The Lowly Maid of All Work
Even the poorest gentry did not expect to do their own dirty work in the Regency era. If your annual income was £100-200 (approx. $9,000 - 18,000 spending power in today’s money), you could afford “help” in the person of a maid of all work.This luckless dogsbody would work 18 hours a day, seven days a week, for the price of her keep and wages of £8-12 ($720-1080) a year; perhaps a kind employer would grant her one or two days off each month. Even the impoverished Dashwood ladies in Jane Austen’s Sense [...]
Regency Spending Power
A simplistic inflation calculation does not give meaning to Regency spending power. Lord Byron could have hired ten scullery maids for the price of a musical snuffbox he purchased in 1813 - £105. According to Samuel and Sarah Adams (The Complete Servant, 1825), an income of £100 a year would enable a Regency household to hire a maid-of-all-work, for about £5-10 per year. This poor dogsbody might hope to save the price of Lord Byron's snuffbox in the course of her lifetime. She would have found it unthinkable to spend an entire month of her wages [...]
Other Interesting Posts
Outsiders Within – Romani in the Regency
By the time 'Gypsies' appeared on the pages of Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth, Romani people had been in England for centuries. Sidebar: Believing the copper-skinned migrants to hail from Egypt, the Europeans had coined the term "Gypsies" for these migrants. Some consider [...]
