1 Rubinstein, W. D., ‘The Victorian middle classes: wealth, occupation and geography’, Economic History Review 30, 3 (1977), 602–23Google Scholar; ‘Wealth, elites and the class structure of modern Britain’, Past and Present 76 (1977), 69–126; Wealth and inequality in Britain (London, 1986); Elites and the wealthy in modern British history (Brighton, 1987); ‘The size and distribution of the English middle classes, 1800–1914’, Historical Research 61 (1988), 65–89; ‘The structure of wealth-holding in Britain, 1809–39: a preliminary anatomy’, Historical Research 65 (1992), 74–89; Capitalism, culture and decline in Britain, 1750–1990 (London and New York, 1993); ‘The role of London in Britain's wealth structure’, in J. Stobart and A. Owens eds., Urban fortunes: property and inheritance in the town, 1700–1900 (Aldershot, 2000), 131–48; and Men of property: the very wealthy in Britain since the industrial revolution (2nd edition; London, 2006). For debates surrounding Rubinstein's work see Daunton, M. J., ‘“Gentlemanly capitalism” and British industry, 1820–1914’, Past and Present 122 (1988), 119–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘“Gentlemanly capitalism” and British industry, 1820–1914: reply’, Past and Present 132 (1991), 170–87; S. Gunn, ‘The “failure”of the British middle class: a critique’, in J. Wolff and J. Seed eds., The culture of capital: art, power and the nineteenth-century middle class (Manchester, 1988), 17–44; Nicholas, T., ‘Wealth making in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain: industry v. commerce and finance’, Business History 41, 1 (1999), 16–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pahl, R., ‘New rich, old rich, stinking rich’, Social History 15, 2 (1990), 229–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and J. Seed, ‘From ‘middling sort’ to middle class in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century England', in M. L. Bush ed., Social orders and social classes in Europe since 1500: studies in social stratification (London, 1992), 114–35. Rubinstein has responded to various of his critics: see Rubinstein, W. D., ‘Gentlemanly capitalism and British industry, 1820–1914: a comment’, Past and Present 132 (1991), 150–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Stinking rich: a response’ Social History 16, 2 (1991), 359–65, and ‘Wealth making in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: a response’, Business History 42 (2000), 14–54.

2 Rubinstein, Wealth and inequality, 48–9.

3 Michie, R.. ‘Income, expenditure and investment of a Victorian millionaire: Lord Overstone, 1823–83’, Historical Research 58 (1985), 59–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also J. Liddington, Female fortune: land gender and authority, the Anne Lister diaries and other writings, 1833–36 (London, 1998).

4 R. J. Morris, ‘The middle class and the property cycle during the industrial revolution’, in T. C. Smout ed., The search for wealth and stability (London, 1979), 91–113, and Men, women and property in England, 1780–1870 (Cambridge, 2005).

5 For a discussion of the North American context see Di Matteo, L., ‘Wealth accumulation and the life-cycle in economic history: implications of alternative approaches to data’, Explorations in Economic History 35, 3 (1998), 296–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 There is a growing literature on this topic but for a recent discussion see Honeyman, K., ‘Doing business with gender: service industries and British business history’, Business History Review 81 (2007), 471–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 This estimate is based on the number of persons who died aged 21 or above compared to the number of probated estates in the year ending 31 March 1898. The figures come from the Registrar General's Sixty-first annual report (1898), 120 and the Commissioners of the Inland Revenue, Forty-first report for the year ending 31 March 1898 (1898), 147. The figure for 1858 was very similar. See also K. Grannum and N. Taylor, Wills and other probate records (London, 2004), 62–3. In theory anyone with personal property or bona notabilia worth £5 or more was required to file for probate.

8 There is an extensive literature on what constituted the British middle class. For recent contributions see A. Kidd and D. Nicholls eds., The making of the British middle class? Studies of regional and cultural diversity since the eighteenth century (Stroud, 1998), and D. Wahrman, Imagining the middle class (Cambridge, 1995). Morris in particular equates property ownership with middle-class status; see Morris, Men, women and property.

9 R. D. Baxter, National income of the United Kingdom (London, 1868), 64; Charles Booth, Life and labour of the people of London, first series: ‘Poverty’, vol. 2 (London, 1902), 21.

10 The following information is taken from the 1851 census enumerator's books and from The general and commercial directory of Birmingham (1856).

11 Birmingham Daily Post, 16 July 1866. In the 1850s Thomas Webster suggested that a household income of between £250 and £300 per annum was sufficient to employ two female domestic servants; see Thomas Webster, An encyclopaedia of domestic economy (London, 1852), 331. The cost of servants also depended on alternative sources of female employment. In some northern towns with large amounts of factory work, female servants could command relatively high wages and the proportion of families able to employ one was therefore limited. See J. Perkin, Women and marriage in nineteenth-century England (London, 1989), 245.

