Eightpences

It was not the amount of eightpences, but the quantity of gin which told fatally against poor James’s character when his aunt’s butler, Mr. Bowls, went down at his mistress’s request to pay the young gentleman’s bill. ❋ Unknown (1917)

He owed his lord, not fifty pence (fifty eightpences or thereabouts), not five hundred pence, but ❋ Alexander Maclaren (1868)

It was not the amount of eightpences, but the quantity of gin which told fatally against poor ❋ William Makepeace Thackeray (1837)

The enclosed accounts, which Hornblower was about to thrust aside, had among the innumerable six and eightpences and three and fourpences one set of items which caught his eye — they dealt with the funeral expenses of the late Mrs Hornblower, and a grave in the cemetery of the church of St Thomas à Beckett, and a headstone, and fees for grave-watchers; it was a ghoulish list which made Hornblower's blood run a little colder. ❋ Forester, C. S. (1938)

It was not the amount of eightpences, but the quantity of gin which told fatally against poor James’s character, when his aunt’s butler, Mr. Bowls, went down at his mistress’s request to pay the young gentleman’s bill. ❋ Unknown (2006)