I watched this movie tonight and was wondering how much Mr. Scrooge paid his employees. He paid Bob Cratchit....15 shillings a week. He paid his maid...2 shillings a week. He paid the boy to buy a goose....1/2 crown or 1 shilling (?). When he woke up on Christmas Day he gave the maid a "Guinea" and increased her wages to 10 shillings a week.
15 shillings= $.75 cents. 2 shillings= $.10 cents. Guinea= $1.05. Crown= $.25 cents.
It needs to be considered that those paltry sums, in present day terms, are pocket change, but back in the 1850's the buying power would have been quite considerably greater.
If you recall when Scrooge was eating in the inn and stopped a passing waiter to ask for "More bread", the waiter replied, "That's ha' penny extra sir" (1/2 cent).
That does give some kind of perspective about the value of money at that time, where a penny actually had some buying power, unlike now.
Here in Canada the penny was phased out of our currency a few years ago, so now our smallest coin is the nickel, whose days might indeed be numbered...
Your conversions are a bit off.
The old shilling equaled 12 pence. Or, 12 pence made up one shilling.
So, 15 shillings was actually 180 pence. 2 shillings would have been 24 pence.
A guinea was worth 21 shillings, or a little more than a British pound. A pound was 20 shillings.
So if Scrooge gives the maid a guinea on Christmas morning, and that's worth 21 shillings, he gave more to her in one shot than he pays Cratchit for a whole week of work (15 shillings). No wonder she ran out the door overjoyed.
A crown is 5 shillings, so half a crown is 2 1/2 shillings, or 30 pence.
I just found a conversion website online. Who knows if it's accurate, but it claims that 1 British pound in 1843 is the equivalent of $124.43 cents in today's American dollar.
It's always seemed odd that they had both pounds and guineas, when the latter was worth only five percent more than the former. It's like having both a dollar bill, and a dollar-and-five-cent bill. What's the point?
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Not sure of your point, but Cratchitt was not actually underpaid for his position. Abused? Certainly - Ebenezer Scrooge was a first class jerk before the interventions. For all the years he put up with Scrooge's general abuse, would Cratchitt not be better served simply getting a job elsewhere for more money if he was underpaid?
Scrooge had no choice but to pay him the going rate, otherwise he wouldn't have had any clerk at all or would have gotten one that was a poor clerk. That he had to pay Cratchitt a day's wage to sit home on Christmas really gnawed at him.
Allowing for inflation what would his salary be today?
shareHard to be sure, but using on line sources for conversion and inflation, Bob Cratchit would have made about $120 dollars a week.
Doesn't seem like much and indeed it wasn't, but typical life in 19th century England had no weekly/monthly expenses like cable bills, phone bills, buying and maintaining modern appliances, AC, central heating, utilities like electricity and water, buying and maintaining automobiles, dining out, etc.
Expenses would be mostly securing housing, food, fuel for heating and cooking, and clothing.
EDITED for error in year and dollar/pound conversion.
19th century to be exact.
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Right, 1840 ish. I had entered 1740 (brain fart) into the on-line inflation calculator, so my estimate as to Bob's take home pay is off by half. Oops..
The equivalent for Bob's 15 shilling a week pay would be about $120 U.S. dollars today, not the $250 I posted.
I guess that still was middle class for the mid 1800s.
Post edited. Thanks.