You are transported for a day to 1875 London and given £15 in 19th century coins. What do you buy?

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Alive_Spare6072@reddit

I'd buy a pasty Mrs Miggins' Pie Shoppe and a firkin of ale at the Putrid Waters Inn. I would then have a leisurely stroll down Shoreditch to acquire half a dozen of London's finest tarts. A carriage ride back to Mrs Menage a Trois boardy doss house for incumbents with tropical diseases. Several days of excessive wenching before a trip to the Whitechapel Scrub & Syphilis Emporium leaving enough change for a carriage and consultation at Dr, Pox's Clap Clinic.

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TheEnormousCrocodile@reddit

For £15? A house.

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Happytallperson@reddit

Possibly a weird one but I'd buy some train tickets and go visit a bunch of the wild spaces in England. See them before they had 90% of the wildlife wiped out.

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snufflycat@reddit

I'm fascinated by Victorian cosmetics and pharmacies. I would go to the nearest pharmacy and buy all sorts of strange concoctions in delightful little bottles. I would never actually use them, because they'd probably all be poisonous but it would be cool to keep them on a shelf and admire them and read the labels. I'd also pick up some arsenic for good measure, you never know when that might come in handy...

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Happytallperson@reddit

Good luck explaining your shelf of opium to 21st century cops.

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annedroiid@reddit

Honestly I’d love to get something like that and then get them all tested in the modern day to see exactly how toxic they all are.

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DenieD83@reddit

So so so much lead and arsenic lol

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snufflycat@reddit

And morphine, even in baby medicine 😬

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Caddy666@reddit

if you're ever around liverpool, try Dr Duncans.

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otocan24@reddit

This is somehow both wholesome and alarming.

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Ashie2112@reddit

lol 😆

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Ok_Project_2613@reddit

I'd buy multiple small (10 acres or so) pieces of land in London or even just the south east and provide a free of charge lease to the church of England for 150 years on the basis that they maintain it at which point it reverted back to the xx descendant of you (who would be alive today) and that the final benefactor is not to be made public until the expiry of the lease in 2025. 150 years isn't that long and the established church has proved to be okay at managing property / land. As land was so cheap back then (especially round docklands etc) and the plots being relatively small shouldn't affect other areas locally still being developed. I come back and the next year I get contacted by the church telling me I have a weird inheritance but who am I to argue with such a thing. Would have a perfect paper trail too.

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systemisrigged@reddit

Go to a tavern and buy a pint

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Daffy1275@reddit

Find a way to buy Manhattan island.

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InformationProper455@reddit

I would go and find my grandparents and see what they needed. Leave the money with them and hope I saw some return later...

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chudmcmuffin87@reddit

Land

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28374woolijay@reddit

I'd buy some shares in Foreign and Colonial Investment Trust

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

I'm curious - what happened to these shares,

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Gauntlets28@reddit

It's just a long-running investment trust that's still around today. It was founded about ten years before the time we're going back to, so it's pretty green.

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barrybreslau@reddit

I'd blow it all on gin, laudanum and prostitutes, but, to each, their own.

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Eggtastico@reddit

A night down gropecuntlane

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Prize_Mycologist1870@reddit

And waste the rest?!

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Historical-Web-6435@reddit

A lot of prostitutes wanted to avoid the stds of the time so they would target the drunkest dudes and basically give the drunks a thigh jobs tricking the drunk dudes into thinking they got it in when in fact they didn't. And I guess that's how they avoided some of the stds idk if it worked or not

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barrybreslau@reddit

Ah, the noble art of frottage; methinks a bit of thigh has to be better than taking those STDs directly in the fanny.

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Generic_userID001@reddit

…and squander the rest?

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UKLimitTester@reddit

And waste the rest.

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squigs@reddit

And bring back some STDs!

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alwayshungry1001@reddit

To be cured with modern medicine, and the see eye ay haven't invented HIV yet so no biggie

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barrybreslau@reddit

I'd get some mercury injections in my penis, so that would be taken care of.

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TheBlueprint666@reddit

That motherfucker staying blue

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Hedgerow_Snuffler@reddit

Weirdly, that statement could apply to your todger, a few days later!

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TheBlueprint666@reddit

That was an actual TrustPilot review from the time

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daftsquirrel@reddit

Jesus Christ dude, that's horrific!

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barrybreslau@reddit

Check out this Hogarth. https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/opinion/syphilis-and-the-use-of-mercury-2 Viscount Squanderfield with his child mistress with syphilis..

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daftsquirrel@reddit

Wasn't it also a thing that they would have sex with an 8 year old virgin to cure syphilis?

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barrybreslau@reddit

Well I'm definitely not googling that one.

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33_pyro@reddit

mercury urethral douche is not a word combination I expected to see today, or ever

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Soft-Mirror-1059@reddit

Holy fuck. I won’t be clicking on that

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remotif@reddit

I know, right? Paris, France - disgusting!!!

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TokerFraeYoker@reddit

Same, imagine continuing the practice of mercury douching urethras for 50 years! I need a lie down just at the thought of

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IfYouRun@reddit

One of the scariest url’s I have seen in a while lol

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barrybreslau@reddit

Thanks mum.

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OldManChino@reddit

imagine the smell

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BppnfvbanyOnxre@reddit

I am sure the hookers are used to it.

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srslywatsthepoint@reddit

Ba Dum Tiss!

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OldManChino@reddit

heh, gottem

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unfeasiblylargeballs@reddit

YOU HAVEN'T THOUGHT OF THE SMELL, YOU BITCH

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SDUK94@reddit

and the diseases

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stella585@reddit

Meh, nothing a course of penicillin upon one’s return to the present-day won’t clear up. HIV and antibiotic-resistant bacteria weren’t around back then, so diseases would actually be *less* of a concern (for time-travellers) than they are today.

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SteelAmethyst@reddit

Never mind that. Imagine the syphillis.

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yeahyeahitsmeshhh@reddit

A delightful bouquet.

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Archduke645@reddit

*Napoleon enters the chat*

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Knightman18@reddit

Of course not dee think of the smell

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Soft-Mirror-1059@reddit

What is laudanum like

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barrybreslau@reddit

Like sippy heroin drink. The pharmacy near me used to sell cough medicine that was basically laudanum.

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Ruadhan2300@reddit

When I hear Sippy, I think of a Toddler's Sippy-Cup. Yes, I'd like my Laudanum in a plastic sippy cup with a picture of a dinosaur on it please!

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barrybreslau@reddit

https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/WckzzigAACe3DJPD "The poor child's nurse". They literally gave little kids opium.

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SoldMyNameForGear@reddit

J Collis Browne’s mix I believe. Contained morphine lol

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Still-BangingYourMum@reddit

I'm on oral morphine AND morphine tablets, was also on Tramadol until 2 months ago. I'd like to tell you how it felt. But I was on big doses and have absolutely no idea of the previous 15 months

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damalan67@reddit

My friend, I can so relate. I was on tramadol and gabapentin for nerve pain, and a whole chunk of time is just a fuzzy gap. Glad to say I managed to wean myself off them.

