The above photos show, in clockwise order:
- The Royal Exchange of London where Scrooge meets business associates
- Christmas pudding or bread pudding with holly leaves and berries
- photos of Cornhill where Scrooge lived and worked
- Find more info about the treadmill/treadwheel as a punishment from the BBC
- 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town where Dickens lived as a child, and the house on which he supposedly based the Cratchit home in Stave 3
- photos of St. Paul’s Cathedral
RESOURCES:
- A Christmas Carol free audiobook
- Get to know Scrooge through his “inbox“
- Mrs. R’s ACC Pinterest Board
- Scrooge’s house was probably in the heart of the City of London
- Scrooge’s “counting house” or place of business was possibly in Newman’s Court
Starting the unabridged version – some notes:
Starting Stave 1 of ACC from Hannah Reimer on Vimeo.
See a photo of the original manuscript with Dickens’s revisions.
See the Library of Congress’s illustrated copy of ACC
Why read A Christmas Carol from the Ad Council
VIDEO CLIPS on Dickens:
-click here to go to my Dickens blog and watch the two videos in the most recent post (at the top of the first page).
Info on words in the text:
Ali Baba
Robinson Crusoe
A Victorian Glossary to help with comprehension of the novel
Bakehouse and Cratchit Christmas Scene vocab
CURRENCY QUESTIONS:
Thanks to Woodlands Junior School in Kent, England (near Dickens’s birthplace) for the following information:
The British currency is the pound sterling. The sign for the pound is £. England does not use the Euro. Although a few of the big shops will accept Euro, it is rarely used across Britain.
Today, the pound (£) is made up of 100 pence (p) exactly like the dollar is split into 100 cents.
The singular of pence is “penny“. The symbol for the penny is “p“; hence an amount such as 50p is often pronounced “fifty pee” rather than “fifty pence”.
abbreviations:
- pounds (£ or l )
- shillings (s. or /-) and
- pennies (d.)
But before 1971, England’s money was divided much differently than it is today.
From 1066 to 1971, and therefore, during the Victorian era, the pound was divided into twenty shillings and the shilling was divided into twelve pennies or pence. Therefore there were 240 pennies or pence in a pound.
1 £ = 20 s.(shillings)
1 s. (shilling) = twelve (12) pennies
1 £ = 240 pence
OR
there are 12 pence in one shilling
and there are 20 shillings in one pound
and there are 240 pence in one pound
Check out the Woodlands School’s great page to help us understand old English money
Old money conversions to money used today
- Sixpence = 2½p today
- One shilling (or ‘bob’) = 5p today
- Half a crown (2 shillings and sixpence) = 12½p today
- One guinea = £1.05 today
QUESTION: In A Christmas Carol, how much was Bob Cratchit really earning?
– On p. 48 of A Christmas Carol, we’re told that Scrooge paid Bob “fifteen ‘bob’ a week”, and “bob” is an English slang word for a shilling. Therefore Bob was earning 15 s. (shillings) a week. 15 shillings is 3/4 of £1.00.
Based on the information below, we could say that Bob was making the equivalent of approximately $100, or a little less, each week.
The National Archives Currency Converter
Measuring Worth website
When you find out the answer you may be very shocked. It is impossible to imagine feeding a family of seven on Bob’s salary; however, it is important to note that some things like food and rent would have been much less expensive than they are today. Nevertheless, the Cratchits are living dangerously close to complete destitution.
https://books.google.com/books?id=mbkU8cPU4rwC&lpg=PP1&pg=PT12&output=embed
Generosity and giving in various religions: “Why Give? Religious Roots of Charity” – an article from Harvard’s Divinity School
7th grade Language Arts 