Dear Rhonda,
My father, Dave Kaplan, keeps me up to date with the Winnipeg Jewish seen by sending your review and the WJP. I was reading your story on Shiteiren (the word caught my eye!) and I wanted to bring to your attention a minor correction in your story in relation to the sentence…" opposed to a groat (coin) or fruppence which is the traditional name of a long defunct English silver coin–leading me to write down in my notebook "Thou shalt not mix a buckwheat groat with a fruppence").
The word fruppence actually should be thruppence which denotes three pennies in old english currency. The english have a habit of pulling words together from how they sounded on the street. So street merchants ended up calling three pennies 'Thruppence', and two pennies 'Tuppence'.
Nowadays folks use the term Thruppence to say that something is very cheap to buy i.e. Don't worry, that toy for Jack cost thruppence.
Best regards
– Myles Kaplan
Surrey, England