The stamps which had to be bought with anything were a grievous burden. A pair of gloves worth tenpence—stamp of one penny; worth one and fourpence—stamp of twopence; above one and fourpence—stamp of fourpence. Penalty for selling without a stamp, £5. Hats were taxed in like manner. Inventories and catalogues were stamped; an apprentice's indentures were stamped; every newspaper paid a stamp of three halfpence. In the year 1753 there were seven millions and a half of stamps issued to the journals.
We have seen what it cost a respectable householder to pay his way in the time of Charles the Second. The following shows the cost of living a hundred years later. The house is supposed to consist of husband and wife, four children, and two maids:
Food, coals, candles, small beer (of which 12 gallons are allowed—that is, 48 quarts, or an average of one quart a day per head), soap, starch, and all kinds of odds and ends are reckoned at £3 12s. 5d. a week, or £189 18s. 8d. a year; clothes, including hair-dressing, £64; pocket expenses, £15 12s.; occasional illness, £11; schooling, £8; wages, £14 10s.; rent and taxes, £66; entertainments, wine, etc., £30 19s.: making a total of £400 a year.
If we take the same family with the same scale of living at the present day, we shall arrive at the difference in the cost of things:
| 1890 | 1760 | |
| £ | £ | |
| Food, coals, ale, etc. | 420 | 190 |
| Clothes | 120 | 64 |
| Pocket expenses | 45 | 15 |
| School | 143 | 8 |
| Illness | 42 | 11 |
| Wages of two maids | 42 | 14 |
| Rent and taxes (not counting income-tax) | 150 | 66 |
| Travelling | 150 | nil |
| Books, Magazines, and Journals (say) | 40 | nil |
| Wine | 70 | 31 |
| On furniture and the house | 100 | nil |
A comparison of the figures shows a very considerable raising of the standard as regards comfort and even necessaries. It is true that the modern figures have been taken from the accounts of a family which spends every year from £1200 to £1400.
It may be remarked in these figures that schooling is extremely cheap, viz., £8 per four children, or ten shillings a quarter for each child. Therefore for a school-master to get an income of £250 a year, out of which he would have to maintain assistants, he must have 125 scholars. The "pocket expenses" include letters, and all for six shillings a week, which is indeed moderate. Entertainments, wine, etc., are all lumped together, showing that wine must be considered a very rare indulgence, and that small beer is the daily beverage. Tea is set down at two shillings a week. In the year 1728 tea was thirteen shillings a pound, but by 1760 it had gone down to about six shillings a pound, so that a third of a pound was allowed every week. This shows a careful measurement of the spoonful. Of course there was not as yet any tea allowed to the servants. Coals are estimated at £14 a year—two fires in winter, one in summer. Repairs to furniture, table-linen, sheets, etc., are set down at two shillings a week, or five guineas a year. Happy the household which can now manage this item at six times that amount.
It might be thought that by the middle of the last century the beverage of tea was universally taken in this country. This was by no means the case. The quantity of tea imported about this time amounted to no more than three-quarters of a pound per annum for every person in the three kingdoms, whereas it is now no less than thirty-five pounds for every head. It was, and had been for fifty years, a fashionable drink, and it had now become greatly in use—or, at all events, greatly desired—by women of all kinds. The men drank little of it; men in the country and working-men not at all. Its use was not so far general as to stop the discussion which still continued as to its virtues. In the year 1749 it was ten shillings a pound. In 1758 a pamphlet was written by an anonymous writer on the good and bad effects of drinking tea. We learn from this that the author is alarmed at the spreading of the custom of tea-drinking, especially by "Persons of an inferior rank and mean Abilities." "It may not," he says, "be altogether above the reach of the better Sort of Tradesmen's Wives and Country Dames. But nowadays Persons of the Lowest Class vainly imitate their Betters by striving to be in the fashion, and prevalent Custom hath introduced it into every Cottage, and every Gammer must have her tea twice a day." The latter statement is rank exaggeration, as the imports show.
Especially the author finds fault with afternoon tea. "It is very hurtful," he says, "to those who work hard and live low; when taken in company with gossips a dram too often follows; then comes scandal, with falsehoods, perversions, and backbitings: it is an expense which very few can afford; it is a waste of time which ought to be spent in spinning, knitting, making clothes for the children. Oh, I here with confusion stop, and know not how sufficiently to bewail my grief to you, delightful fair! who, by prevalent custom, are led into one of the worst of habits, rendering you lost to yourselves, and unfit for the comforts you were first designed. Be careful; be wise; refuse the bait; fly from a temptation productive of so many ills. You charming guiltless young ones, who innocently at home partake of this genteel regale, avoid the public meetings of low crafty gossips, who will use persuasions for you to drink tea with them and some others of their own stamp."