Is there information for incomes in the past?

[Elizabeth Herts]

I am transcribing my grandfather's three diaries from the 1930s.

I would like to know where I could find statistics for pay levels then. He gives the costs of various things, and his retirement pay (although he was working at the Air Ministry he had retired from the Royal Navy through ill health).

[Caroline]

Current Value of Old Money

Might be something useful on these pages.

[Elizabeth Herts]

Thanks, Caroline. A very interesting site.

My grandfather gives some of his expenses in his diary, but I'd love to know what his mortgage was (which he mentions).

[Phoenix]

One of the snags about "value of money" statistics is the way prices move in relationship to each other.

When I was about eleven:

Bus fare 4d
Paperback 2s 6d
Whiskey 30s

Today
Bus fare £2
Paperback £7
Whiskey £20???

[Elizabeth Herts]

I'm not really interested in a comparison with today. Rather, I want to understand how comfortably off he was.

My grandfather had his own house, and three daughters. They had holidays every year and went regularly to the cinema and took the children to the theatre (pantomime). My mother went to boarding school in 1931, but it was subsidised (Royal Naval School in Twickenham for daughters of naval officers). They had their own house, a lovely house, brand new in 1926 but I suspect that my grandmother's grandmother subsidised the purchase (she was proprietor of a large shop in Guildford High Street). In 1933 after she died my grandmother inherited some money, and they were able to live more comfortably and buy a car.

However, I don't think he was well off in his own right.

[Janet]

Anybody owning their own house in the 1930's would have been reasonably well off, as most people at this time rented property.

The Boarding School aspect is trickier because as you say, children of naval officers would have been helped financially. During the second World War it was not only navy officers who benefited from boarding education of their children. Some of the lower ranks such as Chief Petty Officers also benefited from this. Most people went regularly to the cinema and pantomimes, so again is not a very good judge of how well off a family was. Holidays were also taken by many people as train/bus travel was cheap and so were able to get to the seaside very easily hence the popularity of places like Blackpool and the Devon coast so again holidays are not something to judge the wealth of a family. By contrast few people had cars, so car owning and house owning would be your better criteria for how well off a person was.

Janet

[Olde Crone Holden]

My grandfather lived a comfortable middle class existence, although his job was a very humble one - some trumped up clerical job for Libbys Tinned Fruits.

He owned his own house and had a car in the 1920s. His two children went to a private day school. He had a television in the 1930s and the family went on annual holidays, staying in hotels. All this prewar.

He was bankrolled by his father, who also kept various other members of the extended family. Great grandfather was a self made man who was on the board of directors for the Co-op in Manchester. His earnings could never have been huge, but he was a shrewd investor, bought several small houses. He definitely never inherited any money as the previous generations on both sides were dirt poor.

I have an advertisement for the house my grandparents bought, brand new, in Coulsdon, Surrey in the late 1920s. Detached, 3 bed, 3 receptions and a garage - price 600gns. I am sure the deposit, if not the whole amount, was paid by my great grandfather.

In those days, you could only get a mortgage for 90% maximum, and based oonly on 2-2.5 of your annual salary without bonuses, so the mortgage repayments would have been low and certainly not more than a quarter of your income.

Curious little tale here - grandad retired in the 1960s and they sold the house for £52K and moved down to Devon. Grandad promptly died, and grandma returned to Coulsdon and re-bought their house, paying nearly £100k for it!!!

OC

[Elizabeth Herts]

Interesting, OC. Amazing Grandma went back to old house!

My grandparents' house was 10 minutes walk from Guildford town centre - a beautiful spot, just like being in the countryside. It had a huge garden at the bottom of a quarry. They moved in new in 1926, and I'm pretty sure grandma (see my avatar) funded it. Before they were living in rooms. It had a lounge, dining room, kitchen (which you could eat in), scullery, very large downstairs cloakroom and loo, a large hall with a fire one end and table and seats, 5 bedrooms upstairs, a bathroom and separate loo. It also had a garage and various outbuildings for coal and storage etc. The house is still there and we went up there in 2000 when my daughter had her graduation ceremony at Guildford cathedral. It's now worth a small fortune.

I'm sure my grandparents could not have moved from a rented flat into such a house without grandma putting her hands in her pocket, although my grandfather did have a good job at the Air Ministry involved in the design of aircraft.

[Little Nell]

Not sure why Phoenix knew the price of whisky when she was at school???

Retirement info is probably kept somewhere in a govt dept. Metropolitan police pension records are at National Archives in Kew.

[Elizabeth Herts]

As I mentioned, my grandfather had a small amount of Retired Pay (£13 per month in 1932). However he never reached proper retirement because he died of stomach cancer in 1949, just after my sister was born, and I never knew him.

My mum told me so much about him, and his diaries present him in such a lovely light, that I'm trying to learn as much about him as possible.