12 Birmingham Daily Post, 9 November 1868; Kelly's Post Office Directory of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1867).

13 The will of Isaac Robert Mott, proved in the Principal Registry 23rd September 1879.

14 The will of James Mott, proved in the Birmingham registry, 11 August 1927. See also Birmingham City Archives, Lee Crowder papers, MS/864/H/15c.

15 Birmingham City Archives, Lee Crowder papers, MS/884/H/11a. The census of that year records the head of household as Kate Brown, Herbert's widow.

16 These are recorded in his account book held in the Birmingham City Archives (Lee Crowder papers, HO/864/42). For each year between 1880 and 1927 the account book contains a listing of the amount paid and the market worth of each of his investments held on 1 January.

17 Birmingham Daily Post, 10 May 1884.

18 During this period consumer prices remained virtually unchanged. See O'Donoghue, J., Goulding, L. and Allen, G., ‘Consumer price inflation since 1750’, Economic Trends 604 (2004), 38–46.Google Scholar

19 See Birmingham Post, 6 July 1900; Birmingham City Archives, Lee Crowder Papers, MS 864/H/16: letter from Harry S. Brown to James Mott, 13 November 1915.

20 The will of James Mott, 11 August 1927. For the rate of inflation see O'Donoghue, Golding and Allen, ‘Consumer price inflation since 1750’, 43.

21 For further discussion of sources and methodology see A. Owens, D. R. Green, C. Swan, S. Ainscough, C. van Lieshout, J. Maltby, C. van Mourik and J. Rutterford, ‘The final balance: reconstructing wealth portfolios from death duty records in England and Wales, 1870–1930’, Working Paper 2 ‘Women investors in England and Wales, 1870–1930’, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (London, 2008), available at http//:www.womeninvestors.org.uk. See also K. Grannum and N. Taylor, Wills and other probate records (London, 2004), chapter 8; English, B., ‘Probate valuations and the Death Duty Registers’, Historical Research 57, 135 (1984), 80–91CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Collinge, M., ‘Probate valuations and the Death Duty Registers: some comments’, Historical Research 60, 142 (1987), 240–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 The National Archives, Kew, IR19, Board of Stamps: Legacy Duty Office and successors: Specimens of Death Duty Account, 1796–1903. Although this article focuses on the period after 1870, the authors are also analysing accounts for earlier in the century; for some preliminary analysis see Owens, A., Green, D. R., Bailey, C. and Kay, A., ‘A measure of worth: probate valuations, personal wealth and in indebtedness in England, 1810–40’, Historical Research 79, 305 (2006), 383–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A small number of additional Residuary Accounts relating to the estates of famous individuals – writers, artists, politicians and so on – can be found within the IR59 class of records at the National Archives, Kew; they are not included in the analysis in this article.

23 Our investigations suggest that when the sample was selected for preservation (sometime in the early to mid-twentieth century) an effort was made to select different letter clusters of papers based on the decedent's surname. We excluded the estates of Josiah Heap (aged 65) and John Du Pre (aged 92) from the analysis in this article. The net values of their estates were £284,650 and £245,367 respectively and together they comprised over 7 per cent of the total net value of estates in our sample. Inclusion of these extremely wealthy individuals would have significantly distorted the overall average holdings.

24 Valuation of some assets, such as shares in non-quoted companies, could be a complicated matter and sometimes involved negotiation with the Inland Revenue

25 The National Archives, Kew, IR26, Board of Inland Revenue and predecessors: Estate Duty Office and predecessors: Registers of Legacy Duty, Succession Duty and Estate Duty.

26 Leasehold estates were liable for Legacy Duty up until 1853, after which time they became liable for Succession Duty instead.

27 For a lucid discussion of nineteenth-century inheritance tax and its reform see M. Daunton, Trusting Leviathan: the politics of taxation in Britain, 1799–1914 (Cambridge, 2001), 224–55.

28 Rubinstein, W. D., ‘Cutting up rich: a reply to F.M.L. Thompson’, Economic History Review 45, 2 (1992), 351CrossRefGoogle Scholar, note 6.

29 S. Buxton and G. Barnes, A handbook to the death duties (London, 1890), 33–4, 39.

30 For further debate about the use and interpretation of these sources see English, ‘Probate valuations’; Collinge, ‘Probate valuations’; English, B., ‘Wealth at death in the nineteenth century: the Death Duty Registers’, Historical Research 60, 142 (1987), 246–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rubinstein, ‘Cutting up rich’; Thompson, F. M. L., ‘Stitching it together again’, Economic History Review 45, 2 (1992), 362–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Owens et al., ‘A measure of worth’.

31 The net annual yield normally comprised the annual rent that might reasonably be expected minus any expenses such as rates, taxes, repairs or maintenance. See Robert Dymond, The death duties (London, 1931), 459–60.

