I am still trying to work out the correct multiplier for £1 between 19th Century and now. Previously I thought it was 80x going by the price of gold, but this did not reflect comparative standards of living. Pip in Great Expectations received £500 a year, which multiplied by 80 comes to £40,000 a year. This is quite a lot of money for a young, single man, but not outrageously so, especially when he secretly starts to donate half to further his friend's career. Then I thought 150x was a better multiplier, going by the incomes the characters were getting in New Grub Street. Those values seemed to work out quite well for middle class people, but not working class. From reading 19th century literature, £50 a year seems the minimum annual amount for a single person to live off, who has food and rent to pay for, but no servants. Angel Clare gives Tess £50 to live on while he's abroad. Ed Reardon in New Grub Street struggles to earn £150 a year as an author with wife and child to support and a young, female servant to pay. Ed Reardon says he previously worked as a clerk for £50 a year, but that £400 a year is reckoned comfortable. Bob Cratchit is paid 15 shillings a week by his employer Scrooge, but there is probably a bit of exaggeration in that. £37.50 would be an impossibly small amount to live on with a wife and five children to support. Anyway, I fixed on a 150x multiplier, even though it seemed too low when applied to poor people's incomes, but then I discovered that today's price of a gold sovereign is about £225. A gold sovereign represented £1 back then, so I decided a 225x multiplier would be a good one. That brings £50 a year closer to the minimum wage. However, chapter 14 of Middlemarch has thrown a spoke in that idea. Fred Vincy's uncle gives him £100, telling him £80 should be enough for a decent hunter (horses for fox hunting). Fred is slightly disappointed because he has been racking up gambling debts. I googled hunters and they seemed cost in the range of £3000 to £9000. £9000 would buy you a very good horse. That brings the multiplier back to about 100x again <sigh> Mr Lydgate, the young doctor, has savings of £800, but thinks that will not go far in setting up his practice once the cost of his horse and carriage is paid for. Offhand, I cannot remember the exact configuration of this horse and carriage, but it sounds like it is indispensible for a country doctor to be taken seriously by his clients. I suppose that would be like a BMW, so that suggests a multiplier more in the 80-100x range. £100 seems to be a typical amount for Victorian characters to get into trouble with. Pip was pursued for a debt of about £115 from his jewellers; the young Tom Gradgrind steals just over £100 from Mr Bounderby's bank to cover his gambling debts. Now Fred Vincy appears to have gambling debts round about that mark. An 80x to100x multiplier would give a debt similar to that a young person can get into trouble with by maxing their credit cards.
BTW, the exchange rate is currently £1 to $1.64, and £1 to 1.20 Euros.
