12.6. Real Family Budgets

Mr. Purdy, the head of the Statistical Area of the Poor Law Administration,  gives some real cases of expenses.

A family in Kent, November 1835:

		s  d
Earnings		9 0
Flour	5 gallons	4 2
Bacon	3 ½ lbs.	1 5
Butter	1 ½ lbs.	1 2 ¼
Cheese	1 lb.	0 7
Sugar	1 lb.	0 6 ½
Tea	2 ½ oz.	0 8
Soap	½ lb.	0 3
Candles	½ lb.	0 3
Total		9 0 1/4

(Purdy, 1861, p. 348)

8 families of 53 persons in total, residing in Kent, Sussex, Devonshire, Cumberland, 1835, (figures per family): 

		s  d
Earnings		11 2 ½
Flour	35 lbs.	5 8 ¼
Bread	7 ¼ lbs.	1 1
Potatoes		0 2 ½
Bacon	½ lb.	0 4 ½
Meat	1 ¼ lb.	0 6
Butter	1 ¼ lb.	1 1 ¾
Cheese	2 lbs.	0 11
Tea	1 ½ oz.	0 5 ½
Sugar	1 lb.	0 7
Cider		0 3
Total		11 2 ½

(Ibid., p. 350)

47 families, 91 adults and 191 children, Lincoln and Leicester, 1838 (figures per family):

		s d
Earnings		11  0
Flour	39 ¼ lbs.	6  4
Bacon and meat	3 ¾ lbs.	1 10 ½
Groceries		0   4 ½
Clothes		0   6
Firing		0 11
Rent		0   9
Sundries		0   1 ¾
Total		10 10 ¾

(Ibid., p. 365)

The food quantities are in many cases higher, as those families who had a pig, and slaughtered it at the end of one year, could have available 220 pounds of meat per year. Also many labourers had allotments, where they could cultivate potatoes and other vegetables.

There are other reports of family budgets which show weekly payments for schooling of the children, and of amounts of 6 pounds and 8 pounds (amortized over the year) for clothing.

(Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne, A View of the Low Moral & Physical Condition of the Agricultural Labourer, 1844, p. 32)

“Do the labourers bake at home, or do they send to the baker?” “We allow them ovens as much as possible. The great advantage that the poor have in this new system is, that they are not now at the mercy of the bakers and the little shopkeepers, as they used to be; they used to pay, to my knowledge, 20 to 25 per cent. More for every article they consumed than the higher ranks; now, under the new system, that is in a great measure destroyed.”

(Select Committee on the State of Agriculture, 1837, Mr. R. Hughes, steward for landowners, Wiltshire, p. 162)