Bequests

[Anna]

Not sure if this is the right Board to ask this.

In 1699 an ancestor made a will with four bequests which totalled £30. Does anyone know what this would be worth at the time of the Will and also at the time of his death which was 1724 (assuming he had not made another Will between those two dates of course)

[Mythology]

Hmm... well, I wouldn't want to take this as an accurate figure in any way, because circumstances are very different these days, so it would depend what you were spending it on. Common items to us, like tea and oranges, would have been "expensive" then, whereas property would be "cheap", and, of course, an awful lot of what we spend our money on these days (electricity bills, umpteen household goods etc.) hadn't been invented, so there wasn't a lot to spend your money on in a "day to day bits and pieces" sense.

However, for what it's worth,
£30 in 1699 would be £3,183.50 in 2006
£30 in 1724 would be £3,847.74 in 2006
and £30 in 1699 would be £24 16s 5d in 1724

[Peter Goodey]

There's a page on the Old Bailey site on Wages and the Cost of Living. It's short and 'easy to read'.

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/history/london-life/coinage.html

You'll see that for an artisan "£15 to £20 per year was a low wage, and a figure closer to £40 per annum was needed to keep a family".

Somewhere, and I can't find it at the moment, there a historical table of bread prices - there's a body of opinion that says that this is a good way to measure the value of money.

[Guy Etchells]

I would go further than Mythology and say there is no way you can compare values of money in the past with values today.
There are just too many variables; money in the past was not used in the way it is used today. The main form of trade was the barter system rather than coin; families would grow their own food rather than purchase it.

Consider a Master Mason in 1651 would earn £4.10/- which if compared with the £30 was equal to over 6.6 years wages.
I don't think a Master Mason would be happy earning just £3,183.50 in 6.6 years.
A bricklayer aged between 16 & 24 would earn £2.10/- in 1651 £30 would be 12 years wage. What could a brickie earn today per year let alone 12 years?

At best you could say £30 was a considerable inheritance in 1699
Cheers
Guy

[Peter Goodey]

Luckily in the case of a will we don't have to talk in terms of generalities because we know who got the money and can make a stab at what £30 was worth to the actual recipients. It doesn't really matter what a labourer earned if the bequest was to a professional man or indeed to a reasonably prosperous yeoman.

So, Anna, who were the people involved? What was their station in life?

[Anna]

Hi. I have only just got the information from a newly discovered cousin and I need to find out more about his profession (I thought he was a farmer) but he left the money to his wife, 2 sons and daughter and I added it up wrong - it was £29!! £7 to three of them and £8 to his eldest son. He also left his household goods and his house to his wife for her life, later to be divided equally after her death between the children.

I thought it seemed to be a considerable sum for a family who from the 1800s onwards were Ag Labs and later Ostlers and wondered if I had missed out on my inheritence!!

There are gravestones to him, and to his two sons, in the village churchyard so he must have been someone of some standing. Also, he may have been reasonably wealthy but on the Will it is 'his mark' so he couldn't sign his name.
I need to find out more information about him but this is a branch of the family I have only just started on.

In the will he says "First I bequeath my soul to Almighty God" before going on to the other bequests.