Thread: Prices of early 1800s razors when made

And here I am feeling guilty spending 3 hours wage... You know, I don't think I've ever spent that much, even.

Yes and here we sit using computers that require roughly 100 billion gates operating
at least billion times per second correctly for us to exchange emails, and that does not
count all the routers between you and I that are equally, if not more, complex.

Yet we are both impressed with straight razors that cost $125 or so.
Seems our wheel bearings may be a bit out of round, eh?

Cheers

I have a set of Joseph Elliot razors which was a traveling salesman's sample/display collection. The razors have numbers below each one that seem to be a catalog number and a price (wholesale? retail?) in shillings/pence. There are three cases with twenty razors each so scroll through the photos to see them all.

Here is a direct link to the first set of 20 razors and you can just read the numbers along the bottom. And here is the image with a description of each razor. I did my best to convert the shillings/pence price to modern day prices using a couple of websites I found with online calculators. One website was some British university economics dept that adjusted pounds/shilling/pence from any given decade (assumed to be 1850) to 2013 British pounds. I ignored inflation for the two year period and just converted GBP to USD and listed the price for each razor.

The most expensive is the razor with solid/carved mother-of-pearl scales which I calculated to $1,760.66 and the least expensive were two near wedges at $38.75.

Edit - I went into my post history and found where I more fully explained the price conversions.

http://straightrazorpalace.com/show-...ml#post1451921

Incredible collection! It's amazing that this collection has been kept this pristine for all these years...

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

Prices from the 1700s seem not to have survived, though I suppose there must be lists somewhere. One way of going about hazarding a guess i by seeing how much people in that era were paid, and what other goods cost at the time:

Attachment 198519

Attachment 198520

Attachment 198521

The last image shows the cost of a sword. Not a common-or-garden sword, but one with a silver handle. The silver alone would be hefty and the steel used would be many times that in weight of a razor, so it is possibly reasonable to use this as a guide - could be a fifth, or less, or more - depends on the type of razor I expect.

If we use an average mans wages of 15 shillings a week ( a£pound is 20 shillings, then and now) he would have to work longer than a week to buy a razor.

However, pricing things then and now is often an impossibility. They did not have the same resources as us. They did not have mass-production methods like ours. Prices of what you can buy and what you earn do not help - they seem relative at first, but other factors present at the time prove the relativity to modern wages and costs to be vastly unsuitable.

Regards,
Neil

1851 wages:

Occupation £ s. d. per diem
Carpenters 0 10 0 " "
Smiths 0 9 4 " "
Wheelwrights 0 10 8 " "
Bricklayers 0 10 0 " "
Masons 0 9 4 " "
Farm labourers 38 0 0 per annum
Shepherds 42 0 0 " "
Cooks 27 0 0 " "
Housemaids 21 0 0 " "
Laundresses 26 10 0 " "
Nursemaids 19 0 0 " "
Farm servants 23 0 0 " "
House servants 24 10 10 " "

Source: Immigration: report from the Immigration Agent upon immigration; 1851 (pg 5)

Per diem: the amount of money that someone is given to cover their daily expenses while they are working.

comment:
Average wages in Melbourne, 1837 by Katie F
Saturday, Apr 10, 2010 2:23 PM

Hi Paul, Just found that 'Historical records of Victoria' vol 4 page 257 includes average wages in Melbourne for 1837 - they might need to be read with a pinch of salt though, as gov't officials were trying to encourage people to immigrate! Cheers, Katie F

Wages 1860-1890 , souce http://outrunchange.com/2012/06/14/t...-through-1890/

I will go with the Aldrich report data which is hourly wages. It appears the standard is 10 hours a day. I will go six days a week to get weekly income.

Here is the average hourly wage:

Occupation 1860, 1870, 1880, 1890
blacksmith, 0.178, 0.304, 0.259, 0.271
carpenter, 0.182, 0.410, 0.276, 0.322
machinist 0.158, 0.260, 0.227, 0.243
laborers, 0.098, 0.156, 0.135, 0.151

Here is the average weekly wage for 60 hours a week:

Occupation 1860, 1870, 1880, 1890
blacksmith, 10.68, 18.24, 15.54, 16.26
carpenter, 10.92, 24.60, 16.56, 19.32
machinist, 9.48, 15.60, 13.62, 14.58
laborers, 5.88, 9.36, 8.10, 9.06

Originally we were looking for the cost of a razor in 1815. Thanks to Martin we have a good reference for 1820, but we are overlooking something of an order of magnitude - the effects on the British economy of the Napoleonic Wars. The treaty of Amiens (1802) was broken in 1803 and Britain then went to War again (we had already conspired and fought to crush the french in the 1790s). So - though some people dispute this, we are considering the years between 1793 to 1815.

The wars saw a series of coalitions between Britain and Europe, but although other nations were defeated or otherwise ceased fighting, Britain was at war all through the Napoleonic wars. Imagine the cost - the armies had to be fed, steel and iron were used prodigiously for ordnance like weapons, small arms, ammunition, swords, knives, etc, horses supplied, the cost of the Royal Navy and the pay of sailors and the cost of ships, and a hundred other things. We also paid an enormous subsidy to the Austrian and Russian forces, as well as fighting the french who outnumbered us 2:1. Sea defences were also built eg the Martello Towers and coastal defences were improved. Although the British forces were small at first - say 40,000 strong, they had increased to 250,000 by 1813.

