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?

Penelope is blackmailed by Cressida after she finds out her Lady Whistledown secret. Picture: Netflix

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 much is Cressida Cowper’s £10000 bribe in 2024’s money? Picture: Netflix

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”.

How rich are Colin and Penelope in Bridgerton? Picture: Netflix

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”.

Penelope Featherington may be a wallflower in the Bridgerton universe, but her alter ego Lady Whistledown has made her wealthy by Season 3.

Since the first season of Bridgerton, Lady Whistledown was the crowned gossip queen on the Ton. Her identity remained a secret, but many speculated she was well off due to her in-demand newsletter.

In Bridgerton Season 2, Penelope’s secret of being the infamous Lady Whistledown was revealed also proving she had accumulated a hefty sum of money as the writer.

The reality of her wealth left Colin, Eloise, and her mother gasping for air in Season 3. But just how rich is Penelope compared to the modern day?

How rich is Penelope in Bridgerton Season 3?

In today’s money market, Penelope’s payment of £10k to Cressida is equivalent to almost $1 million.

Shortly after Penelope and Colin are married, Cressida learns the truth that Penelope is Lady Whistledown. With the Queen breathing down their necks to learn the writer’s identity, Cressida blackmails Penelope to keep it a secret for £10k.

Netflix

Penelope and her mother go to see Colin and Eloise to tell them. While Colin earnestly tells her not to pay, Penelope stuns them by saying she has more than enough money to.

Eloise questions whether Penelope has really made that much money in all these years, to which Penelope answers that she’s actually made much more.

So how rich is Penelope? She makes £10 per sold issue and, thankfully, a fan on Reddit answered the question.

“A while ago I looked up the purchasing power of £10,000 in 1820, which is not far off from what Pen saved in the books and close enough to the year. I didn’t bother with figuring out income from LW over time,” they explained.

“In 1820, you could buy one of the following with £10,000: Horses: 952. Cows: 2000. Wool: 11111 stones. Wheat: 1757 quarters. Wages: 66666 days (skilled tradesman). In today’s dollars that is roughly $935,841.86.”

In the books, Penelope has been Lady Whistledown for much longer than the series. The book details she made well over £8k.

Another fan broke it down further to say, “Pen could buy about £948k of modern stuff with her £10,000. The disparity between her wealth and that of the average 1820 worker is the same as that between the average 2024 worker and someone worth about £9.6 million. She has the status of someone worth about £13m. she has the economic clout of an author worth about £57m.”

By all accounts, Penelope is the wealthiest of all the characters and even the Bridgertons. It’s no surprise that her mother was left in utter shock while they were close to being kicked out of their home.