Notes on Victoriana - 002
How Money Worked
In his book London In The 19th Century, history professor Jerry White states:
It’s difficult to precisely set the value of English currency in the Victorian Era against its value today. For one, currency was quantified far more specifically than it is now.
He goes on to say, “think of the nineteenth century pound as equivalent to £100 now.” That was a few years ago. To measure it more accurately against modern inflation rates, a calculator on officialdata.org shows that £1 in 1885 is equal to about £164 in 2023.
That may be a precise dollar-to-dollar (or pound-to-pound) comparison, but as White is careful to say, the “buying power [of Victorian currency] is underestimated.”
And that’s very true. The cost of many goods and services in Victorian London was far less than comparable goods and services today. While £164 would scarcely buy you a day’s food and lodgings in modern London, £1 might buy you a comfortable week in the London of 1885 with change to spare. But before we can appreciate what a pound would get you, we need to understand what a pound was – that is, how was its value quantified in the 19th Century?
The pound of two centuries earlier functioned on a 1/240 divisional system (240 pennies to the pound) and continued to do so until 1971 when it switched to the 1/100 (100 pennies to the pound) divisional system still used today. Breaking the Victorian pound down to its individual units would look like this:
£1 = 20 shillings (s) = 12 pennies (d)
That is, £1 consisted of 20 shillings and one shilling consisted of 12 pennies, giving a total value of 240 pennies within the pound. Something priced at four pounds 10 shillings would be written £4 10s or 4/10/0 and expressed “four-pound-ten.” Any amount less than £1 would be expressed, for example, as 12/6, meaning 12s 6d, and pronounced “twelve-and-six.” A whole shilling amount would be expressed 10/, meaning ten shillings, or “ten bob,” with “bob” representing a whole shilling. For instance, one who paid seven shillings for something might say, “I just paid seven bob for this.” But the breakdowns and nicknames do not end there.
A £1 coin was called a sovereign and a 10s coin was a half-sovereign. A quarter pound coin (worth 5s) was called a crown. A half-crown was worth 2/6 (2s 6d) or one-eighth of a pound. One-tenth of a pound (2s) was a florin, also known as a “two-shilling-piece” or a “two-bob-bit.” There were also sixpenny pieces, threepenny pieces (known as a thruppence), half-penny pieces (ha’penny, pronounced “hay penny”), and the farthing, which held a value of a quarter-penny.
Paper money (called banknotes) existed, too, and were most commonly distributed in £1, £5, £10, etc, denominations, albeit these were all printed on white paper much larger than today’s paper money. A £1 banknote was called a quid, a £5 note five quid, etc. Coins, however, were much more common, with crowns, half-crowns, shillings, sixpence and threepence pieces all issued in silver. Sovereigns were always gold and lower value coins such as the penny, half-penny, and the farthing were all issued in copper, to the extent that were often colloquially referred to as “coppers.” The plural for collective penny coins would be referred to as “pennies” while the plural for a penny amount would be expressed as “pence.” For example, if one had a half-dozen penny coins in his hand, he would say he held “six pennies.” If one held an item bought for six pennies, he would say it was worth “six pence.”
When paying for goods and services from a tradesman, one would pay in amounts expressed in whole pounds or its derivatives. When paying for the services of a professional “gentleman” such as a doctor or lawyer, one would pay with a guinea. Written as 1g, 2gs, etc, a guinea was expressed as £1-1s-0d, or “one pound one shilling.” The reason for this was that the professional being paid would keep the whole pound for themselves while paying off their clerk or assistant with the remaining shilling. If a professional was owed, say 7 shillings, he was said to be owed a “third of a guinea.”
Now that we (hopefully) have a grasp on how currency was used and expressed, we can glance at what things cost to better understand the value of the Victorian pound and how comparisons to the modern pound are fruitless.
The excellent “The Victorian Web” resource (victorianweb.org) cites an 1888 article called “Life on a Guinea A Week” in a publication called The Nineteenth Century. It provides tables breaking down of some of the weekly expenses one might find in the London of that time, expressed in pounds/shillings/pennies (£/s/d):
Looking at the examples cited in the above charts, we can see that one week of expenses for a comfortable room, two daily meals, and other niceties like tea and tobacco, would equate to £0-16-2, or 16/2, or 16 shillings 2 pence or 16-and-2, or 16 bob and a tuppence. If one had a single pound in his pocket at the start of the week and stayed comfortably frugal, he’d have 3-and-10 left to splurge with by week’s end.
And this is why a simple inflationary conversion from the pound of then to the pound of now gives a misleading glimpse at the cost of living in Victorian London. There’s no way the £164 modern inflationary conversion rate would ever get one through such a decent week in the London of today. One would likely need to convert that further by a factor of 10 or more to truly find any equivalency.
Much of this value discrepancy, of course, comes from the massive gap in the cost of the labour needed to produce goods and services. Many household goods, clothing, food, etc, was manufactured under near-slave conditions by the poorest of the poor who often had to survive on mere pennies to a few shillings for their week’s hard work and lived in squalor as a result. The successful skilled tradesman, clerk, or other educated white-collar worker might earn between one and two pounds per week, and so be able to afford some decent rooms in a rented flat in which to live and raise a family. The “professional gentleman” like a doctor or lawyer might see twice that or more depending upon their experience and level of success, and so live a much more comfortable existence in a rented house with staff in the West End. Of course, the scale could slide up and down depending upon which point in the long reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) that one examines wages.
I recommend viewing the links cited below, and the numerous off-shoot links provided with each. They offer a rabbit hole of exploration when it comes to all things Victorian England.
Resources:
White, Jerry. London in the 19th Century. The Bodley Head, London. 2007.
Patterson, Richard. “The Cost of Living in 1888.” The Victorian Web.https://www.victorianweb.org/economics/wages4.html
Jackson, Lee. “Victorian London: How Much Did Things Cost?” The Dictionary of Victorian London. https://www.victorianlondon.org/finance/money.htm