Email For David Olusoga

[bainbrig]

How would I find an email address for the film-maker David Olusoga? I’ve stuck a note on his Facebook page, but don’t hold out much hope of a response.

In the first House Through Time programme he mentions a butler getting £250 a year in the 1850s, and I want to ask where he got the figure.

BB

[albaqwerty]

He may have obtained that information from either a census (?) or from advertisements in newspapers from that period.

I quite liked the programme but in my opinion left a few unanswered questions.

[Mamyalynne]

Try him on Twitter.

[bainbrig]

alba. Agreed. Trouble with one outlandish statement is that you raise your eyebrows at the rest.

Have a look at this link about Victorian wages, which indictaes that butling paid between £25 and £50 a year!

http://www.wirksworth.org.uk/a04value.htm

[bainbrig]

Twitter. How do I do that?

[jambutty]

Email his agent - [email protected] and see if he can help.

[Mamyalynne]

//In fact, James had been a butler, which would have given him skills in literacy and numeracy and a little social polish. By 1851 James gave his profession on the census as ‘master of newsroom’ – which meant he was a manager in a gentleman’s club, with a £250 annual salary. //

Source

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5218603/BBC-series-traces-history-one-house-Liverpool.html

I know that doesn't give you the source, but some context.

[gingejbee]

...so, from Mamy's post, it would seem that there was no "outlandish statement" at all....just some misunderstanding of what was said in the programme.

[bainbrig]

Thanks for the correction, but it’s still an amazing annual salary. Have a look at some of the wages in the link I gave above. Did a gentleman’s club manager really earn that much?

[Mamyalynne]

I have no idea, hope you manage to find the source used in the programme.

[bainbrig]

No, it was rhetorical - but do have a look at that link - the figures are really interesting!

[Peter Pedant]

jesus when did you post this?

I saw that programme - and knew that they got around £50 p a. but they discussed this didnt they - and asked what he would do for that - ie run the club...

and you are right this is astronomical

[bainbrig]

I only saw the programme a week ago, Peter - I often have things on the set-top-box for ages!

I questioned it in part as my great grand father was butling at that time, and he was a poor man.

[bainbrig]

And a PS: if the guy was getting £250 per annum, he was definitely bent!

[Mamyalynne]

James Orr ended up with a smart headstone it sounds like too, his wife lived to the ripe old age of 92.

http://www.toxtethparkcemeteryinscriptions.co.uk/archives/page/129/

[jno]

Depends what the gentlemen in question thought he was worth, I suppose, and they wouldn't have been poor.

Ancestry.co.uk is free this weekend so you can look him up in the census and see what it says about him. (Probably won't give his pay scale, though.)

[bainbrig]

The censuses show ggfather residing in the ‘big’ house, while his wife and three children lived half-a-mile away in a small lodging house with 23 other people.

Think that gives an idea of his wages in London in the 1870s.

[Peter Pedant]

well - -
when the doctors' insurance union ( MDU ) was set up as a PIU ( private indemnity union ) in 1884....
the MDU in the nineties commented they didnt have report 1 and 2 and a few others which I found in ... Manchester Uni Library ( where I used to lairk before the internet)

No 1 didnt exist and No2 was a special report because the secretary was paying himself ... £250 p.a. Lawson Tait and a few other worthies then sued him, got him fired and made him repay.... and the second one was paid more sensibly.
( so I wrote and told them and they replied - "Did we ? none of us can recollect a call for reports 1 and 2 ")

so yeah - it seemed a helluva lot

but I am sure in the prog - they go along to someone and ask - what did he actually do ?

[Peter Pedant]

// in a small lodging house with 23 other people. //
that would be five per room

one of the enquiries into slum landlords in the 1890s showed.... the average landlord was a single owner with dependents with around five properties trying to live off the low rents usually within the slum.

and not a fat capitalist

[bainbrig]

Cobblers.
And pursuing your points,
maybe not fat (and anyway, who mentioned capitalists?) but (a) why didn’t the skinny landlord get a proper job of work? and (b) having 26 people in an average-sized London house is slum-landlording by any definition.