The Cost of Living Four Centuries Ago

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 36, 4 September 1902, Page 6

The Cost of Living Four Centuries Ago

A Belgian priest, who devotes lome of hia time to rummaging among the archives and manuscripts of'ihis native Flanders (writes a Louvain correspondent), has unearthed documents which give » splendid idea of the economical conditions prevailing in hia fatherland 300 or 400 years ago. Some items culled from the doouments published by Father Annaert I find interesting enough to be given a l'tttle space for the edification of my readers : Every Flemish village had in the sixteenth century its relief society, which was generally managed by two laymen voted for by the villagers. These two administrators had to give a yearly report of their doings to the parish prießt and the town councilmen. From one of these reporU it appears that in the village of Stekene the revenues of the relief •ociety amounted in 1509 to 56 dollars in American money. One would naturally think that the poor relieved with said wealth were very few and far between. Not so, however, for, according to the records of the disbursements made by the society, 56 dollars made really a round sura in those days. Judge for yourself : Every deserving poor peison received weekly a loaf of bread weighing eight pounds, that made for the year an expense of 89 cents per capita. The society paid also house rent ; and a year's rent for a poor widow's hou-e cut a swath in the revenues of 36 cents. It furnished wearing apparel, and paid for the cloth at the rate of from 11 to 13 cents a yard, whilst the shoes it settled for cost from Beven to nine centa a pair — the price of a good cigar, No mention is made of the accounts of coal ; but items for turf furnished, entailing an expense of 16 cents per waggonload, recur quite frequently. Doctor's fees and surgeon's fees fitted in with the above figure ; for the same accounts refer to sums varying from five to 11 cents for medical attendance upon sick parishioners. For the operation of lithotomy the surgeon received in 1578 the munificent fee of 43 cents. At sight of such a bill th> re was no occasion for the patient to die, as was the case recently in Brussels, where, after a successful operation — operations are always successful when they are not spoiled by complications — the patient, on being handed the surgeon's bill for £1600, suffered one of these, complications from which h<? never recovered. In summing up hia enquiiy Father Annaert makes a compari•on between the annual budget of a family, composed of father, mother, and five children, in the sixteenth century, and the budget of a like household in the twentieth century Considering the value of money in Belgium to-day, thin six-teenth-century budget would repres"nt now a sum of 210 dollars. Whence the coin pilator draws tho inference that the conditions of the laborer in the sixteenth century, when wages averaged from seven to 115 cents a day, was not as wretched a& modernists would have us believe.