Welcome to All Things Austen in April!
We are pleased to welcome a guest today to our celebration of All Things Austen in April. Joining us is Collins Hemingway, the author of the trilogy “The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen,” which reimagines seven “missing” years in her life to create a relationship with a man very much her equal. His topic is taxes in Austen’s day. Thank you, Collins, for joining us today.
This being tax day in the U.S., I thought it appropriate to celebrate the many ways the tax man visited Jane Austen and her fellow citizens during Regency times.
The tax philosophy of the day echoed the views of the famous tax philosopher, George Harrison of the “Beatles”: “If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat/If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.”
Well, they didn’t tax feet in the Regency era, but they did tax other modes of transport such as horses and carriages.
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Among the items taxed between 1795 and 1820 were: almanacs, bricks, candles, carriages, dice, glass, gloves, hair powder, hats (men), horses, leather, letter franks, newspapers, perfume (women), ribbons, servants and gamekeepers, shooting licenses, sporting dogs, spirits and wine, starch, timepieces, tobacco, wallpaper, and wills.
Taxes ranged from threepence for a cheap worker’s hat to several pounds for luxury items. Though the tax on alcohol and tobacco affected everyone, most taxes were geared toward the wealthy. Riding horses, for example, were taxed, but working horses were not.
In “Pride and Prejudice,” Mr. Bennet’s horses, which were farm horses first and pulled a carriage in their spare time, would have escaped taxation. Otherwise, the Bennet family probably could not have afforded a carriage. The carriage tax was among the highest: £8.16s for one four-wheel carriage; £9.18s for a second; and £11 for each one after that, as Hazel Jones documents in “Jane Austen’s Journeys.”
By comparison, an unskilled laborer of the day made about £25 a year, and the Austen women, after the death of Mr. Austen, lived on about £400 annually.
Most of the tax revenue went toward the war with France, which carried on for most of Austen’s adult life.
The window tax, which had been around for many years, is a tax Austen mentions in “Mansfield Park” as a proxy for wealth. Henry Crawford gravely shakes his head at the size of Sotherton Court, the Rushworth house, and the narrator comments that there are more windows “than could be supposed to be of any use than to contribute to the window-tax.” This comment may have originated with Jane’s mother after Mrs. Austen’s trip to the fabulous Stoneleigh estate.
Tax policy and its implications arise subtly in the opening scene of my trilogy The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen in which Austen observes the entrance of a young man, Mr. Ashton Dennis, who quickly emerges as the male protagonist. After describing his wardrobe, the narrator observes: “He wore his own hair, whether because of the new fashion or unsuitable political views, it was impossible for Jane to know.”
The reference is to Ashton’s lack of a traditional wig and the hair powder used to keep it fresh. Old-fashioned Tories wore wigs and gladly paid the tax on powder as a patriotic show of support for the war with France. Some people, however, stopped wearing wigs to avoid the tax, while many Whigs disposed of wigs to protest the war itself, which ran counter to their commercial interests. Walking into a room, one could often tell political affiliation at a glance.
Having failed to raise as much money as expected, the hair tax was ultimately reduced; but by then a more natural look was in, sporting real hair in Roman styles. Vic Sanborn provides a lovely tutorial on changing men’s hairstyles in this era. This was also the beginning of the Romantic era, when hair could be as wild as the heath.
Despite the lack of revenue production, the hair-powder tax did have a positive effect. The powder was made from wheat; by discouraging its use, the tax somewhat reduced the pressure on food supplies for the army.
Every tax has such unexpected consequences, some negative, some positive. The tax on English newspapers led to the start of book clubs and subscription libraries, several of which Austen joined. These groups greatly increased the number of readers, and politics were often discussed at the meeting places, likely speeding up efforts at reform.
Most of the taxes remained in place during the war with France, but the ladies got a break. The men’s hat tax was not repealed until 1811, but the perfume tax ended in 1800.
Readers: What do you think—have I missed any other tax-related commentary in Austen’s works? Were there other unintended negative consequences of these taxes?
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The entire article was new information for me. The reference to Mr. Bennet’s work horse needed for the farm is viewed in a new perspective since it was not taxed. This also shows hows wealthy Darcy was.
Yes, Eva, carriages were the equivalent of a Mercedes or Ferrari, which is why JA luxuriated on a ride in London once her books began to sell.
and odd taxes continue in the UK…the tax for the telly for instance.
hank you for an intriguing article
The window tax was also why Mr. Collins was so impressed with the number of windows in Lady Catherine’s estate, Rosings Park…you had to be very rich to put that many windows in your house!!
The first time I heard about the TV tax, Theresa M. was from our first au pair, who was from Manchester. Always thought that was a little weird, but then England has had many more centuries to develop oddball taxes than the US has!! 😀
Early on, countries tended to tax specific items. Eventually they taxed everything! The sales tax is the same as a tax on all these individual items, it’s just it applies to all items.
Edmund Bertram is taking over a living that is 700 pounds a year. That would allow him to have one carriage,especially if he keeps the riding horses that he and Fanny use. When Mrs Dashwood sold her carriage, she was saving herself the taxes on it as much as the cost of upkeep and the servants needed to keep it usable. Mr Knightly seems to be putting a lot of his funds in farming and he might be saving himself the cost of a tax on a carriage. His horses are primarily for the farm and he hires a coach when he needs one. Marriage to Emma will meant he he will have to keep a carriage.
