One of the challenges of understanding historical money is grasping what it was really worth.

Last time we began discussing money during the regency era with a run down of the currency being used. So now that we’ve sorted our pence from our pounds, let’s try to sort out what all that means.

It is tempting to try and plug the information into a converter that will give us the comparative value of money then into today’s currency.

So, if we did that at: https://www.historicalstatistics.org/Currencyconverter.html we would find that 1 pound in the year 1810 would be the equivalent of approximately $85.52 in year 2000 US currency.

That means we just multiply a regency era value (in pounds) by about 85.5 and we have it. Right? That would mean 100 pounds would be about $8550.

But wait, it gets more complicated than that. We can also consider the amount of labor it would take to earn that same amount of money. When we compaire the numbers in terms of wages earned, 1 pound in 1810 looks more like $2387.45 US dollar [2000] in wage for 165.72 hours worked (at a rate of approximately $14.40 an hour.) This suggests that the same 100 pounds that we valued at $8550 above might really be worth $238,745!

Yet another alternative might be to compare both currencies to a third standard, let’s say the price of gold. If we do that, then we get: 1 UK pound in year 1810 could buy 6.8 gram gold. The price of 6.8 gram gold in year 2000 was 61.15 US dollar [2000]. That would then make our hypothetical 100 pounds worth $6145.00, more or less.

For the love of peace, those are pretty heady discrepencies! So which one tells us the real story.

You’re not going to like the anser, but all of them do. It really all depends on the question that you’re asking.

Making sense of the conversions

When I dove into this subject for The Buttercross Dragon, my goal was to understand how someone with far less that Mr. Darcy’s income might live. And for that question, none of the above conversions truly answer the question. Why not? Because they do not take into consideration to price of consumer goods of the era. (Except for gold which isn’t really considered a consumer good for most of us.)

Some things were relatively more expensive then, textiles for instance, some were significantly less, cows for example. So what might be bought for that hypothetical 100 pounds is related to both the value of that money and the prices of the goods to be purchased.

Clear as mud?

Hopefully this table, found HERE will help clear things up a little. While the price points from the 1980’s are a little dated, they do make the point. In table 3, the first column is in 1810 pounds, the second is their conversion straight to 1988 dollars and the final column is the price of the same goods in 1989 dollars. This helps give us some sense of the actual buying power of a small regency income.

With respect to the fabrics lised, a gown usually took 5 to 7 yards of fabric as it was narrower than today’s typical fabric.

Another table found here gives us these additional reference points for clothing.

• Cotton fabric — 1 shilling per yard
• Enough cotton fabric for a dress — 6 shillings
• Velveteen fabric — 2 shillings 10 pence
• Enough silk fabric for a dress — 1 pound 6 shillings
• A simple white dress — 5 shillings
• Woolen stockings — 2 shillings 6 pence
• A white silk handkerchief² — 6 shillings
• A fan — 5 shillings
• Simple shoes —6-11 shillings
• Walking boots —2 pounds

All these numbes need some reference point though in order to really make sense. Relative incomes are a great way to understand just how dear the price of a simple white dress and pair of shoes might be. So in the next installments of this series, we will consider what incomes looked like in Jane Austen’s day.

What do you think? Do all these numbers make your head spin?