How much was sugar in 1807?

Old-Bailey-9685I’ve found this neat website that tells the answer – a fully searchable edition of the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913. You name it, and somebody will have stolen it – and the value of what they stole will be right there in the proceedings.

I wanted to know whether Elizabeth’s cash-strapped household could afford to let Hannah make strawberry jam for the fete. Turns out that the price of sugar had been dropping for years, and was one shilling a pound in London in 1807. It was probably more out in the Cotswolds, but – yes – thanks to the various genteel jobs the sisters had picked up around the village, Hannah could make strawberry jam with the wild strawberries growing along the edges of the nearby woods.