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Still-BangingYourMum@reddit

I had gabapentin aswell way back, but the side effects nearly caused a divorce. Its nasty stuff and totally wiped out my personality and turned me into a walking meat bag. Talked to the Dr about it and told him no more. Then simply stopped taking it. Now I'm on Noretryptalin and have none of the side effects with Gabapentin.

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damalan67@reddit

Yeah, gabapentin undermined my ability to learn new things, and like you elected to stop using it off my own back. Particularly when it made me behave strangely. On one occasion I started flapping my arms and couldn't stop. Amitriptyline helps so much better.

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Still-BangingYourMum@reddit

If I had seen that, I would have pissed myself laughing afterwards.

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damalan67@reddit

At the time it was just one of those things. Later... much later... worrying.

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Still-BangingYourMum@reddit

I would hate to recall my time on that stuff, wife told me a couple of things that are so totally beyond what I would normally do.

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FunkyOperative@reddit

Care plus. IYKYK

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Bicolore@reddit

Opium disolved in alcohol. Exactly what you'd imagine its like.

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stoatwblr@reddit

A firm favourite for colicky infants (I shit you not!)

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Nolsoth@reddit

Yes and whooping cough. It's still prescribed here in NZ. Bloody works a treat.

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comicmuse1982@reddit

Ye Olde Leane.

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Nolsoth@reddit

Bloody nice stuff. They used to prescribe it for coughs and such.

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genesisporridge@reddit

Like a hug from god

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Mumfiegirl@reddit

Very moorish apparently

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Soft-Mirror-1059@reddit

Well now I’m hungry

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GREENK87@reddit

I’m with ya 💯

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arakasi-of-the-acoma@reddit

Yes, 100% this!

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GoldFreezer@reddit

And then you get to bring back some authentic Victorian syphilis as a souvenir!

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GB-BR-UK@reddit

Hookers and blow. It’s always hookers and blow!

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False_Disaster_1254@reddit

and waste the rest!

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account_not_valid@reddit

That's £1 pound for the month, do you just waste the rest?

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barrybreslau@reddit

No tuppeny whores for me, good sir.

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account_not_valid@reddit

A baker's dozen of gropecunts at thruppence a piece, sir? Many a nice maid among them.

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DependentSun2683@reddit

MY MAN!(high fives)

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RagingMassif@reddit

And heroin!

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WesternResearcher376@reddit

You’ll be patient zero of a new pandemic…

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ghostlight1969@reddit

And still have fourteen quid left!

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llufnam@reddit

“I’d spend most of it on gin, laudanum and prostitutes. I’d waste the rest”

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Phillington248@reddit

And you’d waste the rest 😁👍

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

I've just been to their Web site. £1000 invested in 1965 (which is as far as it goes) would be worth over £400k now. Which would be nice. Mind you, £1000 in 1965 would be a substantial sum - prob around half the price of a house 😁

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

Unfortunately, a mere £15 would not buy that many shares - even in 1875, so the value now would probably only be a few hundred £k. I think I'd probably go to an art gallery or bookshop and buy something from someone who (then) would be fairly unknown - Darwin, Cezanne, Van Gogh (sadly I don't know many - but they only need to be \*really\* famous now). These things go for millions.

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asdfasdfasfdsasad@reddit

In 1875 £15 is roughly the *yearly salary* of a sailor or farmhand and double what a telegraph clerk would have been paid. It is in fact a lot of money. If you turned up at a family owned private bank that you know still exists today (Hoares, for instance) and lay out the fact that your from the future and want to lay down an investment plan that'll be spectacularly profitable then I suspect that they'd be willing to follow your directions. Heck, if you did nothing but leave 15 £1 gold coins sitting in an envelope with an instruction to sell sell them for the scrap gold price in 1993 and put the proceeds into Microsoft shares when they release windows 3.1 then you'd make a few million on the deal. And that assumes that you don't gain any money by putting money into profitable industries such as railroads, then electricity, then oil and gas extraction etc to expand your financial base before then.

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

"and lay out the fact that your from the future" - next stop, Bedlam hospital, before your feet could hit the ground. Oh, and they'd hang on to your £15, on the grounds that you were mentally incapable.

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asdfasdfasfdsasad@reddit

I would think that the contents of your wallet would be enough to prove the point; your hardly going to have forged credit/debit cards and modern coins/notes.

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Huzzahtheredcoat@reddit

The concept of a credit card wouldn't even enter into the lexicon of Victorian England until 1887 in a Sci-fi novel, never mind being actually able to demonstrate or comprehensively explain what the cards of a strange material. At best the contents of your wallet will merely be viewed as the trinkets of a lunatic, there to rationalise your ramblings. Not necessarily of scientific interest, as such likely disposed of as irrelevant.

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asdfasdfasfdsasad@reddit

Forgery was a very old issue in Victorian England. It would be immediately obvious to anybody looking at modern forgery proofing methods including holograms on a modern bank card that they were advanced anti forgery methods that did not exist at the time. Additionally, remember that there are no "know you client" requirements for opening a bank account in 1875 and so no reason not to simply open a bank account and make a deposit in gold coins, with putting the money into particular shares, noting that you would wish to liquidate the shares and make a withdrawal around the year 2025 and are happy to pay their ordinary fees in the meantime. A stack of gold coins has always had a universal way of getting attention, and they are very easily portable to another bank that would be more accommodating if they didn't show the customer appropriate respect. And speaking of appropriate respect? This was an era where insulting somebody could plausibly still result in a duel, and your death. A lowly bank clerk is liable to express extreme disbelief with a raised eyebrow and asking you to make an appointment with a partner who in turn would simply say words to the effect of "I regret that we cannot accommodate your needs, good day sir" if he wanted you gone. Being dragged off to Bedlam is well beyond implausible, unless you severely and gratuitously exceed the social conventions of the era.

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

On the other hand, sailors and farmhands were probably paid f\*ck all of nothing, so that doesn't necessarily make it a large sum of money.

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Novaportia@reddit

How do you prove provenance?

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

Agreed - a pristine copy of a 150yo painting would be highly suspicious. Ideally, try and meet Van Gogh in person and get some personal item or letter to prove this. Just a suggestion - not convinced this would be possible in just a day! How does one locate just one person in a city the size of London in that age?

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UndercoverEgg@reddit

He lived on Hackford Road in Brixton so hang around there.

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xdq@reddit

Hang around, befriend him, buy a load of his paintings. Inspired by your tales of the future he quits art and becomes a science fiction writer, only he's not very good. Coupled with the fact that this change in events prevented his self mutiliation and early death, he quickly fades into obscurity.

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FloydEGag@reddit

He could sign it in his own blood, obtained by cutting off his ear

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Sweddybob69@reddit

Get Van Gogh to paint a dick pick of you

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manxlancs123@reddit

You could lure him in with adverts in all local newspapers for state of the art prosthetic ears.

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DaveBeBad@reddit

Isn’t the usual trope to store it in a vault until some distant relative turns up with a password to open the contents. The items are 150 years old and perfectly preserved, you become rich.

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RagingMassif@reddit

Vaults cost money to have, so you'd need to be paying regularly. Source: I had a vault at Credit Suisse in Zurich.

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docentmark@reddit

More than half. You could have bought a whole house for a thousand quid back then.

