£50

[kev67]

Oh God, Tess has just given her mother half of the £50 Angel gave her to take care of herself. Tess's mum and dad are only going to spend it down Rolliver's or The Pure Drop. £50 was a lot of money then. In chapter 29 Mr Crick relates how Jack Dollop had married a widow for £50 a year only to find that the money stopped once she remarried. Even for those days, £50 per annum doesn't sound like enough to marry a woman you don't love, but it's also not to be sneezed at. I started a thread about the value of money back in the Charles Dicken's Great Expectations forum and I was surprised to find that there was basically no overall inflation during the 19th century. iirc the average salary for a clergyman was £250, so £50 must have been a large fraction of Angel's allowance presuming that he was still dependent on his parents. £50 per year seems close to the minimum you'd need to survive if you had your own living expenses to pay for.