Real incomes of the British middle class, 1760‐1850: the experience of clerks at the East India Company

Abstract

T he study of middle-class income and spending patterns in Britain during the industrial revolution lags seriously behind that of workingclass incomes. In contrast to the wealth of information on working-class experience, our knowledge of middle-class income and spending patterns before 1850 is confined to a small handful of studies and to indirect or impressionistic evidence of middle-class social behaviour, styles of living, dress, housing and furnishings, the food consumed, and servants employed.2 New questions designed to find answers to the perennial problems of income distribution and living standards, the sources of demand for food and industrial goods, the 'Kuznets curve', and so on, are now being asked in ways that point to the pressing need for more detailed knowledge of the development of middle-class income and spending patterns during the industrial revolution.3 Until we gain this detailed knowledge, answers to these questions will remain as elusive as ever. The purpose of this article is to present new evidence on middle-class incomes based on the nominal and real earnings of 'established' clerks employed in the home (London) service of the East India Company between 1760 and 1850.4 It also introduces a new index of living costs for middleI Many people assisted in the preparation of this article. In particular I thank Helen Bridge, Catherine Prior, and Stephanie Haxell who acted as my research assistants at various times. Stephanie Haxell carried out the unenviable task of converting the salary records of the East India Company into electronic form. Wayne Naughton, Ross Cunningham, and Christine Donnelly assisted with computer and statistical analysis. Bob Jackson, and Professors Colin Forster, Barrie Smith, and Roy Church, and anonymous referees made valuable comments on earlier drafts. 2 Specialist studies of middle-class earnings and employment before 1850 can be found in Williamson, Did British capitalism breed inequality?; Boot, 'Salaries and career earnings'; Rubinstein, Elites and the wealthy; Banks, Prosperity and parenthood; Musgrove, 'Middle-class education' (1959); idem, 'Middle-class education' (1961); Perkin, 'Middle-class education'. I Williamson, Did British capitalism breed inequality?; Feinstein, 'Williamson curve'; Jackson, 'Structure of pay'; Clark et al., 'British food puzzle'; Horrell, 'Home demand'. 4The company employed both 'established' clerks and 'extra' clerks. Established clerks formed part of the establishment of the company and occupied all the more demanding and responsible posts in the home service. Extra clerks first appeared late in the eighteenth century when the volume of work began to grow rapidly. They increased in number in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, then decreased quickly after 1830. Although some held quite responsible positions, they were usually employed in routine tasks of copying, recording, and maintaining records of the work of the established clerks. Established clerks were occasionally selected from among the extra clerks, especially at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but this avenue was closed in the 1820s. Established clerks entering from an extra clerk's position were given credit for their experience. This credit was valued for salary purposes at the rate of 5 years as an extra clerk being equal to 3 years as an established clerk. This practice has been followed for the purposes of calculating the length of recognized experience when calculating experience-related salaries for this article.