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TemporaryDraft2959@reddit

Hmm does this mean that it’s not actually worth it to have invested the amount, you basically end up with the same buying power

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timlnolan@reddit

Bank of England inflation tracker says £1000 in 1965 is worth £16K in today's money [https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator)

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sub273@reddit

To give this context, the value of the pound has eroded so much that you’d need £1,000 today to buy what got could with £62.50 in 1965

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tevs__@reddit

All good money depreciates in value, otherwise people would hold money instead of investments.

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redditrebelrich@reddit

That is a fucking disgusting statement in reality! I wonder if things will ever start to revert backwards at somepojt after I'm long dead.

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bentossaurus@reddit

Damn, iPhones must have been so cheap back then.

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Hypnagogic_Image@reddit

That’s inflation not investment

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timlnolan@reddit

Yes, that's why is called the inflation tracker. It shows the 2024 equivalent of £1000 in 1965

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Hypnagogic_Image@reddit

My bad 🙈

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docentmark@reddit

Sorry, I’m not qualified to give time travel based investment advice 😁

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ian9outof10@reddit

I am a time travel investment advisor but I’m not YOUR time travel investment advisor.

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Ze_Gremlin@reddit

Will you be u/docentmark 's time travel investment advisor at some point? I'd assume, being familiar with time travel, you could maybe pop through time and quickly find out?

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Beeblebrox2nd@reddit

Yet

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Craig_52@reddit

No. If you had gone back and invested in 1885 it would have been worth significantly more than £1000 by 1965. Even with modest gains.

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Mattress117work@reddit

In 1981 my parents bought a 4 bedroom house on the outskirts of London for £19,000 and just sold it for £600,000

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TemporaryDraft2959@reddit

Yeah so it probably would’ve been better to just buy a house lol

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Targettio@reddit

Long term investments like bonds only tend to pay out at a rate around inflation. People with money to invest use them as super low risk, guaranteed return, wealth maintaining investments. Then you put some money in other, riskier stuff to gain wealth. I don't know about those specific investments, but they likely fall under this same category.

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aemdiate@reddit

Bonds and investment trusts couldn't be more different. An investment trust is a company, not a fixed income instrument.

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newfor2023@reddit

Interest was pretty high at some points tho. Plus compounding since then.

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Targettio@reddit

Interest is high more or less when inflation is high. Inflation compounds. Long term bonds are like sticking your money in a locked savings account with an interest rate around current inflation. You aren't really gaining, but also you aren't losing. It's about preventing your base wealth from being eroded while you make money else where

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Houseofsun5@reddit

It's exactly why people buy physical gold, it's steady against inflation. If you bought £15 of gold back then and put it next to £15 under a mattress assuming you went and updated the cash when required...The £15 worth of cash would buy you a couple of meal deals now, the £15 quids worth of gold you bought back then would buy you a decent laptop or new iPhone.

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GrandWazoo0@reddit

To be fair if you buy the house and time travel back the house will be a wreck due to neglected maintenance, and probably cost you 400k to get back to being habitable

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forfar4@reddit

My father bought our family home near Dudley (three bed semi, drive, garage, front and back garden) in 1963 for £3000.

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Tarjhan@reddit

Yes! Finally a chance to buy a house before I was born, take that Boomers!

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BppnfvbanyOnxre@reddit

My parents place in Surrey in 1962 was £2200, they couldn't afford the extra £350 for a garage, my old fellah built one later.

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TravellingMackem@reddit

Feels like a relative loss then, given how little house 400k would get you now in affluent areas

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Dirty2013@reddit

In 1958 a relative of mine bought a house just outside Birmingham it cost £2,200.00

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This_Charmless_Man@reddit

Grandma and Grandma bought their new build in Southampton for £3000 in 1960

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GrandWazoo0@reddit

My father bought a few years later in a London suburb. 8000, which was 2.5x his salary. Was recently valued at 1.2m, which was about 18x his final salary.

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Unhappy_Peanut9470@reddit

Did your dad retire working for satan?

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stanleywozere@reddit

As my neighbour never tires of telling me, he bought his terraced house in London next to mine for 9K in 1968. I paid 600K in 2010

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Initial_Remote_2554@reddit

Christ, that'd be like a decent house costing 70,000-100,000 for most people.

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GrandWazoo0@reddit

Admittedly it was a “doer upper”, but perfectly livable 3 bed house for a single man at the time. He married, had kids and extended the house… but yeah, 3 bed for 2.5x salary today is not happening anywhere near London.

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Proof_Drag_2801@reddit

Mortgages were running at around 7% pa. There's always either high prices or high repayments.

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FloydEGag@reddit

In 1875 they could’ve bought it for £300 (probably)

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stuaxo@reddit

A very nice house.

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AikidokaUK@reddit

In the country

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TheBobLoblaw-LawBlog@reddit

Gay gay gay gay bar

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lazlowoodbine@reddit

Watching afternoon repeats and the food he eats.

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

Shame it would take more than a day to buy a house or land. That'd probably be the best investment.

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MyDarlingArmadillo@reddit

You'd be better off spending your £15 on property, in that case. You actually could have bought houses, plural, with that kind of money i think! In London.

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

Really? I'm very surprised if true. Also, in my experience, it takes weeks to complete a purchase, not just one day.

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MyDarlingArmadillo@reddit

Going by old novels I've read, houses could be just a few pounds. They probably weren't great houses, but still. I missed the one day part though, whoops.

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TravellingMackem@reddit

There’s got to be some more profitable companies than this you could pick - some beer companies in particular have very long histories, or chocolate ones?

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

I've just been to their Web site. £1000 invested in 1965 (which is as far as it goes) would be worth over £400k now. Which would be nice. Mind you, £1000 in 1965 would be a substantial sum - prob around half the price of a house 😁

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inlandsouthamerica@reddit

From 1965 to now that is an average 10.69% return. Presuming this is the same to 1875 (which is incredibly unlikely, that would result in returns of £55.9 million

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ProfessionalCowbhoy@reddit

What value would that give today? Did they pay dividends? If you reinvest those dividends until now

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Physicallykrisp@reddit

Genuine question If you bought shares in 1875 how would U cash them out in 2024 wouldn't they ask questions after 150 years

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yeahyeahitsmeshhh@reddit

You'd need to engage lawyers and set up a trust. You'd need to consider what would be likely to last as a legal entity. Unless you are suggesting bringing back physical share certificates and hoping they will be treated as the bearers property.

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thetoastmonster@reddit

But if you're bringing them back with you they won't have aged, and you'll just be told "these certificates do not look 149 years old and are therefore fake". You'd have to hide them somewhere, perhaps in a bank safety deposit box. I have no idea if a bank would even hold on to that for 150 years.

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Tarjhan@reddit

Carbon dating *might* be able to prove that the paper appears to originate from a period of time that predates nuclear testing but I’m unsure if the 149 year discrepancy is small enough to not be noticed, not really my field.

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yeahyeahitsmeshhh@reddit

That's why I think you need to know a legal firm that will also survive for 150 years and set up a trust with an unusual condition that will hold the assets in trust until you are born with a plausible inheritance rule that will flow to you.

