A Respectable Occupation: - University of Hertfordshire Research ...

Perkins records that middle class couples with annual incomes from £160 to
£10,000 would have found it difficult to support more than three children. 37
This is an accurate report of Perkin‘s comment, but nevertheless it is a wide
range. Other authors suggest that a figure of less than £1000 would be
more usual. Loudon suggests £200 to £1000 as being the probable salary
range for the middle class after 1850. 38 According to Reader, even the best
paid in the middle class would have struggled to find £1000 to put a son into
one of the professions. 39 The cost of the medical education for a general
practitioner was estimated to be £300 by Green and £450 - £500 according to
Grainger; Green and Grainger were two witnesses at a Select Committee on
Medical Education in 1834. 40 Hudson assessed it at more than £500. 41 In
1831, Henry Peart‘s family had to find £900 to £1000 for the living expenses,
training and examination fees related to his qualifying as a surgeon-
apothecary. 42 Loudon groups together as lower middle class, doctors who
practised in small towns, elementary school teachers, run-of-the-mill clerks
and lower officials in the civil service, and states that they would not have
been able to afford a medical education for their sons. 43 Jackson states that
a training in pharmacy would have cost £100 in the early twentieth
37 Perkins, The Rise of Professional Society, p. 95.
38 Loudon, „A Doctor‟s Cash Book‟, 261.
39 Reader, Professional Men, p. 123.
40 J. Green, Select Committee on Medical Education, (PP 1834, XIII) Part II, Q.6485-6 quoted in Loudon,
„A Doctor‟s Cash Book‟, 256, note 19 and R. Grainger, Select Committee on Medical Education, (PP
1834, XIII) Part II, Q.6654 quoted in Loudon, „A Doctor‟s Cash Book‟, 256, note 20.
41 Hudson, The Parent’s Handbook, p. 89 quoted in Loudon, „A Doctor‟s Cash Book‟, 256, note 20.
42 Loudon, „A Doctor‟s Cash Book‟, 254.
43 Loudon, „A Doctor‟s Cash Book‟, 261.
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