How Much Would £1 In 1413 Be Worth Today?

[wolf63]

I have been reading wiki and would like to know how much would £1 in 1413 be worth today?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Stafford_(died_1413)#Death

I am just being nosey

[Lie-in King]

Hope I've understood your Q correctly - this isn't necessarily the best answer out there (as it says itself!) -

http://tinyurl.com/gpu7cwh

I put 2016 in, but it chose to go to 2015 instead...

[wolf63]

Thanks for your answer - I went to the link and got confused. How can it be so complicated?!

Maybe it is just that I am tired. I will look again when the mini Tigers get me up for their next breakfast.

Thanks for looking - sleep well, remember cats have to sleep for at least 16 hours a day.

:-)

[Lie-in King]

I know, it looks very silly to me as well. Good night Wolfie, hope you rest & wake well :-) x

[jno]

there's no one measure which is why the range in LiK's link is vast. If you calculated it according to the price of a loaf of bread you'd get one answer; according to the running costs of a castle would give a different one.

[Buenchico]

Assessing the historical values of money can be extremely difficult, even over a fairly short period (such as a few decades), can be very difficult as there are several different ways of making comparisons. e.g. some historians choose to look at the buying power of money, whereas others prefer to relate money to wages. Others still might use official measures of inflation, although that's not easy when the period under consideration pre-dates any official calculations of the inflation rate.

In the 15th century though an artisan (such as a carpenter) would earn around 6d per day, so £1 (= 240d) represents the earnings of such an artisan over 40 working days. The National Careers Service website suggests that an experienced joiner can earn £30,000 p.a. for perhaps 230 days work, so that's about £130 per day. So a modern-day carpenter would earn about £5200 in the same time that a 15th century one could earn £1.

However that's just one way of doing the calculation (and based upon just one particular occupation). Other methods of calculation can produce vastly different results, as follows:

A simple 'purchasing power' calculation produces a current value of £709. (That looks at what you'd have to pay now to buy the same amount of commodities, such as bread, etc).

A 'labour value' calculation (similar to mine above but based upon a wider range of occupations) shows that you'd need to pay someone £6451 these days for the same amount of work that you would have had to pay £1 for in 1413.

An 'income value' calculation (based upon the proportion of an average income used to buy a commodity) produces a figure of £26,290.

An 'economic power' calculation, which examines the value of a sum relative to the country's GDP, gives a figure of £458,800.

https://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/

[Peter Pedant]

Kinda difficult as the stats werent kept

first GDP - Pettit just sort of added up what everyone in the country earned was 1660

and jesus this is 250 y before that !

also in 1413 we werent really a cash economy

[wolf63]

Thanks for the answers. I thought that there would be a little chart somewhere where I could find the figures. It looks like it is much more complicated than I realised.

So - a simpler question. The servants were given £1 each when the boss died. Was that a generous amount of money or just a token amount?

PP - I saw this picture and thought of you. I think that your spelling of the final word is slightly different. http://i68.tinypic.com/263tphu.jpg

[Jackdaw33]

I would say generous as they would have earned nothing like that in a week.

[jno]

quite generous, I would have thought. A few months' wages for a workman, but household servants would have had bed and board included so they would probably have been paid less cash than a workman; accordingly they'd have been able to do more with their £1.

[Old_Geezer]

Surely buying power should be the key. After all, no matter what happens to the currency, a loaf of bread will always be worth a loaf of bread. Now if only folk would keep the relative price of different things stable. Still, the average cost of a basket of staple goods should give a good indication.

[Jackdaw33]

In 1917 my grandmother was awarded a widow's pension of 10/- per week to keep herself and two daughters. She probably didn't know what a pound looked like.

[EDDIE51]

Even as short a time ago as 1970 £1 was enough for a night on the beer and a curry on the way home!