Bingo

[4getmenot]

Why the saying 'Was she worth it' For 56?

[Quizmonster]

Surely it was for 76...7/6 or seven shillings and sixpence having once been the price of a marriage certificate.

[Quizmonster]

Perhaps I meant a marriage licence!

[THECORBYLOON]

I had a look elsewhere and have seen "Was she worth it?" for 56 in a dictionary of gambling phrases but there was no explanation as to the origin..

[Quizmonster]

Click here for an AnswerBank 'bingo' question from three years ago. At least - if you look at my answer then - you'll see I've stuck to my reasoning over time! Everything changes!

[4getmenot]

says 56 and 76

[Quizmonster]

It's obvious that 'Trombones' cannot have been code for 76 before the film The Music Man appeared in 1962.
"Seven and six...was she worth it?", on the other hand, at least has the merit that it actually referred to the price of something. Back in the fifties, everyone just knew that the thing referred to was a marriage licence, which cost that amount whenever the call was first introduced.
It makes total sense...you had "paid" that much for your wife, in effect, and - now you were married - you could decide whether it had been money well spent!

I haven't the faintest idea why '56' should now be used with the same phrase. After all, 5/6 or five shillings and sixpence disappeared a dozen years later with the introduction of decimal currency. I cannot imagine what one could have bought for a lady for 5/6 during that period that one might now query whether one had got value for money!

[andy-hughes]

I love the ones Mel Smith did on 'Not The Nine O'Clock News' -

"Two Fat Antelopes - 27. "One fat and one not quite so fat antelope - 16. Two antelopes that have to go to Evans to get something in their size ..." "House!"

[heathfield]

QM - this might be the answer to the question. See the fourth paragraph down.

[Quizmonster]

Thanks for that, H, and it's certainly a possible explanation. However, give that the incident referred to in your link happened in 1800, I'm puzzled as to why - in the 1940s/1950s and maybe even 1920s/1930s - bingo-callers used 7/6 for "Was she worth it?" It just seems odd that they would suddenly, at some point post-1960, dig that incident up and apply it to another number.
As I said in my own earlier link, these calls varied according to time and geography. Perhaps the 5/6 version arose in Stafford, where the incident took place and spread out from there. Maybe, in Stafford, they never used the 7/6 version! Cheers

[weggiewabbit]

7/6 was also the cost of a dog licence ...

[heathfield]

Sometimes obscure facts from the past are re-discovered and become widely circulated in the popular press before being forgotten about once more.
It could be that this happened in the 1940s/1950s over the case of the chap selling his wife. Who knows?

[Quizmonster]

I still reckon that - after the "76 Trombones "song became widely known in 1962/63 - that became a far more personal and immediate echo for bingo-callers and players than something from decades earlier. Accordingly, they started to use it and, as a result, "Was she worth it?" was going begging all of a sudden.
I can't for the life of me remember what the code-phrase for '56' was in the 50s, or even if it had one. Whatever it was and wherever the idea came from - popular press or otherwise - it seems people decided to tag the one that had belonged for decades to '76' onto '56'.
The answer to the actual question here would still appear to be: "Nobody has the slightest idea!"