Janelle, agree w all your points. Didn’t James, JA’s brother, try to keep a carriage but had to give it up because of costs? Since Knightly will be living w Emma, one assumes they will use the family’s current carriage.
This was very interesting. It truly seems like there was a tax on everything, especially when wig powder and hats were taxed! Thank you.
Fascinating article, Collins. Interesting that the taxes appear to be on a lot of luxury items. Seems pretty fair that way. Unfortunately, it still had a trickle down effect. I read recently that in the poorer London neighborhood, landlords took to boarding up windows because of the window tax, so some houses were completely dark inside even in daylight, in which case the tax on candles would have been awful. Do you know if they taxed tallow candles or just wax candles?
Monica,
Yes, I think I’ve also read that some bigger houses also boarded up windows. Don’t know the answer to the candle question. One hopes they taxed only the expensive candles not the smoky everyday candles used by the poor.
So many taxes…nothing has changed…just different ones! When did death taxes come into play?
I just answered a similar question on yesterday’s post on inheritance law, if you would like to check that comment. Wikipedia has a very straightforward explanation of the history of English inheritance taxes under “Inheritance Tax (United Kingdom): and has similar posts for other European countries if you are interested in comparing them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inheritance_Tax_(United_Kingdom)
Thank you for the great additional background!
I had no idea so many odd things were taxed! Perfume? Hats? Wigs? Very interesting and informative!
And the odd taxes often resulted in changes in society’s habits- from how many windows they put in their homes to whether they powdered their hair! I suppose if there was someone in power who disliked wearing socks he could have tried to push through a tax on socks and everyone would get blisters from wearing their shoes without socks! 🙂
Many years ago, I read that England or America had a room tax, and people created intricate sliding walls, much like those in hotel meeting rooms. For ordinary use, the walls would be in place. When the taxman showed up, the panels would be rolled back. Voila, 4 rooms become one for tax purposes. This sounded like an awful lot.of work to avoid a small tax, and I was not able to track down any details for this article. I’m certain this tax was from a different period.
Very interesting article, Mr. Hemingway!! Thanks for sharing this with us!
When I reread this article, what stands out is the tax on bricks. Remember the craze for “cottages” that Austen uses in her fiction? The popinjay, Robert Ferrars, who says he loves cottages so much, might sound foolish but could actually want a home of his own, not just live with his mother and sister or in lodgings, and under his foolishness be an understanding that with a tax on bricks, a cottage would be the more financially practical choice. The Musgroves in Persuasion may understand that having Mary Elliot Musgrove live with them would not be fun-their solution was to build Charles and Mary a cottage, which still, with the brick and window tax, may have cost the Musgrove estate a pretty penny. Maybe the cottage was in existence before that marriage and it only had to be upgraded to meet the standards of the “Elliot pride.” The first references to the Musgrove cottage certainly mention a window-maybe a large one to let in light and keep the tax down since large as it might be, one window might mean less tax.
Interesting how the brick tax may have affected people’s construction decisions! Thanks for pointing this out.
How interesting! Most of this I didn’t know.
This is very interesting. It seems that, for the most part, items not needed for daily survival were taxed; kind of like a luxury tax. Thank you for sharing this new information.
Deborah, you’re correct. Most taxes were aimed toward the wealthier classes. I hazard to say that this was not so much enlightenment as reality. The middle class was rather small, though growing, and the poor were abysmally poor. There were riots over prices for basic foodstuffs. With no systematic taxation as we have now, the government had to “fish where the fish are.”
Not quite on topic but I’ve been reading up about the East India Company, and when they risked bankruptcy in the early 1770s, they got a bailout from the British Parliament that was to be financed by first a stamp tax, then (after that proved too unpopular) a tea tax on the 13 colonies of North America. Although taxes were high in Britain, apparently the colonies had not been taxed by Britain before that, and even a quite low tax on tea rankled with the Americans. Then we had the Boston Tea Party (and other similar tea parties up and down the coast) and eventually the full-blown American Revolution. This had negative consequences during the Regency as – for example – the British tried to win back their former colonies during the War of 1812. I find it interesting that the US, the nation that had its origin in opposition to taxation from another country, is one of the few countries that taxes non-residents – though they do permit non-resident citizens to vote in Federal elections because they remember the hue and cry of “No taxation without representation”.
Beatrice, thanks for the info. First I’ve heard of the East India connection to the taxes levied by England on America. Another reason was to pay for the British troops in America. Ostensibly, they were there to protect the colonies from the French and Indians, who might be expected to start another war at any time. The colonists, though, didn’t see it that way. They felt the army was there to impose the will of the parent country on the colonies, who had largely been self-governing for many years, and didn’t understand why they should pay to be occupied. The British couldn’t understand why we were ungrateful. Tying America and India together was the general British policy of charging for the privilege of running things for other countries, whether the locals wanted the Brits there or not. India suffered the further degradation of being taxed not just for the administration of the country but also to pay the cost of the war when the Indians rebelled, which they did several times. The US escaped that fate by winning the rebellion!