Cressida’s £10000 bribe would be a huge sum if the figure was adjusted to 2024’s money.
Wondering how much Cressida Cowper’s £10,000 blackmail threat in Bridgerton would cost in 2024? Here’s your answer…
Bridgerton season 3 takes place in 1815, two years after the events of season 1 of the Netflix series which starts in 1813. £10,000 back in those days would have been a huge sum of money, but for the very wealthy families like the Bridgertons, it likely wouldn’t break the bank.
In today’s money however? The 2024 equivalent of Cressida’s £10,000 blackmail request would have been an absolutely astronomical sum of money.
How can you work that out? Well, the Bank of England have an inflation calculator tool that allows users to figure out roughly how much things would have cost in Bridgerton times (a.k.a. the Regency era), compared to today. Here’s a rough breakdown of how much Penelope would have hypothetically had to pay Cressida if they existed in 2024.
How much is £10,000 in Bridgerton?
How much is Queen Charlotte’s £5000 reward in today’s money?
In a bid to unmask the real Lady Whistledown, Queen Charlotte puts up a reward of £5000 which would roughly be around £373,172 ($472,027) in 2024.
How much is Cressida’s £10,000 blackmail request in today’s money?
In episode 8, after discovering that Penelope is actually Lady Whistledown, Cressida tells Penelope that she will have to pay her double the Queen’s reward if she does not want her secret to be revealed to the entire Ton.
In 2024, that figure would be a staggering £746,345 ($944,055). Three-quarters of a million pounds? Cressida, babes… please! We’re in a cost of living crisis!
How much is Cressida’s £20,000 blackmail request in today’s money?
After Colin attempts to quash Cressida’s blackmail attempt (and fails miserably), she doubles her request to £20,000.
According to the inflation calculator, that kind of money is just under £1.5 million ($1.9 million) in today’s society.
How rich is Penelope Featherington?
Penelope is, hands down, the richest member of her family. Since starting Lady Whistledown, Penelope has made an incredibly tidy sum for herself. But what is her net worth?
When Cressida calls for £10,000, Penelope offers to pay it and is pretty much ok with paying it herself. When a shocked Eloise asks if she’s made that high a sum through her business as Whistledown, Penelope replies: “Slightly more if we’re being honest…”
However, after Cressida doubles the blackmail threat to £20,000, Penelope reveals that she “does not have that sum”.
So, if Penelope’s earnings (more than £10,000 but less than £20,000) were adjusted to today’s money, she’d likely be a self-made millionaire.
In the final episode, Penelope also pays for Philippa and Prudence’s extravagant Butterfly Ball, telling her sisters that her mother paid for the whole thing. So she’s got quite a lot of funds hidden under those floorboards in her bedroom.
The Bridgertons, if you’re wondering, are incredibly wealthy and would be considered part of the 1% if they existed in today’s society. When Cressida dropped the £20,000 blackmail request, Colin merely brushed it off as something that the family could pay and simply write off as a “large expenditure”.
