Measuring Worth: Joseph Defriez Estate

Tanner Family Line

Joseph Defriez (1793–1874) was the father of Joseph George Defriez. His profession was Funeral Feather Merchant, and he had the Freedom of the City of London. (See Joseph Defriez and the Freedom of the City of London.)

When he died his estate was valued between £800 and £1000. I wondered what that would be in current dollars, and visited the site Measuring Worth. To keep it simple, I used a figure of £900. The calculator suggested a real price value of £75,360. However, with estates, I've found it more useful to use the website's relative economic status value. That gave an estimate of £661,100. In today's dollars, the real price value would be $94,109 and the economic status value $825,580. In either case, they were a family of some means, and were not the working poor like other ancestors from the UK.

Joseph Defriez and the Freedom of the City of London

Tanner Family Line

Joseph Defriez (1793-1874) was the father of our ancestor Joseph George Defriez (1821-1887). I will eventually put together more information including the materials in George Jarvis and Joseph George Defriez (Margaret Jarvis Overson) and post it here, but in the meantime, here is a curious document.

The City of London is a district of London, about one mile square. It was the original city in Roman and medieval times. Starting in the Middle Ages, the City granted men (and some women) the Freedom of the City of London. That meant the right to work in that square mile, with a fee, policed by the Livery Companies (guilds or trade associations). Each Livery Company was known as "The Worshipful Company of..."

(Besides the normal Freemen and Free Sisters, there are also occasional Honorary Freemen of the City of London. These include people like Benjamin Disraeli, Sir Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Florence Nightingale and, most recently, J.K. Rowling.)

Here is Joseph Defriez's admission paper from 1856. I cannot figure out which Livery Company he would belong to at that time, but the existence of this document means that there should be other documents regarding his Freedom. 

And now, about his profession. Joseph Defriez was a funeral feather merchant and also a Registrar of Births and Deaths. His family was middle class, consisting of professionals and and tradesmen, with connections to the minor gentility.

What is a funeral feather merchant?