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Patient_Drawing8411@reddit

tbf I work at a legal firm that has been running for 260 years we have paperwork from the 1800s its actually crazy

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yeahyeahitsmeshhh@reddit

Oh yeah, I know they exist. Just got to know which ones as part of the plan. I think you need to know your family tree too so you can stipulate the trust is for the sole benefit of "the second son of second son of the eldest son of the youngest son of Ebenezer Green, a grocer in Winchester, resident in the last census at 4 The Harcourt...", allowing you to turn up in the present with all the supporting documents and say it was an old bit of family lore that the trust existed for you. And claim what legally will appear to be an eccentric inheritance.

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SassyKardashian@reddit

I would just go to Coutts. I'd imagine they would be the most trustworthy bank of that time as they're private and specialise in wealthy clients and the royal family.

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GohanX2@reddit

Sounds like the plot of 13 monkeys

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boojes@reddit

As we learned from Back to the Future, you simply need to leave them with a solicitor with instructions to post to yourself on (date). Simple.

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Blaueveilchen@reddit

I would celebrate with my friends in a pub the British victory at the Battle of Abu Klea.

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AlmightyRobert@reddit

If you’re going the investment route, why not a field in London (let’s ignore technical issues of registering it 150 years later). You’d be the next Duke of Westminster

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28374woolijay@reddit

The first Duke of Westminster inherited property with a net value £4 million in 1869 from his father the second Marquess. I doubt I'd be able to buy a field for £15 in 1875 that would make me have a net worth equivalent to that of the 7th Duke today. The main reason I didn't go for land though is that I reckon it would take more than a day to buy, even if I could make £15 go a long way.

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Paulstan67@reddit

How do you solve the issue that your ancestors could withdraw the cash and spend it before you were even born?

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28374woolijay@reddit

I’d buy a share certificate, no one would be able to sell those shares, which would be in my name, without the certificate.

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BearMcBearFace@reddit

What would they be worth today?

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You_are_Retards@reddit

I don't know but £15 in modern money converted to old money of the time is itself already a lot of money. Like buy a nice car money Multiply that by 1000 at least

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randypriest@reddit

£1450 according to this https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator

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sourmanflint@reddit

£15 in 1875 was a years wages for vast majority of working class.

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asdfasdfasfdsasad@reddit

A (gold) £1 coin is worth £350 today in the scrap value of the gold, putting an absolute minimum value of £5250. The inflation calculators don't really deal very well going back that far.

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You_are_Retards@reddit

Thx. much less than I guessed .

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Mindless_Count5562@reddit

That’s just the buying power of £15 back then, not the expected value of the shares purchased.

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Captaincadet@reddit

That’s before any dividence or interest

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randypriest@reddit

That's the £15's buying power equivalent on its own, no investment at all.

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SaltyName8341@reddit

Bank of England inflation calculator says £15 now was £1450 in 1875

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Rhyobit@reddit

According to [https://www.officialdata.org/uk/inflation/1875?amount=15](https://www.officialdata.org/uk/inflation/1875?amount=15) it would be £2,169.09

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BearMcBearFace@reddit

It would be worth more than that as the shares will have increased in value, so I’m wondering what it would be worth with that increase.

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MrTubek@reddit

Someone said that £1000 invested in 1965 would be around £400k, so that 15 would be worth around £6k

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Whulad@reddit

That was 1965 not 1875

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MrTubek@reddit

They said it's as far as it goes

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warriorscot@reddit

Simply converted to today's money £15 is nearly a £1000. £6000 simply converted to today money is £375k. You are more likely talking about somewhere in the high tens to £150M.

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homelaberator@reddit

About £15

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BCS24@reddit

And here I was gonna say a lady of the night

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tmr89@reddit

And directly invest in colonial oppression?

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Rubberfootman@reddit

A pub crawl. I’d love to know what proper 19th century ales and stouts tasted like.

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Delam2@reddit

Pretty bad I’d wager

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Rubberfootman@reddit

I’m not sure. This is before the Free Mash-Tun Act of 1880 when brewers were allowed to add cheaper substitute ingredients into their beer. Also, it is long before the terrible damage that two world wars did to British beer recipes. I’d pay good money to try an 1870s Barcley Perkins imperial brown stout.

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Blackcat_84@reddit

Wait, what did world wars do to our beer recipes?

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Rubberfootman@reddit

Grain was scarcer/rationed so breweries used other ingredients and used fewer ingredients, so the beers were thinner and weaker. In many cases the recipes don’t seem to recover after the war.

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harryTMM@reddit

which is what partially caused the English Beer poisonings of 1900

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Rubberfootman@reddit

…and now I know why I absolutely refuse to brew beer with invert sugar.

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Itsalwayssunnyinreas@reddit

who’s trying to make you do that?

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Rubberfootman@reddit

I like to re-create old English ales, but a lot of the recipes from the 20th century call for invert sugar.

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Itsalwayssunnyinreas@reddit

i’m just razzing you - that’s a cool hobby tho!

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Rubberfootman@reddit

Haha, thank you.

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deformedfishface@reddit

Yeah but it's only a couple years after Pasteur so the wide dissemination of brewers yet wouldn't have happened yet so it'd probably be pretty sour from the wild yeasts.

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Rubberfootman@reddit

Get out of here with your pasteurised beer - I want something that has sat in a huge barrel for a year.

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deformedfishface@reddit

It's not that the beer is pasteurised, it's the fact that he discovered and isolated yeast without the extra microbes. Some are helpful little buggers but some aren't.

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yfce@reddit

You would win that bet

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StandardBanger@reddit

They taste like the morbs & smallpox with a sprinkle of Quinsy

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fezzuk@reddit

Like today's but with more piss and vinegar.

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Rubberfootman@reddit

Certainly more vinegar, from the wild yeasts in the ageing barrels.

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Fowl_Eye@reddit

gold sovereigns from that era, I'd be a bit more richer coming back to 2024.

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Saxonion@reddit

Spend an hour looking over maps, then purchase the title on as much land as possible somewhere that was still farmland at the time, but would go on to be desirable (thinking maybe Uxbridge, Gerrards Cross area).

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AF_II@reddit

I'd probably just trawl the bookstores and buy a load of first editions. Most books were a shilling or so, so even if their retail now (in mint condition, naturally) is tens rather than hundreds/thousands I'd still turn a profit. Maybe some William Morris first run samples. depending on the day & if the trains were reliable I'd also be tempted to go see a match - both Brum FC & Blackburn Rovers have just been founded and I bet any ephemera from their first games would be highly collectible.

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CNash85@reddit

You'd have to deal with provenance - any rare book expert would likely brand them fakes, because there's no way they would be in brand-new condition after 150 years. You could arrange to store them in a bank vault in 1875, preferably the Bank of England or some other institution that's survived to this day, and then retrieve them when you return to the present.

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AF_II@reddit

I have enough booksellers and antiques dealiers in the family that this isn't an issue ;)

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CNash85@reddit

But would what we'd call a mint first edition today have to be *exactly* as it was when it was completely untouched and unread, only days or months old? That's why I was thinking that a book expert would be able to tell the difference. Fair enough if not!