32 We are grateful to W. D. Rubinstein and F. M. L. Thompson for advice on this matter. An alternative way of conceptualizing the multiplier is to consider it as a percentage return, in which case 30 represents an annual return of approximately 3 per cent on investment. Further discussion of the problem associated with specifying an appropriate multiplier and justification for the one chosen here can be found in A. Owens and D. R. Green, ‘Deriving real estate values from the IR26 Death Duty Registers’, training manual, ‘Women Investors in England and Wales, 1870–1930’ (London, 2009), available at http://www.womeninvestors.org.uk.

33 Buxton and Barnes, A handbook, 67. This is also the opinion expressed in Harris, W. and Lake, K. A., ‘Estimates of the realisable wealth of the United Kingdom basd mostly on estate duty returns’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 69 (1906), 723–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Daunton, Trusting Leviathan, 225.

34 The strict definition of settled property was that it was limited to or in trust for persons by way of succession. See Dymond, The death duties, 13–23.

35 See, for example, E. Spring, Law, land and family: aristocratic inheritance in England, 1300–1800 (Chapel Hill, 1993).

36 C. Stebbings, The private trustee in Victorian England (Cambridge, 2001), 6.

37 A. Owens, ‘Property, will making and estate disposal in an industrial town, 1800–1857’, in J. Stobart and A. Owens eds., Urban fortunes: property and inheritance in the town 1700–1900 (Aldershot, 2000), 93; Morris, Men, women and property, 103.

38 D. R. Green, ‘To do the right thing: gender, wealth, inheritance and the London middle class’, in A. Laurence, J. Maltby and J. Rutterford eds., Women and their money 1700–1950 (London, 2009), 144.

39 On this point see R. J. Morris, ‘Men, women, and property: the reform of the Married Women's Property Act 1870’, in F. M. L. Thompson ed., Landowners, capitalists, and entrepreneurs: essays for Sir John Habakkuk (Oxford, 1994), 171–91. For a wider discussion of trusts and trustees in Victorian Britain see Stebbings, The private trustee.

40 This was not the case for settled personalty, such as heirlooms and works of art, which were liable for duty at each succession. On this see Mandler, P., ‘Art, death and taxes: the taxation of works of art in Britain, 1796–1914’, Historical Research 74, 185 (2001), 271–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Daunton, Trusting Leviathan, 248.

42 Dymond's The death duties is a useful guide to the complexities of assessing estates for inheritance tax.

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44 For discussion of the life-course approach see Kok, J., ‘Principles and prospects of the life course paradigm’, Annales de Démographie Historique 1, 1 (2007), 203–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Further research will investigate the significance of the life course for selected individuals, tracing household characteristics using the census enumerator's books. Indexes to births, deaths and marriages were published quarterly by the General Register Office from 1837 onwards. These indexes have been digitized and are available from http://www.ancestry.co.uk.

45 This point is the currently the subject of ongoing research by the authors.

46 The gap in the mid-1890s is a consequence of a fire in the Estate Duty Office which led to the destruction of papers for those years.

47 See, for example, Atkinson, A. B., ‘The distribution of wealth and the individual life-cycle’, Oxford Economic Papers 23 (1971), 239–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. B. Atkinson and A. J. Harrison, Distribution of personal wealth in Britain (Cambridge, 1978); Shorrocks, A. F., ‘The age–wealth relationship: a cross section and cohort analysis’, Review of Economics and Statistics 57, 2 (1975), 155–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lydall, H., ‘The life cycle in income, saving and asset ownership’, Econometrica 23, 2 (1955), 131–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a review of North American studies see Di Matteo, L., ‘Wealth accumulation and the life-cycle in economic history: implications of alternative approaches to data’, Explorations in Economic History 35, 3 (1998), 296–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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54 Morris, Men, women and property, 142–77.

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58 Ibid., 172–3.

59 See, inter alia, P. L. Cottrell, Industrial finance, 1830–1914 (London, 1980); Acheson, G. C. and Turner, J. D., ‘The impact of limited liability on ownership and control: Irish banking, 1877–1914’, Economic History Review 59, 2 (2006), 320–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and R. C. Michie, The London Stock Exchange: a history (Oxford, 1999).

60 For a discussion of some this literature see Rutterford, J. and Maltby, J., ‘“The widow, the clergyman and the reckless”: women investors in England, 1830–1914’, Feminist Economics 12, 1 (2006), 111–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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62 See P. Thane, Old Age in English History (Oxford, 2000), especially pp. 287–307.

63 L. Hannah, Inventing retirement: the development of occupational pensions in Britain (Cambridge, 1986).

64 G. Robb, White-collar crime in modern England: financial fraud and business morality, 1845–1929 (Cambridge, 1992).