London bricklayers’ wages – 1888

As skilled workers, bricklayers enjoyed a relatively good hourly rate of pay. But their take-home pay each week could vary depending on the time of year and the availability of work.

In the summer, when daylight permitted longer working days, a bricklayer in full-time employment could expect substantially more hours work – and more pay.

National Minimum Wage 1999 - 2011

The introduction of a National Minimum Wage backed by legal force in 1999 was one of the main domestic achievements of the Labour Governments of 1997-2010.

Changes to the rate have been recommended each year by the Low Pay Commission and accepted by government. 

House decorators’ and painters’ wages – 1888

House painters were a relatively low-paid group of skilled workers, and by the later 1880s their wages had fallen back from the levels reached in 1872, when joint committees of workmen and the Master Builders’ Association had agreed on a rate of 8 1/2d an hour.

Their union, the Amalgamated Society of House Decorators and Painters, blamed the decline in pay and conditions on the “disorganised condition of our workmen, brought about chiefly through so many local societies existing in the trade”.

Glass bottle makers’ wages – 1888

Along with many other groups of industrial workers in this period, glass bottle makers had their own specialist trade union.

From the late 1880s, the Labour Department of the Board of Trade began to collect information on trade unions which inevitably included details of pay rates and collective agreements covering their members.

The following extract is taken from Statistical Tables and Reports on Trade Unions (second report) (HMSO, 1888), and was in turn extracted by the Board of Trade from the annual report of the North of England Glass Bottle Makers Society.

Agricultural labourers' wages - 1850-1914

How much did an agricultural labourer earn in the 19th century? Almost everyone looking into their family tree will come across at least one Victorian ag lab in their ancestry. But that need not be the end of the research line.

In 1908 the Labour Department of the Board of Trade prepared a report on the Rates of Wages and Hours of Labour for ordinary labourers in agriculture. The report was not published at the time but was rescued and appeared in British Labour Statistics: Historical Abstract 1886-1968 (Department of Employment and Productivity, 1971).

Members of Parliament salaries - 1911 to 2011

Salaries were introduced for Members of Parliament in 1911. Before that date it was assumed that MPs would have other sources of income; this changed as the first working class MPs began to be elected.

Since 1971, the salary level for MPs has been set by an agreed formula that is based on senior civil service pay bands. This has been subject to an independent review by the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) in the first year of each new Parliament. From the start of the 2010 Parliament, responsibility for parliamentary pay, pensions and MPs’ expenses claims was transferred to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.