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Comment by arbuge | Hacker News Reader

> By the time Josiah died in 1795, he’d amassed a fortune of £600k pounds (more than US $100m today), and was the 4th richest man in all of England.

I found this to be an interesting point about how much the wealth of society has increased since those times. $100m today would not put you anywhere even remotely close to the top of that list.

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Converting historical currency to modern values becomes increasingly meaningless the longer the time span, and 1795 is a sufficiently different world to today with a different basket of goods that I don't think that's a valuable comparison.

By the same formula 100k in todays' money would be $600. Is that realistic?

That formula is for old British Pounds which are not even decimal. If go back earlier than that, there's records of whole villages being bought for a pound or two.

I've just started reading Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906 and it mentions that the richest Dukes had incomes in the hundreds of thousands per year and, of course, huge capital assets - so that 4th place does seem rather surprising.

FWIW I can't find a reference to him being the 4th richest anywhere else but the article, so they probably just misread something in their sources.

The goods available are very different. It would be interesting to compare what that buys you in terms of land and property though.

The potteries business of Stoke-on-Trent is so thoroughly vanished that it was a few years ago promoting the sale of houses at £1 to anyone willing to fix them up and live there. Sic transit gloria mundi, I suppose.

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