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How Generous were they?

 How generous were the people of Dorchester under John White? The sums of money collected for charitable purposes were typically tens or hundreds of pounds. That would not be much today, yet we know that money was worth a lot more 400 years ago. But how much more?

There is no single answer. It depends how you compare then and now. You could take the price of food as a yardstick. But some things were luxuries then but not now and vice versa. Or you could compare wages. But whose? There aren't many weavers nowadays and there weren't any computer programmers in the 17th century. So any comparison of the value of money is going to be a bit arbitrary and uncertain.

Two measures will be used here. The first is based on bread and milk, basic food both then and now. The price of bread has increased by a factor of about 150, milk by a factor of about 550. We will use an average of 350. The second is based on the wages of a labourer and a skilled craftsman. They have gone up by a factor of about 1,500. This is much more than the increase in the price of food - people expect to have a higher standard of living today!

Here, then, are some of the amounts raised in John White's Dorchester for charitable purposes. The first number in brackets is today's equivalent in terms of food, the second in terms of wages.

Typical collection at a service in Holy Trinity, 1619-20  

£1.13s.0d 

(£577 - £2,475)

Collection to relieve the poor during cold weather, Feb 1635

£19    

(£6,650 - £28,500)

Collection at St. Peter's for victims of the 2nd great fire

£57  

(£19,950 - £85,500)

Collection for plague at Taunton, 1640  ...        

over £60 

(over £21,000 - £90,000)

... and a week later for victims of fire at Yeovil    

£44    

(£15,400 - £66,000)

For the founding of the Hospital, 1620-23      

 £267 

(£93,450 - £400,500)

Bequeathed by J. Whetstone for building an Almshouse  

£500  

(£175,000 - £750,000)

This was from a town of about 3,000 people. And they gave like this many times, year after year.

Even allowing for the big uncertainty in the change in value of money, these were clearly generous people. Why? And how do you think their giving compares with charitable giving today? Would it be a fair comparison, given that taxation now provides for much of what was charity in John White's time? Are we as generous now as they were then? To give you a benchmark, the total amount of money raised in Dorchester for Christian Aid week 2005 was about £21,000. The population of Dorchester is about 6 times what it was in John White's time. So a Dorchester the size of John White's would have given about £3,500.

On the other hand, in the Dorchester Town Council minutes of 25 January 2005 'The Mayor reported on the swift response of the residents of Dorchester to the Indian Ocean [Tsunami] Disaster which had claimed over 175,000 lives and rendered over 5,000,000 people homeless. Within hours of the catastrophe Dorchester's Rotary Clubs had arranged a response and were inviting charitable donations. Within a week £28,000 had been raised and vital equipment had been purchased and dispatched. In that first week the Rotary Clubs of Dorchester had provided 5% of the total supplies provided by the people of the United Kingdom.'

Over to you ...