Sir, – Not having heard his commentary I will have to accept Mary Hannigan’s word (“View from the Couch”, Sport, August 7th) that Marty Morrissey suggested that a pint of Guinness cost 14 shillings and sixpence in 1945, the last time Waterford reached the All-Ireland senior camogie final.
That looks like a very inflated black-market price, perhaps occasioned by wartime shortages. I recall my father telling us at home in the late 1960s that a friend of his who enjoyed his pint in Comerford’s in Mooncoin had responded phlegmatically to the most recent Budget levy by saying that “he would follow the pint to ten bob” (shillings). That landmark was not reached until February 1980.
That excellent academic database The Price of a Pint from 1900 tells me that the pint retailed for a little less than one shilling in 1939 and a little over a shilling in 1947. – Yours, etc,
PAT O’BRIEN,
READ MORE
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.
