“FIVE years ago I was” owns a certain G. J. “in the New Bailey, convicted of felony and sentenced to four months’ imprisonment. When I was discharged from prison, I could get no employment. I went to my old employer to ask him to take me again.
“He said that I need not apply to him, for if he could get me transported he would; so I could get no work until I met with Mr Wright, who got me employed in a place where I remained some time, and have been in employment ever since.
“I am now engaged as a screw-cutter - a business I was obliged to learn - and am earning nineteen shillings and twopence a week. I have a wife and four children, and but for Mr Wright I should have been a lost man.”
19s 2d in 1852 is roughly equal to £93.88 per week or £4,880 per annum today. At 33d (2s 9d) per day, this is a little short of the average male wage for the time as calculated by Gregory Clark of the University of California, Davis, for Measuring Worth (.pdf file). Mr Wright’s wage as a foreman would be equivalent to around £15,000 a year now.
Précis
A former prisoner known only by his initials ‘G. J.’ recounted how Thomas Wright had helped him back into work when, following a spell of four months in jail, his old boss had angrily refused to take him back. He attributed his unblemished employment record since, and his happy family life, to Wright’s kindness. (55 / 60 words)