Nevil Shute on Inflation

Cromer Pier, England

By writing in his spare time, Nevil Shute eventually finished his second novel So Disdained. One of the reasons it took the author three years to complete it was that he was working for the Airship Guarantee Company at the time. He worked as a senior stress engineer on the rigid-bodied His Majesty's Airship R100 to service the British Empire travel routes. 

In addition to airships, Nevil Shute knew about the practicalities of flying airplanes. His novel is packed with details about how Lenden's airplanes worked, as well as the way he flew them. Knowing all those details, I'm sure Nevil Shute knew how much the planes cost to operate as well. He built those into every facet of his novel, including the scheme of Lenden and his WWI pilots, to travel around Britain in their seaplane, and offer ten minute joyrides for a guinea (one pound and one shilling).

You are probably asking "How could his character Lenden have believed he could charge customers so little? Surely, if he and his partners had charged his customers more, he could have made a go of his seaside tourist business!" But according to the website www.measuringworth.com, one guinea in 1919 was equivalent to 44.28 pounds in purchasing power today. That's what they call the real price. They also calculate the labor value of a guinea in 1919 as over one hundred-and-sixty-seven pounds, and the income value at over two hundred-and-fifty-two pounds. 

If you raise the price to thirty shillings, as Lenden and his friends later did, the real price rises to 63 pounds, while the labor and income values climbs into the mid two hundred and three hundred pound range. That's in today's England currency. If you want to translate that into what an American tourist would pay in U.S. money, if he were to travel to the UK today, increase those figures by fifty percent.

I'm not sure how to factor all those different values to figure out how expensive it would have been for someone one hundred years ago to take a ten minute pleasure flight. English reader Joppy kindly shared with us that his father earned just over seven pounds in his first year working as an apprentice pharmacist. In this case, his father began work eleven years later, in 1931.  

Consider the English TV series Downton Abbey, which portrays life at an English manor house (such as Moran worked at) beginning before World War I, in 1912. By the time the series finishes, in 1925, the Earl of Grantham is struggling to run the house with a fraction of his former staff. Wages, as well as other costs, have multiplied several times since World War I. It seems safe to assume wages continued to rise between 1925 and 1931. 

We can assume that, had a young man like Joppy's father started as an apprentice pharmacist in 1919, he would have earned significantly less than seven pounds in his first year. Perhaps, let us say, four pounds? And that's for a man. Given the gender limitations back then, a woman of similar age and skills would likely earn less, perhaps three pounds a year? 

Enjoying a drink at Cromer Pier

Whatever the amount, you get the idea. For most working class people during their first few years in the job market, they might be able to afford a drink on Cromer Pier with their friends. (I wonder what that cost in 1919? A couple pence?) But to spend a guinea (a pound-and-a-shilling) for a ten minute jaunt in Lenden's little Avro seaplane would have represented a major portion of whatever they had in the bank.

Assuming, that is, that they weren't living from payday to payday. 

For someone like Moran, the business agent of a manor lord, who had his own automobile, and drove up to London regularly for a black tie dinner with his friends and business associates, the situation would, naturally, be different.

As for the numbers I mentioned earlier, I can't help wondering how they might compare to a cheap flight from England to some sunny holiday spot today. Of course, cheap flights to sunny holiday spots didn't exist in 1919, so you have to take that into consideration too. A ten minute jaunt in Lenden's Avro might represent, for most tourists of that period, their one and only chance to ever fly in an airplane!

In any case, one guinea, or thirty shillings, was hardly an insignificant sum. A successful business operates on repeat customers, and that's something Lenden and his pals couldn't generate. The first time they went to a seaside town, they would do okay. But if they tried to return a few months, or a year later, few people wanted to fly with them. So the people who would invest that sum on a novelty didn't want (or couldn't afford) a repeat experience. The people who hadn't flown with them the first time still wouldn't fly again. I guess they figured the money was better spent elsewhere. 

The English like their seaside towns. Even if the towns are quiet during the week, towns like Cromer bustle on weekends. In the summer, some seaside towns operate amusement park rides and attractions. The larger ones, such as Great Yarmouth, located south of Cromer, may well have them going year round. I wonder if Lenden and his friends could make such airplane rides pay now in these towns. I suspect the towns would not allow them, given modern safety restrictions. But if Lenden and his pals could offer such flights, one thing's for sure. A ten minute ride would cost you a lot more than a pound-and-a-half. 

Then again, if you were interested in listening to a short presentation on the joys of timeshare ownership...

Dragon Dave