RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: ChasH on Saturday 01 December 07 11:59 GMT (UK)
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Thought you chatters would like to see a bit more data found in registers. Brings family history alive when one finds something like this.
Not cheap were they?
I may have other interesting things to post if you think it worthwhile.
Regards
Chas
P.S. Note the three ways the letter "e" was written.
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They seemed extraordinarily expensive. I wonder how often money has been devalued since then.
Lizzie
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How much in today's money was 13/6d in 1692?
jim
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expensive indeed but books were back then. They were a sought after item and as you can see priced well over what most could afford. Things were not mass produced way badk then hence the high costs.
As a comparison have a look at this site that lists costs of various items from Sothampton in 1625
http://www.portsdown.demon.co.uk/mark.htm there's a few years difference to the date in this post, but it gives a rough idea.
Sarndra
www.sarndra.com
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expensive indeed but books were back then. They were a sought after item and as you can see priced well over what most could afford. Things were not mass produced way badk then hence the high costs.
As a comparison have a look at this site that lists costs of various items from Sothampton in 1625
http://www.portsdown.demon.co.uk/mark.htm there's a few years difference to the date in this post, but it gives a rough idea.
Sarndra
www.sarndra.com
Furthermore, at this site http://www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk/
In 2006, £13 6s 0d from 1692 is worth
£1,535.61 using the retail price index.
A lot of money for sure.
Cheers
Sarndra
www.sarndra.com
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expensive indeed but books were back then. They were a sought after item and as you can see priced well over what most could afford. Things were not mass produced way badk then hence the high costs.
As a comparison have a look at this site that lists costs of various items from Sothampton in 1625
http://www.portsdown.demon.co.uk/mark.htm there's a few years difference to the date in this post, but it gives a rough idea.
Sarndra
www.sarndra.com
Furthermore, at this site http://www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk/
In 2006, £13 6s 0d from 1692 is worth
£1,535.61 using the retail price index.
A lot of money for sure.
Cheers
Sarndra
www.sarndra.com
Arghhh i put the wrong amount in...scrub that previous post..i'm still waking up.
In 2006, £0 13s 6d from 1692 is worth
£77.94 using the retail price index.
Still a lot of money but hey better than 1500 pounds!
Righty i'm off for breakfast LOL!
Sarndra
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We who live in the UK are very lucky - books are cheap. More expensive in the rest of Europe (I guess that there is a smaller market as other languages are less widely spoken) and other parts of the world. When I'm in South Africa visiting family, I'm always asked to bring books over, as they are very expensive there.
meles
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Books back in those days would have been hand bound, very labour intensive, and if they were leather bound, and goldleaved etc that would have been even more. I have ancestors who were book binders, and the girls in the family were 'book folders' . Then there was the 'goldbeater' who presumably made the gold leaf.
I am having the 250 year old family bible (from another branch of the family) mended by a sympathetic hand binder, and I dare not say what it is costing. The original price is stuck in and if my memory serves me right, it was 3/6, which was a lot in 1760ish. Mind you the binders said that it would have cost less to do just a simple rebinding, but mine is being mended to (hopefully) preserve all the notes written in. I just hope it is OK, but the poor leather book binding was just falling apart. I am hoping this will mean it last another 200 years!!
Helen
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[snip]
I am having the 250 year old family bible (from another branch of the family) mended by a sympathetic hand binder, and I dare not say what it is costing. The original price is stuck in and if my memory serves me right, it was 3/6, which was a lot in 1760ish. Mind you the binders said that it would have cost less to do just a simple rebinding, but mine is being mended to (hopefully) preserve all the notes written in. I just hope it is OK, but the poor leather book binding was just falling apart. I am hoping this will mean it last another 200 years!!
Helen
That is so lovely Helen. I love reading about family heirlooms being so well looked after especially after having worked (and intend to again) in the heritage sector with artifacts hundreds of years old. I'm sure it will last that if not more if done properly!
Cheers
Sarndra
www.sarndra.com
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I've got an illustrated bible with no hard cover at all unfortunately. I remember going with my gran to collect it from an old lady's house in the village. The old lady had died, leaving no family friends and neighbours were allowed to have her belongings. Gran being a big church woman opted for the bible..........I used to love looking at it because of the pictures. It had all the photo mounts for family details but sadly they were never completed and it now sits in her old bible box with the hard bound bible (no illustrations) that was hers, along with several prayer books.
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I wonder if anybody noticed and understood the reason for my spelling it, "expence"? Equivalent to X pence = multiplied by pence :D
Chas
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I may have other interesting things to post if you think it worthwhile.
Please do, Chas. I love seeing stuff like this - and there's no other way we would ever get to see things that are in private hands.
Monica
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understood the reason for my spelling it, "expence"
I think like most Rootschatters, I missed that. We're probably all too polite and just thought you couldn't spell!! :D :D
Lizzie
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Meles ... when I was in Canada, I was quite shocked at the cost of a simple thing like a hard-backed notebook, similar to one I had bought before my trip in WHSmiths for about £2 ... it worked out at about £9 !
I couldnt understand it when I saw all the trees and pulp mills in the Rockies ... why was anything paper so expensive ? This includes books, even postcards ...
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I wonder what a similar new book would cost today? Remembering the register had to have parchment pages not paper - I reckon it would cost you a lot more than £77.
Carole
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I wonder what a similar new book would cost today? Remembering the register had to have parchment pages not paper - I reckon it would cost you a lot more than £77.
Most definitely it would. Literally hundreds of sheets of parchment would set you back quite a few pound...given it's the treated skin of dead animals, parchment tends to be a tad more labour intensive to produce than paper (although if made well, it tends to last since parchment is usually more naturally alkaline than paper...and your most major issue is usually dessication rather than acid decay). That, of course, is assuming you can find a specialist who can make parchment in bulk.
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I wonder what a similar new book would cost today? Remembering the register had to have parchment pages not paper - Carole
Never, never, never would anybody even dream of using parchment for such a mundane purpose as a parish register for births, marriages and deaths. Parchment was reserved for important documents. One only needs to look at the slapdash way most registers were written. Had parchment been used they would have taken more care for it would be much more expensive than paper.
The acidity of modern mass produced paper was not in hand produced paper used in parish registers and the worst problems seem to have been caused by incorrect storage conditions rather than deterioration due to age and chemicals. A register written today on ordinary paper with modern ink would not outlive a decent one already two hundred years old if both were stored in the same condition!
Regards
Chas
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Well I would have expected a register from 1692 to have been parchment. All the early one's I've seen have been. I don't know if they all were but they were supposed to be parchment :
"In 1598, Queen Elizabeth I approved an order which stipulated that every church had to:
- use registers made of parchment
- copy any old, surviving records into the parchment registers
- copy the year's baptism, marriage and burial entries and send them to the relevant bishop annually for safekeeping; these became known as Bishops' Transcripts.
Queen Elizabeth was particularly concerned that records dating from the beginning of her reign be preserved, which is why so many parish registers date from 1558. "
I know the later ones, when they gradually introduced printed forms for marriage after Hardwicke's Marriage Act and the ones for baptisms after 1812 were paper, but early ones were on parchment, which is why so many have lasted - as were legal documents.
Carole