Reading the Regency

Regency Incomes

"I mean to be too rich to lament or to feel anything of the sort. A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of."
[Chapter 22, Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen]

The wide gulf between the richest and the poorest was as pronounced during the Regency era as it is today. If money really was the best recipe for happiness, as Mary Crawford believed, then how much money would those in Regency society receive in annual income?

In 1814, Patrick Colquhoun published his Treatise on the Wealth, Power and Resources of the British Empire. In it, he attempted to work out the average incomes for every social group, based on the total annual income for that group, divided by the number of households. The figures he produced included the following:

Five hundred and fourteen Temporal Peers and Peeresses, (Dukes, Marquises, Earls, Viscounts and Barons) received an average income of £10,000 per year. A small handful of those peers would have enjoyed incomes close to one hundred thousand pounds, which suggests that many peers had annual incomes well below the average.

The forty-eight Spiritual Lords and Bishops had an average income of £5,010 per year.

Eight hundred and sixty-one Baronets had an average income of £3,510 per year.

Eleven thousand Knights and Esquires had an average income of 2,000 per year.

Thirty-five thousand Gentlemen and Ladies, living on independent incomes had an average of £800 a year, but that average was taken from incomes ranging between £100 a year and more than £60,000 a year.

Three thousand five hundred persons working in the higher levels of the Civil Service had an average income of £980 per year.

One thousand five hundred eminent Clergymen had an average income of £720 per year.

Nineteen thousand Judges, Barristers and Attorneys had an average income of £400 per year.

Three thousand five hundred eminent Merchants and Bankers had an average income of £2,600

Forty-four thousand Manufacturers and nine hundred Wholesale Warehousemen had average incomes of £804 per year.

One hundred and forty thousand Shopkeepers had an average income of £200 per year.

One million and twenty-one thousand Artisans, Mechanics and Labourers had an average income of £48 per year.

Eight hundred and seventy-four Teachers and Educators, in Universities and the chief schools, earned an average of £600 per year.

An independent income

"And would you," said Mr. Gresham, "if it were in your power, sir, reduce the woman you love from opulence to poverty--to distress?"
"I have four hundred a year, Miss Panton has two--six hundred a year is not poverty, sir."
[Chapter 33, Patronage by Maria Edgeworth]

Income among the landed classes was always spoken of as an annual amount. Some of this would have come from interest on investments, annuities and pensions. The rate of interest paid on investments was often between 4% and 6%, depending on when the money was invested, which is why Mr. Bingley's inheritance of £100,000 provided him with an annual income of "four or five thousand a year"; the equivalent of earning four or five per cent in interest.

While he used the interest to live on, the capital would have remained safe "in the funds" until such time as Mr Bingley used it to purchase an estate. At that time, he would hope that the rents and other income received from the land that made up the estate would provide a similar income to the interest the purchase money had earned while invested.