THE HUNGRY THIRTIES
âI HAVE TO TELL YOU NOW âŚâ
NO COMPUTERS, NO MOBILES
HAYTERS
THE HUNGRY THIRTIES
The Price Bailey firm of accountants was effectively founded on 2 April 1938 when Leslie Benten opened L.H. Benten & Co. at 6 High Street, Bishopâs Stortford. He moved to 1â3 Market Square on 21 March 1939. Benten was joined by Stanley Price in 1943. Price had been born in Bradford in 1917 but the family moved to Bournemouth when he was eight. Stanleyâs father, Clarence, had married Stanleyâs mother, Lily. Tragically, Clarence Price was killed in the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, and Stanley was brought up by his mother who did not marry again. She had been a milliner with her two sisters, Mary and Alice, when they were still in Bradford and opened a millinerâs shop when they moved to Bournemouth. Stanley began work articled to an incorporated accountant. Stanley Price became an Articled Clerk of The Society of Incorporated Accountants and Auditors paying ÂŁ250 [ÂŁ15,000 in todayâs money] and signing an agreement on 24 May 1934. There he met his future wife, Barbara, who worked in the practice as a secretary. They moved to Wisbech in north Cambridgeshire where there seemed to be a partnership in prospect for Stanley. However, he did not remain there long and moved to Bishopâs Stortford and joined Leslie Benten.
There were a number of farmers in the Bishopâs Stortford countryside among the first clients of Benten and Price. One of them was Shrubbs Farm owned by the Liddell family who remained with the practice for over 50 years.
It is easy, and perhaps a relief, to forget the tough economic conditions of 1930s Britain and how hard life was for the majority of people. At the beginning of the decade there had been a world depression of unexpected proportions. This had led to massive unemployment and Britain did not escape. Nor was the suffering confined to the industrial areas of the Midlands, the North of England, South Wales and the industrial areas of Scotland. For example in South-East London, Annie Weaving, the 37 year old wife of an unemployed husband, and mother of seven children, collapsed and died while bathing her six-month old twins. She had been struggling to feed her children and her husband and pay the rent on the 48 shillings (ÂŁ2.40 or about ÂŁ100 in todayâs money) her husband received in benefits. At the inquest the coroner said that, by not eating herself, she had âsacrificed her lifeâ for the sake of her children.
Statisticians of the time divided the 12 million families in Britain into four social grades, classified according to the chief earner or income receiver in each family.
| | Income of chief earner per week | Number of families | Per cent of families |
| Class A | Over ÂŁ10 (ÂŁ550 in todayâs money) | 635,000 | 5.2 |
| Class B | ÂŁ4âÂŁ10 (ÂŁ220âÂŁ550) | 2,580,000 | 21.3 |
| Class C | ÂŁ2 10sâÂŁ4 (ÂŁ137.50âÂŁ220) | 4,581,000 | 37.8 |
| Class D | Under ÂŁ2 10s (ÂŁ137.50) | 4,318,000 | 35.7 |
The rich and landed of Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs were few and far between!
Life for the middle-class families in Bishopâs Stortford was not as bad as this, of course, but nevertheless, businesses were struggling and every effort had to be made to keep down costs. The upper and middle classes were a very small percentage of the population.
Back at L.H. Benten & Co., the fees and balance sheet at the end of the first year of trading were:
| | | ÂŁ | | |
| | Fees | 1,130 | | |
| | Postage | 15 | | |
| | Telephone | 22 | | |
| | Printing and stationery | 42 | | |
| | Salaries | 289 | | |
| | Rent | 54 | | |
| | Profit | 708 | | |
| | Balance Sheet | | | |
| | Motor vehicles | 36 | | |
| | Office furniture | 60 | | |
We need to multiply the numbers by 60 to arrive at todayâs value. It would therefore look something like this:
| | | ÂŁ | | |
| | Fees | 67,800 | | |
| | Postage | 900 | | |
| | Telephone | 1,320 | | |
| | Printing and stationery | 2,520 | | |
| | Salaries | 17,340 | | |
| | Rent | 3,240 | | |
| | Profit | 42,480 | | |
| | Balance Sheet | | | |
| | Motor vehicles | 2,160 | | |
| | Office furniture | 3,600 | | |
âI HAVE TO TELL YOU NOW âŚâ
The arguments have raged back and forth for more than 60 years over Britainâs preparedness, or lack of it, for war in 1939. In hindsight it is easy to see that a further war with Germany was inevitable, and indeed, the leader of the French army in the First World War, Marshal Foch, described the Treaty of Versailles as merely a twenty-year armistice, a remarkably accurate prediction. However, the spirit of the 1920s and early 1930s was one of peace and goodwill. There had to be a better way to settle menâs differences than the appalling slaughter that had taken place between 1914 and 1918. It was not only national revulsion at this carnage that led the British governments of the 1920s and 1930s to reject the isolated calls for rearmament. There was also a widespread feeling, nurtured by such publications as Maynard Keynesâs The Economic Consequences of the Peace, that Germany had been treated too harshly. And when Hitler began to rant about the injustice of it all, some were inclined to wonder why the Germans scattered around central and eastern Europe should not live under one government. For example, when the German army marched into the demilitarised Rhineland in 1936, Lord Lothian said: âHitler is doing no more than taking over his own back garden.â
Foreign Office Intelligence had changed its mind about Germanyâs preparedness for war. Original calculations suggested a date some time in 1942, but in 1936 fresh information indicated that the Germans might be ready as early as January 1939. This was one of the reasons for the rapid signing of contracts for Hurricanes and Spitfires before either had been fully tested
As we now know, Germany did not invade Poland in January 1939 but at the end...
