And Did Those Feet

They have discovered a complete ice house by Regent's Crescent. near Regent's Park https://www.mola.org.uk/blog/18th-century-ice-house-re-discovered-beneath-streets-marylebone?mc_cid=1d0f108c34&mc_eid=c123dc770c

Saturday I attended a walk/event based on the slave owners who lived in  Bedford Square. The tour was organised and given by Jean Campbell from MA for Narrative Environments at CSM. She used the UCL database of compensation payments for those who owned slaves when it was abolished in 1833. Legacies of British Slave Ownership this enabled her to identify several people who lived in Bedford Square who owned slaves.  Jean used this to help raise consciousness not only of slavery but of legacy issues, such as educational attainment of Black students.  The walk used several methods to increase interaction and to stop it being a didactic exercise. The Government borrowed £20m pounds from 2 Bankers, one of them being Rothschilds. Jean reported that this debt was only paid off recently in 2015. ( Taxpayers still paying).

The answer is that is is very complicated. History Today dealt with this in an article by Roderick Floud 'Pricing the Past' March 2019. It is often done using inflation indices which have been compiled for the past, these might be based on prices or earnings, or a combination - each giving different result. But the article suggests, as my anecdotal experience would confirm, that these give a result far too low.  People have resorted to other methods for example including taking a single commodity and using that at as the measure.   For example. you could give an idea of the buying power of a daily wage by giving it in the number of Mars Bars it could buy, or the income of a Doctor  in terms of the daily wage equivalent of unskilled labours, or Roman Legionaries. Froud uses a site called MeasuringWorth.com which helps calculate historic value by a range of methods. Be warned it is complicated. However, I have just discovered that if you go straight to this page, t...

https://londonist.com/london/history/18th-century-queer-london?utm_source=Today%27s+posts+from+Londonist&utm_campaign=7ca5d986e9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_01_21_04_00&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_acfd22879f-7ca5d986e9-219853617

New discovery! https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/aug/26/poet-alexander-pope-designed-londons-marble-hill-garden-says-historian?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail

I seem to remember they numbered in thousands but initial searches suggest 500. But I came across this web site which gives the answer. https://publicdomainreview.org/2013/08/07/the-lost-world-of-the-london-coffeehouse/ 'By the dawn of the eighteenth century, contemporaries were counting between 1,000 and 8,000 coffeehouses in the capital even if a street survey conducted in 1734 (which excluded unlicensed premises) counted only 551. Even so, Europe had never seen anything like it. Protestant Amsterdam, a rival hub of international trade, could only muster 32 coffeehouses by 1700 and the cluster of coffeehouses in St Mark’s Square in Venice were forbidden from seating more than five customers (presumably to stifle the coalescence of public opinion) whereas North’s, in Cheapside, could happily seat 90 people. '