The Worth of Regency Money

When I read in a Regency about the hero giving a waif a pound, I wonder how much money that Regency pound is today. The worth of money has two parts: its value in today's money, and what you could buy with it then.

Here's an Old Money to New Calculator from the British National Archives that translates yesterday's money into today's.

According to this calculator: In 1820, £1 0s 0d would have the same spending worth of today's £41.92

For all of us Yanks out there, we now need to translate to US dollars. Yahoo Finance has a Currency Converter. Here, I select US dollar (USD) and British pound (GBP), setting British pound to 41.92.

For May 2, the day I did the calculation, 41.92 GBP equals 67.7951 USD. Since the exchange rate varies from day to day, you will get a different value on another day.

The second part of the National Archives' currency converter, Buying Power, tells you what you could purchase with that Regency pound: Plug in 41.92 pounds in today's money (1 Regency pound) and select the year 1820.

For 1 pound, you could purchase 6 days (craftsman wages in building trade) or the wool from 1 sheep.

What does this mean? One Regency pound was a lot of money. Coins smaller than the sovereign or guinea, which I listed in my last post, Regency Money, could easily handle most day-to-day transactions.

The other important fact is that labor was cheap and commodities, including food, were expensive. A Regency construction worker had to work six days of more than eight hours each to earn enough money for the wool for a suit of clothes.

That Regency lord was very generous, and that waif was very lucky.

In Lady of the Stars, my Regency time travel, the twenty-first century heroine hands the nineteenth-century hero a fifty pound note to convince him she's from the future. He thinks she's a rich woman--until he reads the date on the note.

Thank you all,

Linda

Regency Money

As I read a Regency romance, I inevitably reach a scene that involves money. All those pounds and pence and shillings are indecipherable to my American mind. So, I translate, or try to. I see "pound" and read "dollar". 200 years ago, as today, a British pound was never equivalent to an American dollar. So, what was British money in the Regency?

Money came in the forms of notes and coins. In general, notes were for larger denominations, up to 1000 pounds, and coins were for the smaller denominations. In Regency times, the lowest denomination of notes was 1 and 2 pounds. For smaller amounts, coins were used.

The Royal Mint issued coins, and a bank issued notes. The Bank of England has issued notes from its inception in 1694, and until 1844, regional banks could also issue notes.

From What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool, here are some of the most common money terms in Regency novels:

Value--Coin

21 shillings--guinea

20 shillings--sovereign (1817 and later) -- pound

10 shillings--half sovereign (1817 and later)

5 shillings--crown (slang term--"dollar")

2 1/2 shillings--half crown

2 shillings--florin

12 pence--shilling

6 pence--sixpence

3 pence--threepence

2 pence--twopence (pronounced "tuppence")

1 pence--penny

1/2 pence--halfpenny (slang "ha'penny")

1/4 pence--farthing

Note that a guinea is more than a pound.

Here's a link with most of the above information.

http://www.studyenglishtoday.net/british-money.html

Guineas, sovereigns and half-sovereigns were gold. Crowns, half crowns, florins, shillings, sixpence and threepence were silver. The pennies and farthings were copper.

This link shows some coins minted during the reign of George III, which includes the Regency:

http://www.coinsgb.com/George_III/0-George-III.html

Most Regency financial transactions involved coins, even though one and two pound notes were available. Why? Because a Regency pound was a lot of money. The Worth of Regency Money is my next post.

Note: the picture above shows the newest designs of British money. From Wikipedia.

Thank you all,

Linda