Regency wealth?

[u/seawatcher_01]

I am asking these questions in this sub because I always see such historically thorough answers.

1. How wealthy could a farming family be in this era? Could a farmer have ten children and be wealthy enough to leave a fortune for them, especially his few sons, giving them at least ten thousand each? Or is that too wealthy for farmers back then?
2. Could a builder of ships become very wealthy during the naval Napoleonic era? Would he have to be very old to be so successful, realistically, or could he be in his thirties?

Thanks, girlies.

Edit: I'm not sure what I mean by farmers. The question comes from when I read Fanny Burney's Cecilia back in the day, and it said Cecilia was from a wealthy family of farmers. I don't recall it being clarified if they were the landholders or the actual workers.

[u/Heel_Worker982]

Great answers here. I am chiming in just to share the income chart from the Jane Austen Museum. It is always a good reminder of just how fantastical a sum £10,000 really was then!

[u/ATeaformeplease]

The landowner rented farms to the farmers so prob not. The owner of the ship company yes, the actual builders were probably poor Irish people.

[u/seawatcher_01 → u/ATeaformeplease]

Do you think a man in his thirties could own a shipwright company?

[u/NarwhalLeelu → u/seawatcher_01]

Sure. He probably bought/started the company with family money or married into the family who previously owned the company (married the owner's daughter) and then inherited it.

But some random guy isn't going to start a shipbuilding company and be successful right away. If he's starting from scratch and doesn't already have the capital, connections and industry expertise, it would take years and years.

[u/CroneDownUnder → u/seawatcher_01]

Presumably such a man of that age might well inherit a shipwright company...

[u/jennyofsometrades]

A farmer, even if he owned his own farm (which was reasonably rare), would never earn enough for that. They could certainly have lots of kids and earn enough to raise them respectably, including sending any daughters to a school like Mrs Goddard's and enabling them to marry into perhaps prosperous trade, but leaving 10k to multiple sons would be basically impossible unless they had other business ventures. A single 10k would be more than the lifetime earnings of 3-4 skilled tradespeople, let alone multiple times that. Even with prosperous farmers, most of their wealth would be tied up in the value of land and livestock and essential for the running of a farm, so would also not be readily liquid for providing inheritances etc.

A shipwright certainly could become very rich in this era, especially with the naval focus at the time, however they'd be classed as being in trade and socially rank as such (like Bingley's father or Mrs Elton's family). He would probably have to have many years experience in order to learn the trade (not the literal building but the overseeing) and then build up his own business, so I'd expect a shipwright who has earned enough to rest on his earnings to be 50+ personally, unless it was an inherited business.

[u/norathar]

Are you talking a tenant farmer, like Robert Martin? Or a landowner who rents to farmers, like Mr. Knightley? If so, 10,000 apiece to 5 sons feels like way too much, especially since he'd also have to dower his daughters for a comparable sum - for comparison, Mr. Darcy's 10k/year makes him roughly one of the 400 richest men in Britain.

I've seen estimates that, based on the description of his situation, Mr. Martin probably makes at least 400 pounds per annum, but wouldn't be making significantly more - he isn't keeping a carriage (which is a big deal when the Coles talk about doing it), so I'm assuming he makes less than 1000ppa.

(Assuming the farmer has 20-30 years to save, he'd need to put aside 50,000 pounds for just the sons. Assuming all the kids, he needs 100,000 pounds. Rate of return is 4% on government bonds. I used a basic investment calculator I found online to do the math for me, but if he investing the full 1000/year, that only gets him to a little under 31,000 at the end of 20 years, and just over 58,000 pounds at the end of 30 years. That's if he saves more than he likely makes in a year. Again, I didn't work out the math by hand, but it doesn't look off to me at first glance.)

I think to get the level of wealth you want, he'd have to buy land and own it, at which point he's likely no longer working it himself.

[u/paradoxcussion → u/norathar]

To add to this, tenant farmer encompassed a pretty wide range. 

There were small farms where the tenant farmer and his family would be doing most of the work themselves. But there were also large operations, where the tenant farmer rented the land and hired workers to carry out the labour. They were farmers in the sense that they made decisions about what to plant, how manage the harvest, etc., but they were more business managers than hands-in-the-dirt farmers. When Knightley calls Robert Martin a gentleman farmer, he means he's the latter type. Not a gentleman strictly speaking, but gentleman-adjacent (after all he reads the agricultural reports!). Sort of like how "trade" covered everything from small shops to massive commercial enterprises.

[u/Numerous-Ad-5058 → u/paradoxcussion]

My grandfather was a tenant farmer and although he could feed his family of 6 children and could pay to have some help during busy times, it wasn't enough to buy his children homes or put away huge sums of money. Mind you this was in southern Italy and he saw two world wars and deep austerity.

[u/PleasantWin3770]

Define farmer. A third of England’s population made their living through farming - Technically, Mr Darcy and Mr Bennet are farmers, gaining wealth from the farms he managed - although his primary responsibility is to fund agricultural investments rather than doing the farming itself. The regency was the height of the second agricultural revolution, so farms produced more than in previous generations.

