Person:Mary Taber (26)

Wages: Source: http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Coinage.jsp
During the eighteenth century wages could be as low as two or three pounds per year for a domestic servant, plus food, lodging and clothing. Female domestic servants earned less than men. Wages for eighteenth-century women could range from the £2 or so mentioned above to between £6 and £8 for a housemaid, and up to £15 per annum for a skilled housekeeper. By contrast a footman could expect £8 per year, and a coachman anywhere between £12 and £26. Because they had to provide their own food, lodging and clothing, independent artisans needed to earn substantially more than this. £15 to £20 per year was a low wage, and a figure closer to £40 was needed to keep a family. The middling sort required much more still and could not expect to live comfortably for under £100 per year, while the boundary between the "middling sort" and the simply rich was in the region of £500. The First Lord of the Treasury enjoyed an annual salary of £4,000.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, these wage patterns changed very slowly, as did London’s pattern of employments. Although the centre of global trade and Britain’s largest manufacturing city, London was relatively little changed, beyond the revolution in transportation brought by the railways, by the mechanisation associated with industrial production. Through at least the middle of the nineteenth century most people continued to work in small manufactories; or from home on a piece rate in sweated trades. Clerking and financial and legal services became more common occupations in the second half of the century, swelling the ranks of the "middle classes".