Note 216 — Chapter VII · THE REMEDIES OF 1795

In connection with the dearth of milk it is important to notice the rise in the price of cheese. ‘Poor people,’ says Davies, (p. 19), ‘reckon cheese the dearest article they can use’ (cf. also p. 143), and in his comparison of prices in the middle of the eighteenth century with those of 1787–94 he gives the price of 112 lbs. of cheese at Reading Fair as from 17s. to 21s. in the first period, and 40s. to 46s. in the second. Retail cheese of an inferior sort had risen from 2½d. or 3d. a lb. to 4½d. or 5d. (p. 65); cf. also correspondent in Annals of Agriculture, vol. ii. p. 442. ‘Every inhabitant of Bath must be sensible that butter and cheese have risen in price one-third, or more, within these twenty years.’ (Written in 1784).