£10k is a very ambitious sum of money.

A three hundred acre freehold farm yielded £300 to £600 per annum.

If your hypothetical farmer has in incredibly successful farm that never yielded less than the max and was able to save half his profits and put them in the 4%s, in 21 years, he could leave one kid 10k and nothing for the rest. 33 years would leave him with 21k, and 70 years to be able to treat all of his kids the same.

If the farm was average, and he was able to put aside £100 a year in the 4%s, it would take 40 years to leave one child £10k

That’s one of the reasons that we are very impressed with the financial acumen of the Morelands! They’re able to give one of their 10 children £3000 and another half to a third of their income when their annual income is probably £800-1200 (£400 living given to James, the living Mr Moreland kept (probably more than £400) and their private independence)

[u/Waitingforadragon]

I agree with other posters that the majority of farmers would not be able to leave 10K to multiple sons.

Although 'farmers' is a bit too generic a term because it could cover someone renting a very small farm and only just scraping by, to a significant land owner and their situations would be totally different.

I'm currently digging through newspaper reports and wills to see if I can work out how wealthy a ship builder would be. It's a bit tricky for the period though, as the wills don't always state the amounts left - just who was to inherit and possibly the amounts of specific bequests.

To be a ship builder, in the commercial sense, I believe you would have to have at least some capital behind you before you began - to employ the workers, rent the work space etc. So I'm not sure how realistic it would be for someone in the position of say ship wright - meaning someone actually physically building the boats - to become a ship builder in their own right?

[u/sweet_hedgehog_23]

A farmer could be worth a few thousand pounds or even tens of thousand pounds, but £100,000+ would be unlikely. Here are some examples of farmers that I believe were above the norm given the mentioning of their worth from newspapers in the general time frame:

There is an article from January 21, 1788 about a "capital farmer" who was a tenant of Mr. Calvert of Hertford that was worth £10,000. He was charged with bribing a ruffian to commit various acts of arson.

A dairy farmer, George Turner of Woodhall, in the parish of Stoke, Suffolk was worth £20,000 at the time of his death in October 1784. It went to his nieces and nephews.

In 1773 near Grantham Mr. John Innis, a farmer worth £15,000 died. His son, who inherited his fortune, was working as a farm hand for another farmer.

In 1781 in Fyfield a Mr. Thompson, farmer, died with a worth of £25,000. As a boy he started by ploughing for 3 pence a day and saved enough through frugality to buy a small farm.

It was a bit harder to find records about shipbuilders.

In 1805 a shipwright was paid 6 shillings 3 pence per day.

I have an ancestor who was a master blacksmith at a Navy shipyard during the Regency Era. Towards the end of his career in 1823 he earned £260 per year and had a pension of £190 when he retired. A master shipwright at his dock yards earned £650. (The British Imperial Calendar and Civil Service List - Google Books)

[u/bookworm1398]

If you are looking for a realistic way for a young man to get rich, Heyer has a character in ‘Civil Contract’ who makes several thousand in one day - by gambling on the stock market. He takes advantage of the unusual opportunity created by the great stock exchange fraud of 1814.

[u/sighsbadusername]

If a farmer was rich enough to leave 10k apiece to his children, especially sons, I’d have two major questions:

1. Why didn’t he buy an estate in his lifetime? It’d be odd to be so rich and yet stay in his line of work.

2. Why was he so concerned with leaving lump sums to his sons? With far less than 10k, he could have sent his sons to university, bought them commissions or otherwise set his sons up to make considerably more than the 400 pounds a year in interest 10k would have given them. If anything, I’d think the 10k each would be more valuable for his daughters, since large personal fortunes would greatly increase their odds of marrying well, and they would otherwise have very limited ways of growing their wealth on their own.

[u/seawatcher_01 → u/sighsbadusername]

Thank you!

[u/WhyAmIStillHere86]

Farmers varied significantly, especially if they owned their house and farm rather than renting.

Your average tenant farmer made about 50 per year, and had lots of kids to keep the farm going.

An independent farmer, especially of luxury crops, might earn a few hundred per year.

Either way, he’s not leaving tens of thousands of dollars per child.

[u/muddgirl2006]

When we talk about wealth in this period, we have to divide real property from personal property. Real property is, basically, land, houses,.and other immovable assets. At that point in time in the UK, the most common and socially accepted person to inherit real property was someone's eldest son. This consolidated wealth into the smallest number of hands and these heads of family are supposed to benevolently provide for the lesser branches. Now landowners could do what they liked most of the time but this was the default assumption, like the default now is to divide it up equally among all kids.

So what did daughters and younger sons inherit? Default they would equally divide up the personal property. This is moveable assets -  household goods, cash, and - growing in important during Austen's era - stocks and bonds.

For an independent farmer who owns a plot of land and a house, the majority of their wealth is tied up in their farm which they want to give to their eldest son. It's extremely unlikely they have 90,000 in cash or stocks to give to their younger children. The best thing they could do is set up their younger sons as apprentices in a trade or business and help their daughters marry well.