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AF_II@reddit

I've bought book that old which still have uncut pages, so, yeah. A few years on a dusty bookshelf to pick up a stale scent and a squished spider or two and it's easily passible.

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Wyvernkeeper@reddit

Dickens stories were originally published chapter by chapter in cheap pamphlets. If you came back with a suitcase of those you'd be laughing.

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reginalduk@reddit

1875, you might be able to source a first edition Frankenstein first published in 1818 from somewhere, one recently sold for over a million....

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AF_II@reddit

That's a price point where people start to ask questions. i'm going more for the <£500 not-worth-faking-who-cares-about-provenance genres...

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colei_canis@reddit

Radiocarbon dating something that had time travelled would be such a ballache.

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LongjumpingSwitch147@reddit

You can carbon date items for about £500 so you could easily do it on those books

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Reasonable_Phys@reddit

Carbon dating wouldn't solve this. In fact it would show it as fake

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LongjumpingSwitch147@reddit

Brain fart moment

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sultansofswinz@reddit

I've seen several comments mentioning returning to a bank to pick up their property but how would that work? Wouldn't they laugh you out the bank if you turn up claiming to be in ownership of a vault box from 150 years ago? even with loads of proof it would seem like an elaborate hoax. Also, is there a time limit where they consider someone dead and hand over belongings to the state? not sure how it works to be honest.

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811545b2-4ff7-4041@reddit

Dammit, I'd be 6 years too early for the first Watford FC match!

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colei_canis@reddit

On the other hand, you could start an incredibly polluting industrial enterprise in Luton and render the place (even more) uninhabitable ten years before Luton FC is even formed which is a win in my book.

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811545b2-4ff7-4041@reddit

I like the cut of your jib sir. Maybe a lead paint company that feeds into the river

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colei_canis@reddit

Watford Open-Air Abestos Grinding Ltd, right next to the Watford Heavy Industrial Fan Testing Facility.

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IThinkItMightBeMe@reddit

Lucky you

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811545b2-4ff7-4041@reddit

COYH!

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itkplatypus@reddit

Such a book would probably be presumed to be counterfeit as it would appear virtually brand new.

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AF_II@reddit

No one goes to the effort to counterfeit books worth max of about £300. You'd spend more on the materials. A few years on a dusty shelf and no one would tell the difference between just very well kept unread and new; books are remarkably resilient forms of data if given very basic care.

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Suspicious_Worry3617@reddit

I have some Rev Morris, but 1st ed, not samples unfortunately.

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Andrewhtd@reddit

Upvote for mention of Blackburn Rovers

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SnooBooks1701@reddit

The lack of boxing and fading would make people suspicious of your books, they'd be in too good condition

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blackcurrantcat@reddit

That is a smart answer.

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PersonalityFew4449@reddit

Stamps

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randomusername748294@reddit

Colt 1860 Army London model. £4-5.

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max_db@reddit

Probably a house in Mayfair!

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Unlikely_Chemical517@reddit

Opium, probably

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Positively-negative_@reddit

More of whatever I took to believe this, and probably the bus home when I come down and realise I’m in an alley way having shat my pants and passed out

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Potential-Fee-1603@reddit

I'd buy shares in jp Morgan

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Plumb121@reddit

I'd leave a letter with Lloyds of London to be delivered to me on my 12th birthday, listing investment ideas such as Yahoo, Google, Facebook and the like.

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deltree000@reddit

Why not just get delivered to you on 22/05/2010 "Bitcoin. Buy 10,000. Sell in 2024 for at least $50k, each." FYI that date was the first online transaction for BTC, 10,000 exchanged for a Papa John's pizza. So a tiny bit of Googling and you'd see investing the current cost of a pizza for a potential $500 million return isn't too bad.

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ProjectedEntity@reddit

So... you're saying Papa John's a time traveller.

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makomirocket@reddit

No, this is a commonly misreported story. A buyer of bitcoin acted as a middleman, who accepted the bitcoin from someone online, who in return used their USD to make a purchase from a Papa Johns. At not point was Bitcoin actually used for the direct purchase

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rjstoz@reddit

Though not bought directly from papa John's woth the bitcoin, the customer still exchanged their bitcoin with someone and received a pizza- even with card payment, there's often an intermediary payment processing company

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makomirocket@reddit

Right, but it's often used as an example of when a cryptocurrency was actually accepted by a big business as a valid form of payment, and to show how little it was worth back then Vs how much it is now Not "one guy making a Facebook market purchase, who wanted to buy 10k of bitcoin, and just used buying 2 pizzas as a proxy for sending the money"

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Vast_Emergency@reddit

And fundamentally this hasn't really changed whenever you buy something with BTC (and is one of the reasons why it doesn't work as currency).

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stackontop@reddit

It’s not like I can buy a pizza in US with Yuan anyway

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Jaffiusjaffa@reddit

With that much money, hes daddy john now

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srslywatsthepoint@reddit

The guy who bought the pizza sold his bitcoin not too long after to pay for a $2000 holiday.

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JJGOTHA@reddit

Yes. He invented the tasteless pizza in Napoli in the 1800s. They still use the same recipe.

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callmeBorgieplease@reddit

Yes.

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33Yidana53@reddit

Or here is an even better less complicated idea give yourself a note of lottery No.s

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Metori@reddit

You wouldn’t even need your buy them. You use to be able to mine BTC on a laptop.

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juanito_f90@reddit

Why buy? Just mine then a few years prior instead.

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Tarjhan@reddit

To be sure, you’d have to send it to arrive some time ahead of that date - you need to give yourself time to acquire a computer and become sufficiently conversant with the technology to know what you’re doing. Same for investing in something like Apple, you’d need to locate a broker and set that arrangement up.

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BritshFartFoundation@reddit

If you sell 10,000 bitcoin you're not gonna get anywhere near $50k each for them

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Slugdoge@reddit

Why do these boring superficial answers always make it to the top of these threads? It's an interesting prompt with some good answers but the top replies are always "buy stocks/bitcoin!!". Yes, those are worth a lot of money in the current day, what a great observation.

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Life-Duty-965@reddit

It's what most people would do if they had the chance This isn't a creative writing sub geez man gets over yourself

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AffectionateJump7896@reddit

Isn't the answer the euro millions numbers for 16 year old you's birthday, when you became eligible to play? Perhaps you throw a few investment ideas on top, so they know what to do with the winnings. The problem with instructing child-you to invest is that they don't have the seed capital.

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uncertain_expert@reddit

How do you know what winning numbers for Euromillions will be on your future birthday, in 1875?

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Major_E_Vader97@reddit

because you are say 24 in 2024 but if you travel back in time and leave a letter in 1875 to be delivered to you in say 2010 it would get delivered, however if you then followed the letters advice it would be a risky paradox because you'd potentially not go back and deliver yourself the letter again as you're already rich so it wouldn't be needed, time travels weird because technically its like everything you ever did will do or are doing is already set in stone so you should already have had the letter anyway before going back in time the first time anyway

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corporalcouchon@reddit

An extra letter in the mail system causes another letter to be delivered fractionally later and the reader of said letter leaving for work fractionally later leading to a tiny alteration in the way he or she picks up the box of balls that get loaded into the machine...

