venice, circa 1950s

Of course such appeals I guess have come at regular intervals but I suspect this may date the bag to the Second World War or the years directly afterwards.

Now given the sort of chap my dad was it would not surprise me that this money bag had been sitting amongst his stuff from that time, before coming north to us.

It had been used to hold a series of hotel suitcase labels from the 1950s and these too in the fullness of time will come out to feature as stories for the blog.

In the meantime my 70 year old money bag will return to its place of safe storage, and I shall go rummaging for some pennies, and haipeni’s and may even turn up the odd three penny bit and sixpence.

And who knows may well come across more stories of the trivial kind.

Pictures; money bag, date unknown and hotel suitcase label, circa 1950s,  from the collection of Andrew Simpson