While serving a mission in England, Elder John Snider received tithing and donations for the Nauvoo temple from several branches and members throughout Great Britain. He brought the donations as well as lists of the names of those who donated back to the temple recorder’s office in Nauvoo. George Walker, a clerk in that office, appears to have created the record featured here by copying either the loose copies of donations brought back by Snider or a list that Snider or another British missionary created compiling the donations. (The Book of the Law of the Lord, Book A, 319.)

British currency in the nineteenth century consisted of coins of varying values. The primary currency used was the pound sterling, often in the form of a gold sovereign. Smaller coins called shillings and pence were also commonly used. A pound was traditionally divided into twenty shillings, and each shilling was divided into twelve pennies, or pence. The two smallest coins were divisions of a penny, into four farthings or two halfpennies. The abbreviation used in ledgers and other financial records for this form of currency was “£ s d.” The pound symbol (£) derived from the word “Libra,” meaning “a pound” in Latin. The “s” was an abbreviation for the Latin “solidus,” which in English was referred to as a “shilling.” The “d” was an abbreviation of “denarius,” or a Roman silver coin, which was also initially used as the name of the English silver penny. While other countries in the British empire abandoned this system, currency in the United Kingdom of Great Britain was not decimalized and standardized into units of one hundred until 1971. (“Pound,” in Oxford English Dictionary, 7:1202; “Solidus,” in Oxford English Dictionary, 10:401; “Denarius,” in Oxford English Dictionary, 3:191; Sutherland, English Coinage 600–1900; see also “Pounds, Shillings and Pence,” The Royal Mint Museum, accessed 3 July 2023, https://www.royalmintmuseum.org.uk/journal/history/pounds-shillings-and-pence.)

The Oxford English Dictionary. Edited by James A. H. Murray, Henry Bradley, W. A. Craigie, and C. T. Onions. 12 vols. 1933. Reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Sutherland, Carol Humphrey Vivian. English Coinage 600–1900. London: B. T. Batsford, 1973.

The Royal Mint Museum. https://www.royalmintmuseum.org.uk/journal/history/pounds-shillings-and-pence/.