Oct 14 1914 Ad for Scotch House shows people to see how much it costs to dress an Army officer http://t.co/vCMDDVFvg1 pic.twitter.com/aIygmjiocg — WWI covered live (@ThisDayInWWI) October 15, 2014

Old English money is highly confusing as they didn’t use the decimal system till 1971. In the UK before 1971 there weretwenty (20) shillings per pound (£) which was written as “20/-”. So this “10/-” meant 10 shillings or £0.50.

The “d” meant a penny and in one pound (£) there were 240 pennies ( 240d ) = £1. To make it even more confusing a sum of 12s 6d (12 shilling and 6 pennies) was normally written as 12/6. To convert a penny you calculate 1d = 5⁄ 12 p ≈ 0.417p. So 6d would be 2 1⁄ 2 p or 2.5 pence or £0.025.

So breaking down this ad and using Wikipedia’s inflation calculator we can see how much each item cost, then and now adjusted for inflation.

And according to the exchange rate in Oct of 2014 £ 2,330 would be about $US 3,712. About $3700 to outfit a British officer. I’m not sure what a British officer would get paid but we know that a private in the British army was paid $1.60 a week. Adjusted for inflation that would be about $213/week or $850/month.