CIGARETTE PAPERS
LODGINGS IN LONDON. After making full allowance for the change in the value of the currency, the cost of lodging in London over two centuries ago was cheap compared with the rentals ruling in these days. On September 27, 1710 we find Swift writing from London to his friend Stella:
I lodge in Bury street (St. James’s) where I removed a week ago. I have the first floor, a dining room, and bedchamber at eight shillings a week; plaguy deep, but I spend nothing for eating, never go to a tavern and very seldom in a coach; yet after all it will be expensive. Swift’s eight shillings would represent about three times that sum, but if he found the rental “plaguy deep” in Anne’s day, he would have to use some stronger adjective in these times, because he would find it impossible to obtain the equivalent for less than fifty shillings now. This passage from his letters to Stella also shows how writers who had yet to become famous were compelled to live frugally in order to live at all.
—CRITICUS.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ST19320928.2.93
Bibliographic details
Southland Times, Issue 21823, 28 September 1932, Page 8
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183CIGARETTE PAPERS Southland Times, Issue 21823, 28 September 1932, Page 8
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