Financial Matters

Lee Jackson has recently gone to a great deal of trouble compiling material on costs in London; see The Victorian Dictionary. I won't reproduce his work here.

A couple of comments, however, are in order.

Note that Cassel's gives information on how a family with three children can live comfortably on £500, £400, and £300 per annum. Then compare this against the wages -- note that respectably employed people were usually making a great deal less than this.

Consider also the section on the economy of the poor. We find a family whose total earnings per week were £2 3s. 9d, i.e. £113 17s. per annum if I've calculated correctly. Upon reading further, we find that this week was a particularly good one; in some weeks, they might take in 17s. or so, and in others 8s. or nothing at all. This despite the fact that the man was apparently a good worker, and that there were no expenses whatever to drink or the like. Thus tallying up a rough average, we find that this family (a man, his wife, and four young children) must have taken in something on the order of £50 per annum, and had expenses of roughly £60 -- thus their ever-increasing debts, and their periodic resort to subsisting entirely on bread and tea. The point being made was that even in a household where the wage-earners were hard-working and thrifty, poverty was something one simply could not climb out of.

Moving yet further down the scale, we can now imagine how Jack the Ripper's victims must have lived. With no regular income at all, and alcohol their only consistent friend, is it any wonder that they turned to casual prostitution?

-- ChrisLehrich^? - 29 Dec 2004

This page is linked to by: CyclopediaHome,