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CheeseFace83@reddit

What if you left a letter that arrived the Friday before your time travel saying "Hi it's me, well .. you.. this letter was posted in 1875 and has the euro millions result for tonight's draw. Put the following numbers on [insert numbers] and when you get back to 1875 make sure to send this exact same letter" You'd arrive back in 2024 with a winning ticket and the millions would only be received after your return so never had the butterfly effect to break anything...

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SirDooble@reddit

What if you leave instructions for yourself advising that you MUST take the time travel opportunity in 2024 and return back to 1875 to leave the original letter advising of the Euromillions numbers?

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GoldenPeperoni@reddit

But in your first run you've clearly not received the letter when you were 16 (you are 24 now), so sadly the letter didn't come through 🥲

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SirDooble@reddit

No, but in the first run OP offers me a go on his time machine, which was for free, so I didn't need the money yet. Now I go back the first time with the plan, leaving the letter with the numbers and instructions. I was always going to time travel, even if I didn't receive a letter from myself. Now that I go back, I just make sure the would-be past me in the future makes sure he still travels back despite being rich.

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BikerScowt@reddit

Does the multiverse theory not explain this? You'd still go back to where you were and be poor as fuck but another version of you would be minted.

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Typical-me-@reddit

So you’re saying back to the future is a bunch of bullshit?

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welshinzaghi@reddit

This. If you make a plan for your trip back in time, and whatever you planned should have already happened, the plan failed 🙃

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zonked282@reddit

yea buy a euromillions ticket ( bonus points if its for a date of a mega jackpot around your birthday that had no winner so you dont have to share it) and then a recommendation to spend a few hundred of that windfall on bitcoin in 2010 and sell them for 55k each in november 21

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Impressive_Monk_5708@reddit

This is why you get 2 letters, one on your 16th telling you to save, another on your 30th or mid 20s saying where to invest

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klausness@reddit

But you didn’t get those tips on your 12th birthday, which means that your plan failed. You need to do something that does not conflict with history up to now. If you change history (assuming that’s even possible), you will be coming back to a different world. One in which you might not even exist.

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pgh9fan@reddit

Then you have some guy walking up to you in the rain asking if you're Marty McFly.

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GrossWordVomit@reddit

If my 12 year old self got a letter like this is just throw it in the trash lmao

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FloydEGag@reddit

Hopefully no one at Lloyd’s would open and read it or it’d be in the bin with it and off to the madhouse with you!

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KingDaviies@reddit

Your 12 year old self is binning that

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viola-purple@reddit

THIS 💯

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AllTheLads420@reddit

Then your parents read it, assume some pervert is trying to groom you and put it in the bin

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prometheanSin@reddit

Opium, Gin and whores. I'd probably squander the rest.

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trazeebarb@reddit

Laudenam, coca cola and a lady of the night 🌙

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cyclic_phenomenon@reddit

Bitcoin.

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Hedgerow_Snuffler@reddit

OK, straight out of the portal, I'm Checking the tide times. Seeing I've got 4 or five hours till low tide, I'm walking to 187 Piccadilly, St. James's, were [the bookshop Hatchards stands](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hatchards/@51.508622,-0.1380503,3a,48.9y,183.45h,93.07t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sZKezxYqLTJuHoT7f5x1SSg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x487604d68aa66449:0x81cfe967b2e4be7b!8m2!3d51.5084919!4d-0.1380702!16s%2Fg%2F11xj7b30x?coh=205409&entry=ttu) (and still does to this day) and I'm buying a mint embossed cover first edition of the recently published Great Expectations. while there I might pick up one or two rarities or stories that just catch my eye. Stop for a coffee somewhere, 19th C style. And then wander over to 105 Great Russell St, where art suppliers [Cornelissen & Sons](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5174761,-0.1290212,3a,75y,359.43h,91.05t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7VxsCI-XydQLYPXIQNUMIA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu) trades from, and pick up some real quality brushes, and one of those REALLY cool Victorian all steel retractable drawing pencils! After that, I am going to pop into the nearby British Museum, just for a 15 minute wander, as I've loved the place all my life and want to see it in its Victorian Weirdness. Now there was a really Famous Chop House somewhere near Old Bailey, lasted uptill WWII, but long gone. I'm gonna see if I can get some lunch there. Full of Kindey Pie & stout, I'm wandering down towards the river, I'm 100% going to find a bootmakers between Blackfriars Bridge & Steelyard. Get a long pair of stout leather mid calf carters boots, I'm going to slip down to the foreshore (probably by [All Hallows Lane](https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Steel+Yard/@51.5096414,-0.0905999,3a,75y,209.92h,88.82t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s_net9uAVAG19UvCHFyCNIA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!4m15!1m8!3m7!1s0x487604acd7254bad:0xc633b510e3c86036!2s35+Old+Bailey,+London+EC4M+7AU!3b1!8m2!3d51.5143068!4d-0.1029919!16s%2Fg%2F11g1nml3hk!3m5!1s0x487603542f360589:0x656f6db185ff1a65!8m2!3d51.5100675!4d-0.090338!16s%2Fg%2F1v3kgzx3?coh=205409&entry=ttu) to the Walbrook steps) And spend the afternoon doing some unregulated Mud Larking!

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FloydEGag@reddit

This is such a good answer. Although be careful you don’t get chucked in the river by the full-time mudlarks annoyed at you horning in on their racket.

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Hedgerow_Snuffler@reddit

I've actually got a plan for this. I'm going to rely on my attire, (upper-middle class, suit and day jacket, combined with now muddy knee high Carter's boots) that I'm in fact an eccentric historian / archaeologist (kind of true in fact) And I'm not threat, and I'll leave any 'Docketts' - Coins and 'Shiners' - Gems or jewellery to their care. I'm in fact out for Roman and medieval ceramics, and other assorted historic novelties, that to their industry are pretty much useless.

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bobdvb@reddit

I'm going to suggest that as romantic as mudlarking might be, in the 1870s it's going to be much more grim. The Victoria Embankment is only just completed in 1875 and your chances of dysentery or other maladies from the water are going to be high.

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FloydEGag@reddit

This makes it even better

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picto19860@reddit

Great answer but can’t imagine mudlarking would be much fun on the Victorian Thames!

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reginalduk@reddit

50k for the he great expectations. I would check to see if they have a used first edition of Frankenstein instead.

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unhiddenhand@reddit

Don't forget to stop by covent garden for a bit of whatever takes your fancy... 😯

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yfce@reddit

It’s perfect, you can have your fun in Covent Garden then zip back to the 21st century for antibiotics.

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Artaheri@reddit

Books was my first thought. Then drop by some bank or law firm that exists today and have them stored, until collected by providing a password or something. Then go have tea and browse some knick-knacks.

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Hot_Jury_6253@reddit

Amazing!!!£

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Crittsy@reddit

Several people have mentioned Dickens but, I think 1st editions of Thomas Hardy would be a better choice, Far from the Madding Crowd was published in 1874, and, if you could get signed, even better

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Hedgerow_Snuffler@reddit

I think I pitched for Dickens, as it's a sure fire bet it'll be in stock. He was such a popular writer. Hardy's a good choice too. If I knew more about artists of that period, and was trying to make money, I might have tried to find something cheap, by a (then up-&-coming still to be famous artist) but that might involve trawling rounds loads of galleries, and I've only got a day.

