Victorian Wealth: Still Helping a Friend

[yamamura]

Well my friends who wanted the Victorian pic has another question. He wants to create a wealth table for the Victorian age and wants others opinions on the one he made. Here are some of the annual wages of the time period and his intitial chart. Please tell me, so I can tell him what you all think.

G

Aristocrats £30,000
Merchants, bankers £10,000
Middle-class (doctors, lawyers, clerks) £300-800
Lower middle-class (head teachers, journalists, shopkeepers, etc.) £150-300
Skilled workers (carpenters, typesetters, etc.) £75-100
Sailors and domestic staff £40-75
Laborers, soldiers £25

Pound/Dollars/Modern/Points
30/150/3000/-10
100/500/10000/-5
750/3750/75000/0
1000/5000/100000/1
2000/10000/200000/2
3000/15000/300000/3
4000/20000/400000/4
5000/25000/500000/5
10000/50000/1000000/6
20000/100000/2000000/7
30000/150000/3000000/8
40000/200000/4000000/9
50000/250000/5000000/10
Unlimited/15

[TheQuestionMan]

I cannot remember where exactly I found it , but here's a good reference link . http://codepoet.org/~markw/gurps/

You could also try GURPS SteamPunk , GURPS Castle Falkenstein , and Regency HERO as resources .

Just my 2 Pence

QM

P.S. : Here a good Victorian link but off topic http://centralnexus.tripod.com/GVictbck.htm

[Black Rose]

At the risk of being all nitpicky, don't forget that the nobility had widely varying levels. You could be of the aristocracy and still very poor, money-wise. You could have a place to live, but it might be falling down around your ears.

And for a spendthrift wife (or wastrel son), an allowance of around £500 a month (£6000/year) would be more than fine, provided it wasn't the Season (or Le Petit Season, for that matter). Then all bets are off in terms of the amount of money you'd need to survive (dresses, jewelry, phaetons, parties, etc.).

[yamamura]

Black Rose, he says pick away.:) But I figure that about aristocrats. I guessed the 30,000 a year represted a well to do nobleman or lady. He would like to know your source for the information you provided, after all the more info he has, the better.

G

[Dr. Anomaly]

Cthulhu by Gaslight is also another very nice reference work. :)

[Tom Carman]

Well my friends who wanted the Victorian pic has another question. He wants to create a wealth table for the Victorian age and wants others opinions on the one he made. Here are some of the annual wages of the time period and his intitial chart. Please tell me, so I can tell him what you all think.

G

Aristocrats £30,000
Merchants, bankers £10,000
Middle-class (doctors, lawyers, clerks) £300-800
Lower middle-class (head teachers, journalists, shopkeepers, etc.) £150-300
Skilled workers (carpenters, typesetters, etc.) £75-100
Sailors and domestic staff £40-75
Laborers, soldiers £25

Pound/Dollars/Modern/Points
30/150/3000/-10
100/500/10000/-5
750/3750/75000/0
1000/5000/100000/1

I'm not too sure of your units here: Pounds x 5 = Dollars is right for the period. Is "Modern" supposed to be the equivalent in current Dollars? I wondered because the chart shows Pound x 100 = Modern, while I believe that 19th Century Dollars x 100 = Modern Dollars. At least that's what I found when I was running a Space:1889 game. If the Victorian-era annual salaries are correct, then a $75000 Modern income would equate to Victorian lower middle-class, which doesn't seem right. (Or maybe modern technology and conveniences are allowing us to get along on relatively less money without the domestic staff of a middle-class Victorian household?)

[yamamura]

if a Doctor or Lawyer would make 800 pounds a year then perhaps the base should be 800 pounds, $4000 =modern $75,000. Also I have hit the fact that the US dollar was actually $11 dollar to the pound through out the Victorian era. But we are still looking for confirmation on either the 1:5 or the 1:11 ratio for exchange. By the way we have updated the table slight to this creature.

Pounds Dollars Modern Points
£25 $125 $3000 -10
£150 $750 $10000 -5
£800 $4000 $75000 0
£2000 $10000 $100000 1
£4000 $20000 $200000 2
£6000 $30000 $300000 3
£8000 $40000 $400000 4
£10000 $50000 $500000 5
£15000 $75000 $1000000 6
£20000 $100000 $2000000 7
£25000 $125000 $3000000 8
£30000 $150000 $4000000 9
£35000 $175000 $5000000 10
Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited 15

Aristocrats £30,000
Merchants, bankers £10,000
Middle-class (doctors, lawyers, clerks) £300-800
Lower middle-class (head teachers, journalists, shopkeepers, etc.) £150-300
Skilled workers (carpenters, typesetters, etc.) £75-100
Sailors and domestic staff £40-75
Laborers, soldiers £25

G

[Tom Carman]

if a Doctor or Lawyer would make 800 pounds a year then perhaps the base should be 800 pounds, $4000 =modern $75,000. Also I have hit the fact that the US dollar was actually $11 dollar to the pound through out the Victorian era. But we are still looking for confirmation on either the 1:5 or the 1:11 ratio for exchange. By the way we have updated the table slight to this creature.

Pounds Dollars Modern Points
£25 $125 $3000 -10
£150 $750 $10000 -5
£800 $4000 $75000 0
£2000 $10000 $100000 1
£4000 $20000 $200000 2
£6000 $30000 $300000 3
£8000 $40000 $400000 4
£10000 $50000 $500000 5
£15000 $75000 $1000000 6
£20000 $100000 $2000000 7
£25000 $125000 $3000000 8
£30000 $150000 $4000000 9
£35000 $175000 $5000000 10
Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited 15

Aristocrats £30,000
Merchants, bankers £10,000
Middle-class (doctors, lawyers, clerks) £300-800
Lower middle-class (head teachers, journalists, shopkeepers, etc.) £150-300
Skilled workers (carpenters, typesetters, etc.) £75-100
Sailors and domestic staff £40-75
Laborers, soldiers £25

G


OK, my bad: I haven't looked at my Space:1889 source material lately. The conversion for current dollars to late-19th Century is more like 20:1, not 100:1, so Victorian pounds sterling to current dollars is around 100:1 (but one source suggests that 200:1 might be more accurate, and I think he's right). For most of the latter half of the 19th Century, dollars converted to pounds at around 5:1. The exchange rate spiked up during the American Civil War, to about 10:1 in 1864, but was back down to 5 by the latter 1870's.

Be careful with the income figures, as they are not so much "personal" income as family income that supported one or more households, including the servants. A personal allowance for the wealthy gentry or aristocrat is likely to be equivalent to 1-3 points of Wealth Perk.

My main data source is http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/current/howmuch.html

[yamamura]

Tom I couldn't agree more on those income figure. Thanks though for the book head up. I will inter-librabry loan it and look in depth at it.

G