We've all been complaining about the price of meat these days. Grain prices have been soaring the past couple of years and now a pound of hamburger goes for $3 to $4. That Thanksgiving Turkey you just bought? News anchors have been reporting an increase of 20% over last year!

Wishing for the old days?

Well, here is Bruce McIntosh's butcher's bill from the spring of 1906. It looks like he went to Dr. Titus's butcher shop about once a week and bought about 5-10 pounds of meat (I suppose the McIntosh household had an icebox).

The type of steak he liked is not identified but it went for 12 1/2 cent a pound (priced a ribeye lately?). Roasts went for about the same price.

Veal appears several times, I wonder if that was because it was spring? (my dad said that, back in '50s, they would finish out their steers and bring them to town in the fall)

Interestingly enough, no pork appears. Did the family not care for pork? I'd guess that fresh pork was in abundance in the fall at slaughter time, rather than the spring. I'd be willing to bet the McIntosh's had a cured ham or two hanging in the cellar though.

Whiskey went for $3 a gallon. No Virginia ABC store then!

So was Dr. Titus giving the meat away, running some sort of food program? Well, in 1906 a day's wages for the average worker was about $2. On average Mr. McIntosh was spending $1.60 a week on meat (or 4/5's of a day's wages)..

Let's say an average wage today is $100 (8 x $12.50), so we'd need to spend about $80 a week on meat to approximate. In the Dickens' household we might spend $20-25 a week on meat. We're very frugal but I suspect that, even given the recent upshot in grain prices, meat has become much more affordable to the average household over the past century.

And one final note...in doing a little internet research, it seems that at the time, Mr. McIntosh was living at what we now know as the Birkby House on 109 W. Loudoun Street. (http://www.birkbyhouse.com/birkby_house_history.htm)