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Crittsy@reddit

I seem to remember watching a doc about 10 years ago about the Hardy museum and they mentioned that the full set of signed 1st editions were valued at over 1 million GBP

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Effelumps@reddit

Beautiful answer. L. Cornelissen & Sons is a wonderful place. I should like to take a carriage of the sights and to the Palace of Westminster to listen to the Public Health Act be passed, ensuring that all new dwellings had to be built with running water and internal drainage systems and cheer as loud as possible from the public gallery. Pop by the Abbey too. I would like to meet some of my great greats of course, but not in a way to disrupt. A fine meal and ale and a grand day out. Take in a couple of views of town too with all the spires above the city skyline. A couple of choice souvenirs, and spare made out to an institution that has serviced the country in a fine way through to today.

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coffeemakesmesmile@reddit

Thank you for adding those links, really cool to see those places you mentioned

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Bosteroid@reddit

Finally a proper answer

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MystiikMoments@reddit

Bitcoin

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Browny_Deluxe@reddit

A t-shirt with text on front and back saying “All females please refrain from prostitution in Londons East End in 13 years time”

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ASeatedLion@reddit

Probably a house.

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Captain_Swing@reddit

A house in London.

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Takseee@reddit

I feel like the actual answer here is. Appear, spend 10 minutes trying to get my bearings. Black out after someone koshes me on the head, wake up on some ship bound for Singapore or in a workhouse with no coins and a very sore head.

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Intelligent_Walk3856@reddit

Probably just keep some of the 19th century coins, they must be worth a fair bit in 2024 Probbaly worth the equivalent of £2000 spending poelwer today so a mix or some of: -Books -Gold -Proper good suit -Whisky -Marketing posters that seem to be valuable now -Jewellery box or something like that which is now considered an antique

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travelingwhilestupid@reddit

Steel. It was created before nuclear weapons. [https://interestingengineering.com/science/what-is-pre-war-steel](https://interestingengineering.com/science/what-is-pre-war-steel)

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-Blue_Bull-@reddit

I'd convert some of it and buy $15 worth of shares in JP Morgan. Stock value plus dividend income would be £1.7 billion. I'd spend the remainder of the £15 in the pub, getting pissed.

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Vertigo_uk123@reddit

why not berkshire hathaway

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

JP Morgan didn't exist then :-(

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haywire-ES@reddit

It had existed for 4 years at that point

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

https://preview.redd.it/7a43hydysjbd1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=35e62360270f4ee3d35644035771937f292c73ff

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haywire-ES@reddit

[From their wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.P._Morgan_%26_Co.) >J.P. Morgan & Co. is an American financial institution specialized in investment banking, asset management and private banking founded by financier J. P. Morgan in 1871.

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

According to Wikipedia, that was Drexel Morgan and Co. A precursor to JP Morgan and Co. They are stretching the truth, I suspect.

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hazehel@reddit

Hoddle to you too

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-Blue_Bull-@reddit

I'm putting it all in dog money.

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Ronsona@reddit

Glen?

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fezzuk@reddit

Think you would have to get to America to do so.

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NickEcommerce@reddit

I reckon there must have been a couple of brokers in 1875 who would buy and sell stocks in New York. You'd probably need a stellar credit rating (that's a nice note from a very important person), but I'm sure you could do it.

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obadiah_mcjockstrap@reddit

A copy of razzle and a box of Maltesers

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Available_Drink3305@reddit

Buy some Art

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Dazzling-Ad6085@reddit

A first edition Dickins book or a paining by one of the pre-raphelites

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herwiththepurplehair@reddit

A piece of Pre-raphaelite artwork.

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SubstantialAd283@reddit

Find Monet and buy some of his throways before he goes all stabby and burny on them.

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Sea-Still5427@reddit

A house.

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AlGunner@reddit

Id be enquiring about things like Faberge eggs, he was alive then but if you could buy them in London or not is another matter. Or maybe Ming vases.

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-usagi-95@reddit

Probably myself. Sorry, dark humour.

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corporalcouchon@reddit

Shares in JPMorgan Chase

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asuka_rice@reddit

Buy a few collectibles. Penny black stamps, fine arts, rare gold coins and put acquired in demand land and property in trust fund for you to inherit in the future, the present.

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Behold_SV@reddit

M3 mask with n95 filter to avoid inhaling that stuff and move away from London. As per shares and other assets without much of a research I’d buy a land in London. Then lease to developers.

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No-Couple-3367@reddit

Nvidia or Bitcoin

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iEatCats4Fun@reddit

Apple stocks

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feeb75@reddit

A house

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JockosaurusRex@reddit

I think I would buy 3600 postage stamps.

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Whatever-ItsFine@reddit

I'm for experiences over physical possessions, so I would see how many famous people I could meet, even for a moment. They wouldn't even need to be famous-- just important people to me.

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srslywatsthepoint@reddit

For a day? I'd nick a lot of things.

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livvyxo@reddit

I'd buy a fancy watch, then get drunk on gin, sleep in a penny hangover and get robbed.

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Acceptable-Sentence@reddit

Straight to gin alley

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livvyxo@reddit

This

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Ottazrule@reddit

And a 'below job'

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jaynoj@reddit

Hence the need for the gin ... to rinse your mouth out afterwards.

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singeblanc@reddit

Wait, is OP paying to give or receive?

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No-Recognition-8736@reddit

A hooker

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FlipMcvickers@reddit

Bitcoin

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homelaberator@reddit

Cocaine and heroin.

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Zwirnor@reddit

Heroine only got developed and approved for use by Bayer Pharmaceuticals in Germany in 1899. Aspirin was slightly later as it went up in the same panel as heroin but got denied due to concerns it might be damaging to the heart. Now heroin is a scourge on society, aspirin is used to treat heart conditions. Imagine if I had time to travel to Germany and stop heroin being developed. What sort of world would I return to?

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FloydEGag@reddit

Neither had been synthesized yet…I’m afraid it’s laudanum all the way

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nowayhose555@reddit

Penny black stamps. I think they go for auction for £1000+. The problem is I'd have so many of them I'd probably crash the market. I'd probably buy a bunch of other stamps as well.

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spokenwealth@reddit

Monster Aussie Lemonade

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KINGHAROLDINIHO87@reddit

Liquor

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Kent_Doggy_Geezer@reddit

Is that £15 in today’s money or 1875 money, because that’s rather different and would definitely change what I could do.

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LondonUKDave@reddit

Arsenal FC was established in 1886 just saying. You could own that dump plus the league !

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cazzyinthehay@reddit

Buy the most beautiful polyphon with a load of songs.

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YouCantArgueWithThis@reddit

Food and drink first, then a room where I can hide for the rest of that 24 hours.

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AncientNortherner@reddit

Local hooker. Everything you could catch then has basically been cured.

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Alarmed_Lunch3215@reddit

A house

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PigletAlert@reddit

How much was a house? I feel like a house might be worth investing in, somewhere in London that survived the blitz. If not maybe some art.

