Family Lessons 130: Window Tax

Thomas Hickman was my 8x great-grandfather who lived in Wigan with his wife Margaret on the street called Wallgate. His son, Jeffrey, my 7x great-gramps, was a joiner, and also lived on that street with his wife Ann. Curiously, the records for the 1768 Window Tax have survived:

Wallgate, Wigan: Thos Hickman 5 lights. No Window Tax payable. 3 shillings for the house.

Wallgate, Wigan: Geoffrey (sic) Hickman 6 lights. No Window Tax payable. 3 shillings for the house.

Jeffrey was 38, and his father was 76, but both paid the same tax. Properties with ten windows or more qualified their occupants for addition contribution to King George’s Treasury. Three shillings was the minimum levied on every dwelling; from 1747, 6d was charged for each window in a house with 10–14 windows, 9d for each window in a house with 15–19, and 1 shilling for every window in a house with 20 or more. Jeffrey’s 6 windows ('lights') and Thomas’s even more modest 5, meant they were exempted from all but the basic minimum due.

Although taxing daylight seems to be the very ultimate in governmental cheek, and may have occasioned the phrase ‘daylight robbery’, it was essentially an attempt to make taxation proportionate to a payee’s means. The rich in their larger houses paid more, the poor in their cottages and tenements less, much like modern Council Tax property bands are meant to achieve.

A similar concept is spoken of by the Lord Jesus regarding His followers’ accountability for their doings on earth, and the resources each was given:

¶ And that servant that knew his master’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew it not, and yet did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes: for unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required, and to whom men much commit, the more of him will they ask. Luke 12:47-49, Geneva Bible

To those feckless, lazy Christians, of whom I know a good many, these are sobering words indeed. And to those of us who teach, or are paid for our time in the execution of the Lord’s work, these words are particularly serious.