value of the british pound in the 19th century?
I’m reading all these classics like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre and they are talking about the British pound…I know that the current pound equals about .40, but like in Jane Eyre, one of the main characters, Mr. Rochester, explains that he is worth 20,000 pounds in the 19th century and I’m really curious about how much that is equal to in current American dollars.
Extra tags:
- how much was a pound worth in 1850,how much was 20000 pounds in 1850,what was a pound worth in 1850,value of a pound in 1850,100 pounds in 1850,value of british pound in 1850,how much was 100 pounds worth in 1850,1000 pounds in 1850,19th century british pound,value of the pound in 1850,british pound 19th century,how much was one pound worth in 1850,1 pound in 1850,how much was 20 000 pounds worth in 1850,value of one pound in 1850,value of 1 pound in 1850,value english pound 1850,value of pound in 1850,how much was mr rochester worth,pound in 1850 was worth
Related posts:
- Why is the British Pound so powerful a currency?? Everybody likes overseas to have dollars, i wonde why? The British pound is a very stable currency, nobody would expect the British Pound to crash....
- The British pound, why is it worth more than the Euro? I just got back from a 15 day trip to Ireland. I knew that the American dollar was worth less than the euro. I did...
- Will I get charged extra for buying something online in US dollars with a British Pound bank account? I want to buy a CD from DFTBA.com which sells things in US Dollars but I live in the UK and have a UK bank...
- Canadian Dollar to British Pound exchange rate? According to iGoogle the current cost of 1 pound is .5404 Canadian. I am travelling from Canada to London in March and I need to...
- which currency is worth more? the Great British Pound or the Euro? i am asking about the comparison between the great british pound and the euro. i never asked about the american dollar…. is the british pound...
Tagged with: american dollars • British • british pound • century • how much was a pound worth in 1850 • jane eyre • mr rochester • Prejudice • Pride • pride and prejudice • value
Filed under: Currencies
You needed $86.38 in 2000 for what you could have bought for £1 in 1850 so then 20,000p. would equal 1,727,600$
http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/ecocom/giblinfaq.html
It is very difficult to give an exact estimate, because some things are more valuable now than they were then, and others were cheaper. For example, food was much more expensive in Jane Austen’s day than it is now (farming being much more labour intensive and not producing so much). On the other hand, property was much cheaper, in real terms, than it is now. Buying or renting a home took up far less of your income than it would nowadays.
In The Cambridge companion to Jane Austen, Edward Copeland w rites that any income above £4,000 a year, ‘leaves behind the cheese-paring cares of middle-class incomes – the problems of £100 to £1,000 a year, and even £2,000 a year – to enter a realm of unlimited general comforts. To spend more, according to contemporary wisdom, a man "must go into horse-racing or illegitimate pleasures."
It’s dependent on when in the 19th century you are referring. In the early 1800′s the British pound was worth $5 US and was a .916 fine medium sized gold coin (abt 1/4 oz). The Director of the US mint was paid around $5,000 per year at that time or 1000 pounds per year. Workers received I think about 15 to 25 cents per day, only a part of which was paid in good silver coin, the rest paid in some sort of paper IOU’s.
In the early 1800′s the British pound was The Currency of choice, eventually as the US gained in size and power during the 19th century the dollar grew in value. Most of our early gold coins were taken and melted and recoined into European currencies as those were worth more.
Thus a factor of 100:1 is probably conservative: 20,000 pounds is maybe 10 million dollars today. See coinsandhistory.com for background illustrations.