Empire's Children - New UK Television Series on Channel 4

Empire's Children is a new TV series which starts at 9.00pm on 9 July 2007 in the UK on Channel 4.

Only time will tell what the programmes are like, but worth a look at the first episode if you are in the UK or can get Channel 4 by satellite.

If you are not in the UK then take a look at the informative website.

Old Maps - Baedeker's Old Guide Books

If you have ancestors in the UK, Spain, Portugal or the USA you will be interested in Baedeker's Old Guide Books which is a site containing old maps of the following -

Great Britain, 1910

London and its Environs, 1905

Spain and Portugal, 1901

The United States, 1909

The webmaster advises .....

This web-site has a collection of old maps that will be an aid to Genealogists and Local Historians. The maps are scanned from various Baedeker Guidebooks which were published before 1939.

Published at the time before the automobile was commonplace, the maps appearing on this web-site, gives a view of parts of Europe and America before the urban spread of the 20th century. Each map of a town shows details such as major buildings, major roads and streets (some named) and railways. The environs maps show less detail.

The Historic Value of Money

I was looking at the will of an ancestor recently and saw that he left his sister-in-law a sum of £5 (five UK pounds).

It is not a particularly old will as the gentleman in question died in December 1927, but it got me to thinking what that £5 would be worth now.

There are lots of ways of valuing the current worth of historical sums, but I found a couple of sites that make the job easy ....

If you are in the UK then The National Archives Currency Convertor site will give a comparison at 5 yearly intervals.

With the help of the site, I found that £5 in 1930 (the nearest 5 year rounding) would would have the spending worth of approximately £167 in today's money.

If you are in the US then I found The Inflation Calculator which does the same task.

I took US$5 and did the conversion from 1927 and found that the relative worth in today's money is approximately $55

It would seem that inflation has been a lot higher in the UK - or perhaps they used a different basis for comparison.

I feel sure that there are similar convertors online for other countries of the world.

Whilst looking at my problem over the £5 legacy I also came across the Measuring Worth site.

It is a somewhat complicated site that explains lots of ways in which monetary values can be compared, and it is surprising how the results can vary. It was much too difficult for me to take in but perhaps it will be more helpful to some.

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