The blog schedule lobbed a fat one across the center of the plate this month! Tax Day in the United States is April 15th. Since that date is ingrained in the American national consciousness, this becomes the only realistic topic for a post dropping on the 12th.
’Tis true that Mr. Franklin sardonically noted, “…but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” The American War (as the British named it) from 1775 to 1783 was fought over (in American eyes) the issue of “taxation without representation.” Yet, in the Great Britain of the Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815), representation in the Westminster Parliament did not relieve Britishers of a two to twenty percent tax burden. It is doubtful if any were happy to pay these taxes.
However, most Englishmen of means realized the existential threat posed by Napoleon. The Government imposed long and short-term tariffs on individuals and businesses to cover the millions of pounds needed to fund the military machine (and loans/subsidies to foreign countries…£560,000 in 1794 to Hanover…what was that? Oh yes. The Hanoverian Dynasty!).[i]
As Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer noted at the end of the Nineteenth Century,
[An Englishman] had to pay, besides tithes and church-rates, window tax for every window, taxes on his horses if above the size of ponies, taxes on his cart-wheels, taxes on his malt, taxes on silver plate, if he had any, taxes on hair powder, if he wore it, taxes on property if he inherited it, taxes on every bill he paid, for no receipt for any sum above £10 was legally valid unless it were written on stamped paper. [ii]
Of course, many of us in the Austenesque world focus on the more peculiar taxes, particularly the one on hair powder, simply because the idea of powdered hair or wigs is now so quaint. Yet, a comfortable gentleman could expect to pay at least an annual license of one guinea in 1795 and eventually over £1/3s per person by 1813. Is it any wonder that young men and women began to favor softer, more natural hairstyles than the previous two generations (those born between 1740 and 1770)?
Of course, Pitt’s hair powder tax only accelerated the trend away from hair powder, which had begun with the snicking rumble of the guillotine in 1792.[iii]
The number of taxes levied was genuinely astonishing. Unlike the modern world, where VATs, excise taxes, or sales taxes are generally applied across the board, different items enjoyed different assessments. Since there was no income tax, many of these taxes were geared to separate the well-to-do from their annual income. The larger your establishment, the more you had to fork over to the government. As a point of reference, the purchasing power of an 1812 pound is about $89 (US) in 2024. What is important to remember is that few could imagine paying a maid $712 a year in 2024 (£8 in 1812 x $89). The pound and the dollar went a lot farther in 1812. Yes, I know, room and board in exchange for six-and-a-half days a week…really?[iv]
Consider a few of these duties.[v]
Servants: (for Men) £2 8s for one, £3 2@ for two up to £7 13s for eleven
Carriages for pleasure: £12 for one…up to £163 7s for nine or more
Coat of Arms on Equipage: £2 8s
Carriage Rental Firms: £12 per four-wheel coach
Recalling how Lady Catherine DeBourgh emphasized her wealth, her massive household at Rosings would have set her back a pretty penny. Assuming she only had three carriages (a large barouche, a smaller coach, and Anne’s phaeton), she would pay £42 in tax annually.
After 1792, the government discovered new ways to increase revenues by adding items for a single year to the list.[vi]
1793 Game Duty
1794 Foreign Brandy & Rum, slate/stone/marble, bricks & tiles, glass, paper
1795 Imported wine, tea, coffee, cocoa, fruit, silk
But, one need not be a military historian to comprehend how the war progressed by 1797. Consider the list of items added to the taxed list:
1797 Tea, coffee, cocoa, sugar, bar iron, Scots Distilleries (an excise tax on Scotch, dear Lord!), brick, auctions, wills, deeds, advertisements, and on and on…29 items
Is it any wonder smugglers always seeking to avoid the excise men shifted into high gear?
The Government also reached back into the statuten books. One source of revenue was a tax enacted in the late Seventeenth Century: the Duty on Lights and Windows (1695), popularly known as the Window Tax. The original purpose, interestingly enough, was to raise revenues without undue government invasion of privacy. Unlike an income tax that demanded a person to reveal their total income, a tax collector needed only to count the windows. The government combined the dwelling’s value and the number of windows/ventilation openings to arrive at the tax assessment.
Historians and other social scientists are now considering the impact of such a tax on architectural design is only now being considered by. Landlords reduced windows and ventilation openings (vents) in tenements built to house industrial workers. This condemned the poorest of Britishers to pestilential miasmas without any relief available. On top of that, landlords often passed on the tax burden. Other apartment buildings saw existing windows bricked over. Homes featuring bedchambers with no windows—after all, one does at night is sleep, no? [vii]
Yet, the tax also led to an exhibition of conspicuous consumption by British elites. Windows rose from floor to ceiling, as frequently imagined in Darcy’s library. Ostentatious treatments called attention to windows. The greatest of houses created glassed-in porches to demonstrate wealth! Mr. Collins may wax poetic about Lady Catherine’s chimney-piece, but I imagine Rosings’s glittering front reflecting orange in the setting sun.[viii]
Unquestionably the Georgian/Regency world carries a tremendous romantic appeal. Yet, we rarely appreciate how the entire nation was living under as much of a threat, a more real one, as the USA was in the 1950s. However, the lives of the gentry and the ruder classes were profoundly affected by the tax policies enacted by the Government to keep the revolutionary hordes of Republican France away from Dover.
[i] William Newmarch, On the Loans raised by Mr. Pitt During the First French War, 1793-1801; with some statements in Defence of the Methods of Funding Employed. Journal of the Statistical Society of London, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Sep., 1855), pp. 255.
[ii] Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer. England in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, A.C. McClurg & Co.), 1899. p. 13-14.
[iii] See http://demodecouture.com/hairstyles-cosmetics-18th-century/
[iv] See https://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflation/1812 for a good explanation.
[v] 1819 Gentleman’s PocketMemorandum Book as cited by Nancy Mayer at http://www.regencyresearcher.com/pages/tax.html
[vi] Newmarch, p 257.
[vii] Andrew E. Glantz. A Tax on Light and Air: Impact of the Window Duty on Tax Administration and Architecture, 1696-1851. Penn History Review, 15:2, Spring 2008, p 28.
[viii] Glantz, p 32.
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