The measure inspired bitter opposition and was even unpopular with the working class, who were not convinced by Lloyd George's slogan "ninepence for fourpence," the difference in these two figures being the employer's and the state's contribution.
People who need to live on fourpence can do so more easily here".
At Bicton in Derbyshire, the gardeners were fined threepence if they arrived in a dirty shirt or if their shoes were not properly tied, and fourpence if they were "found gathering fruit with unwashed hands".
When an arched footbridge to the mainland was built a year later, clubbers paid fourpence admission and were wrist-stamped as they queued to join dancers in the ballroom adjoining the neglected hotel.
Here is art critic Julia Cartwright describing in her diary the delights of discriminating shopping at her favourite Morris & Co in Oxford Street: "There are lovely things at every turn, Persian potteries, hangings of every variety, cabinets and rugs and I fell in love with a sunflower paper at fourpence ha'penny a yard".
Back when rock music was deemed antisocial, and even traditional jazz bands were frowned upon, it cost just fourpence to gain entry to a place where the young were free to dance, drink and kiss.
It was her habit to hitchhike to London, spurning offers from private cars but taking lifts from lorry drivers to whom she would offer the equivalent of the bus fare – fourpence – which they would usually refuse.
He reconstituted the Queen's Hall Orchestra as a limited company under himself as chairman and subsidised the Proms from his own pocket to the annual tune of £2,000 – at least £200,000 in today's values – offering season tickets at an average price of fourpence a night.
In 1508, Lord Huntingdon paid three shillings and fourpence for "20 great oranges to send down into the country to preserve".
Every week his Methodist mother paid a penny ha'penny for £5 to cover her children's early demise, fourpence for the Hospital Savings Association, with another two shillings for a clothing club - typical, he said, of "respectable working-class parents".
(Or "one thousand seven hundred and thirty-eight pounds, fifteen shillings and fourpence, New-York money," as the newcomer specifies; the baffling complexities of pre-Revolutionary currency and finance become one of the novel's running jokes).