How was this all paid for? By increasing taxation at home and reducing the common man to a state of desperation, unemployment and ever increasing prices. Some emigrated. Some just joined the army to avoid starvation. Mills and other industrial concerns had to close down. Inflation grew and grew. Income Tax - introduced in 1799 to garner money to fight the french with - was increased.

Conditions got a bit better after the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, but this was only a brief interlude. The wars still rumbled on abroad and the costs and taxation continued. It was not until 1812 when the Russians trounced Napoleon that coastal fortification and Martello Tower building ceased. Each battle cost us more. Some notable ones which involved the British forces were:

Battle of Toulon, 1793
The Flanders Campaign, 1793 - 1796
The West Indies Campaign, 1793 - 1796
The Battle of the Nile, 1798
Third Anglo-Mysore War, 1789 - 1792
Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, 1798 - 1799
Invasion of Holland 1799
The Battle of Copenhagen, 1801
Maratha, 1803 - 1805
Hanover, 1805
Naples - 1805
Battle of Maida, 1806
The Battle of Blaauwberg, 1806
Alexandria Expedition, 1807
The Peninsular War, 1808 - 1814
The Walcheren Campaign, 1809
The Mauritius campaign, 1809–1811
Holland Expedition, 1814
The Battle of Waterloo, 1815

The above involved transporting the British Army to France, Holland, Spain, Sicily, Mauritius, Denmark, Egypt, etc, etc. Very costly. Even then it did not stop. Napoleon escaped captivity and we had to hunt him down again - the Hundred Days War.

In 1815 the conflict came to an end (with the exception of the Hundred Days War) with the Battle of Waterloo. By then we had gathered an enormous national debt (some say it was the equivalent of £36 billion pounds today, others halve this figure). Things continued to decline - european countries had been occupied and smashed, famine was common and money was hard to come by. This practically cut off most British imports to a weakened and impecunious Europe. We did continue to recover, wages increased (they had been stagnant for almost 20 years before Waterloo), but prices went down (due to the market being restricted and competition being stimulated).

In short it was a time of great changes. You cannot ignore unemployment, near famine, wage cutting, taxation, inflation, etc. What was common re: wages/labour in 1820 could possibly bear no relation to that in 1815 and pre-1815. There were even huge regional variations - London being much different to places like Yorkshire.

Trained and notable economists have tried to define it, but in the financial deficit, for example, even thy differ in estimates from £18 billion to £36 billion in todays money.

Regards,
Neil

And, not to say the heavy hit from a combination of the American colonies and French during that period causing a loss to the Crown therefrom. Though, after the fracas, the American imports of quality products such as razors and good steel items probably helped the UK economy more than the burdensome taxes that caused the first rhubarb and the American seamen losses which caused the second.
~Richard

There are some issues with using Mechi's pricing.

First, most of the catalogs for his goods on Google Books are horribly dated.

For instance:



This price list is in a catalog dated 1805, which would be remarkable for at least two reasons. First, J.J. Mechi was 3 years old in 1805, and second because he would have been a 3 year old beyond the cutting edge of typography for his time, having moved away from the still-common long-s.

Here's a list of his prices from the Brighton Gazette, February 1831:



Not that different. Though do note the razors were then sold only in pairs, and it's unclear what the scale material was.

Also very important is that note that he gives no credit. Even if a typical laborer of the day could have theoretically afforded those prices, in practice the lack of credit would most likely mean it simply wasn't possible to buy. Consider, these were most likely luxury-goods prices.

One year previously, he carried only two variety of razors at 3s, 6d. (He moved to #4 Leadenhall in that year, 1830. He only opened shop in 1828.)

By 1840, he was (at least in the newspapers) advertising exclusively dressing cases, which sold for "20s to 30 guineas".

This ad is from Bell's Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, February 6, 1853:



20s for a whole (modest) dressing kit with 2 razors.

Golddragon,

I may be mistaken, but I believe the prices listed for the razors in those sales kits are per dozen. Most manufacturers catalogs that I've seen are.

Zach - you really should'nt have taken Googles word for the date, which is often wrong and probably based on the OCR version, but instead should have referred to the frontispeice of the document itself where it mentions that John Joseph Mechi was obliged to leave his premises in 1830 for a larger premises. This dates the catalogue at or post 1830.

It is the same 'Bayerische' or german library copy, but 10 years later than Martin's reference.

The exact same german library copy is again referred to by Google, but with a date of 1800, 2 years before Mechi (1802-1880, though some say 1881) was born.

I really do not know that any Mechi catalogue is of use regarding 1815, as he did not set up in business until 1827, I believe.

The catalogues referred to are priced for single razors. All retail catalogues aimed at private individuals were priced for individual razors at the time, and price per dozen lists were wholesale.

Regards,
Neil

Originally Posted by Geezer

And, not to say the heavy hit from a combination of the American colonies and French during that period causing a loss to the Crown therefrom. Though, after the fracas, the American imports of quality products such as razors and good steel items probably helped the UK economy more than the burdensome taxes that caused the first rhubarb and the American seamen losses which caused the second.
~Richard

Not only that Richard, but the war crossed the Atlantic to the States, mainly because the British Navy were forcibly impressing US citizens into the navy. The US would have preferred to stay out of it, so first of all they banned British goods, and later followed that by banning trade wit the UK and France. The main outcome of this was to upset US citizens, who relied on a healthy trade with the UK.

Because the British continued to take liberties and because the US continued to invade Canada - a British province, the US declared war on us in 1812.