We already reveal that the youngest Featherinton member has been able to significantly boost her bank account.
After what felt like an eternity of waiting, we finally got to see the second half of season three of Bridgerton last week. This focused, among other things, on the £10,000 that youngest Featherington descendant Penelope earned with Lady Whistledown. Marie Claire investigated what this amount would be worth today – and with what amount of money Penelope Featherington could fill her bank account.
The reward
Already in the first season of Bridgerton we see that Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) is very keen to find out who Lady Whistledown is. She even enlists the help of Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie), only to suspect her of authorship. So the queen’s search is not very successful. In season three she is done with it. She must and will find out who is spreading all the gossip. The Queen is willing to offer a reward of £5,000 to anyone who can reveal the author’s identity to her, a sum that is quite impressive.
Later in the series it is mentioned that Penelope Featherington (Nicola Couglan) made a lot of money distributing her Lady Whistledown column. She said she earned more than £10,000 from it. And that sounds impressive, but how much was that worth at the time?
How much was £10,000 worth?
In 2024, £10,000 is also a lot of money, but we know that £10,000 was worth even more in the era in which Bridgerton takes place.
To unravel exactly how much this is worth, we first need to know approximately when Bridgerton took place. The series is of course based on the books by author Julia Quinn. She released a whopping eight books, one for each Bridgerton child, and all of these stories would take place from 1813 to 1827, in the Regency era.
In what year exactly does the third season of Bridgerton take place? We have to do some calculations for this (and for the sake of convenience we assume that the characters in the series are the same age as in the books). Penelope Featherington is said to have been born in 1796 and married at the age of 28. In that case it would be 1924. How much was money worth that year?
Queen Charlotte’s £5,000 reward turns out to be worth a lot. According to the CPI Inflation Calculator, £5,000 in 1824 was equivalent to £687,930 in 2024. Penelope’s £10,000 is therefore equivalent to more than a million pounds: £1,375,860 to be precise. In euros this is even a bit more: rounded up to €1,627,484.
Admittedly, that’s a pretty impressive amount. Not bad, Penelope, not bad!
Source: Marie Claire | Image: NL Image
