Genealogy Chat

Top tip - using the Genes Reunited community

Welcome to the Genes Reunited community boards!

  • The Genes Reunited community is made up of millions of people with similar interests. Discover your family history and make life long friends along the way.
  • You will find a close knit but welcoming group of keen genealogists all prepared to offer advice and help to new members.
  • And it's not all serious business. The boards are often a place to relax and be entertained by all kinds of subjects.
  • The Genes community will go out of their way to help you, so don’t be shy about asking for help.

Boards

Quick Search

Single word search

Tools

Findmypast DNA Banner

Icons

  • New posts
  • No new posts
  • Thread closed
  • Stickied, new posts
  • Stickied, no new posts

Value of Estate on Death in 1889

Login to Add Reply Watch This
ProfilePosted byOptionsPost Date

Hilary

Hilary Report 27 Jun 2009 12:11

Hi

I have recently received a copy of a Will showing that the total value of an estate in 1889 was £44,499-16s-10d. I am trying to find out how much this would be worth today and find that there are 5 ways to compute relative worth of the pound from that period. I have found figures based on 2007 as follows:-

£35,220,569.25 using the retail price index
£45,188,100.04 using the GDP deflator
£218,626,735.86 using the average earnings
£269,666,455.36 using the per capita GDP
£442,275,867.57 using the share of GDP

Please could anyone advise me which computation (i.e. is it average earnings?) should be used for the calculation of Estate worth? If anyone has access to values later than 2007 I'd be very interested to learn them!

Thank you for any help that you can give me!
Hilary

Sam

Sam Report 27 Jun 2009 12:53

This is according to the National Archives currency convertor...

In 1890, £44,499 16s 10d would have the same spending worth of today's £2,665,095.52

which is different again from any of the figures you already have.

Sam x

InspectorGreenPen

InspectorGreenPen Report 27 Jun 2009 13:07

I think you might have got your decimal place in the wrong place.The two calculations I think are most useful are

Retail Price Index or Purchasing Power:- £3,5million This is what it would cost you today to buy the same items costing £44,500 then

Average Earnings:- £21,9million By dividing this by the RPI value you get a factor of approx 7. What this tells you is that on average, our income is seven times greater now than it was in 1899, or looked at another way, the sum left in the will would have appeared seven times more of a fortune than it appears to us today.

Hilary

Hilary Report 27 Jun 2009 13:37

Thanks Sam, I didn't realise that the National Archive had a currency convertor so that will come in very handy in the future.

Thank you also to BrinsleyS for that valuable piece of infomation and you are right, I DID mistype the original amount in the search that I originally did.

Very best wishes to you both and thank you once again!
HiIary