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MeltingChocolateAhh@reddit

I would go to London bridge train station then see how far north I could get in half a day with the money I've got then tell as many northerners as I can about the concept of the great northern powerhouse.

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Whulad@reddit

I’d bomb over to Europe and find a 22 year old Van Gogh and buy some of his art

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

The correct answer ;-)

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heartshapedprick@reddit

Except he likley didnt kill himself anyway

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

You're saying.... da da da... that he might not be dead after all?

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3me20characters@reddit

I'm pretty sure we could fake a suicide that would get past 1875's CSI team.

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heartshapedprick@reddit

Poor vincent cant catch a break

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classicalworld@reddit

And lives on, his paintings never get famous as his sister in law dies before him.

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snoopswoop@reddit

Yeah, I think you'd need to buy it from someone who already owned a piece.

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CrazyEntertainment12@reddit

Wasn't he living in London that year? Might get lucky running into him in Brixton

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Cyanopicacooki@reddit

That was the year he moved back to Paris...

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811545b2-4ff7-4041@reddit

Just take the Eurosta.. oh wait.

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WarmTransportation35@reddit

He lived in Isleworth so I should be able to navigate the area I live then tell him how much I love his paintings.

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Whulad@reddit

Even better!

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haddock420@reddit

Except the people in 2024 wonder why the art looks pristine when it should be over 100 years old.

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Happy_Boy_29@reddit

Horse n enough hay to get me round the NC500.

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Resident_Creepy@reddit

I win! 10 million for 1.44 in 1874! British Guiana 1 Cent Magenta The most expensive stamp on record is the British Guiana 1 Cent Magenta. Only one is known to exist. It was ordered to be printed by the postmaster general of British Guiana in 1856 after a shipment from London was delayed. Its first sale was recorded in 1874 for six shillings ($1.44). In June 2014, the stamp was sold at Sotheby’s auction for a whopping $9.48 million. The buyer was high-end shoe designer Stuart Weitzman, who simply tucked the stamp into his pocket after the record-breaking sale. https://www.grabbitandrun.com/the-10-most-expensive-stamps-in-the-world/#:~:text=The%20most%20expensive%20stamp%20on,for%20six%20shillings%20(%241.44). The 10 bucks you can then just throw away :)

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PutridForce1559@reddit

Get a wheelbarrow for all the coins needed to make £15

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virgin_goat@reddit

Prostitute

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S1337artichoke@reddit

To bring back? What kind of life would you provide for her on your return to 2024?

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Henery16@reddit

Heroin… I’d go do some sweet Victorian heroin

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Bad_UsernameJoke94@reddit

A brass Merryweather fire helmet for my collection. I've got more modern Cork, leather and composite helmets but nothing metal.

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811545b2-4ff7-4041@reddit

I think you should official win.

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Booboodelafalaise@reddit

I love these niche answers. I have no idea exactly what you’re collecting (I’m about to google) but I applaud your enthusiasm.

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UnrepentantlyBitchy@reddit

I’d but laudanum. Hands down. Not a second thought. The rest left over would go to Foreign / Colonial Investment Trust.

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juanito_f90@reddit

£15 in *coins*? Jesus, that would be a fair weight. I’d prefer a few £1 notes at least! Either way, invest in shares in Cadbury or British Gas.

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reginalduk@reddit

Van Gogh was in London in 1875. I reckon you could have commissioned a portrait of yourself from him for next to nothing. Id do that

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Trick_Substance375@reddit

Deeds to a property. Maybe not enough but I'll buy in the cotswolds.

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LittleGreenCabbage@reddit

Land 😤

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travelingwhilestupid@reddit

I'm not sure you'd still have that land 149 years later

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LittleGreenCabbage@reddit

Long as I have the deed who's gonna take it 😤

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travelingwhilestupid@reddit

me

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zimzimmawho@reddit

Ronnie Pickering?

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LittleGreenCabbage@reddit

Fuck

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saladinzero@reddit

And now you know what joining the Empire felt like.

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matthewgoodwin1@reddit

*Half of Europe has entered the chat*

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Kitchner@reddit

>Long as I have the deed who's gonna take it 😤 The government. There's a law called eminent domain which means "Imma steal your land" in Latin.

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stumac85@reddit

I'm fairly certain there's plots of landholdings that have been held by certain families for centuries (not just the royal family).

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Some_Director_1251@reddit

You’re correct except the plots are actually 70% of the entire country and the families are the aristocrats who descend from the invading Norman army of 1066

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travelingwhilestupid@reddit

there's someone actively enforcing it

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Suspicious_Worry3617@reddit

Is that long ago enough that the paper bank notes would sell for a lot? I could just have 15 £1 notes, catch polio or ricketts and return home

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diond09@reddit

Place it all on Pathfinder at Aintree.

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Mischeese@reddit

My Great Grandparents some food and my GG Grandparents Rent I’m sure £15 would buy them a lot. Dull but they were poor AF.

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kayzgguod@reddit

how do you know they were poor af if u werent even alive

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Mischeese@reddit

I heard stories from their kids (my grandparents) The censuses of 1871 and 1881 were both pretty useful for what work their parents did. And because I know where they lived the Booth Poor map has been super useful - worth a look if you have London family.

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OldManChino@reddit

You may then cease to exist...

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Mischeese@reddit

True! But the circumstances that needed to happen for me to exist are so bloody weird, I’ll take my chances :)

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

But if you cease to exist, then you couldn't have gone back to give them the money. Paradox...

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h00dman@reddit

"Oh no I've gone cross-eyed."

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Hellsbellsbeans@reddit

This is Hot Tub Time Machine all over again

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

Don't you go baffling me with advanced science!

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Hellsbellsbeans@reddit

Sorry, shamelessly quoting [this Back to the Future discussion](https://youtu.be/oBoPdUOWfXo?si=rWgDbUEbIl9GMu00)

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LEVI_TROUTS@reddit

Did it involve a bit of temporal displacement and access to the modern equivalent of around £1500?

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Mischeese@reddit

LOL!! Sadly no, frankly that would have been easier. But there was a Victorian Prostitute, WW2 affair, a jeep crash killing a load of soldiers in the mid 1960s in South America, some experimental surgery, and then some letters going to the wrong person. I basically shouldn’t exist. I should never ever time travel that’s all way too easy to mess up :)

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devandroid99@reddit

Hahaha, grandpa spends it on prophylactics.

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OldManChino@reddit

or maybe they were just too full that night to fuck

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minimalisticgem@reddit

Or in my case I’d give the money to my great great great grandparents. Their parents may still have been alive too I’m too tired to do the maths.

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OldJonThePooSmuggler@reddit

As much laudanum as I can afford

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pocahontasjane@reddit

Hookers and opium

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Kat8844@reddit

Pharmacy bought pure Victorian Coke probably wouldn’t be a bad investment!.

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paulywauly99@reddit

BTC.

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junojack@reddit

1st edition novels (Dickens), Paintings

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flaninacupboard2@reddit

You’d need to also store them somewhere to retrieve today, if you brought them directly to the future they woukd not be aged and woukd be considered forgeries

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probablyaythrowaway@reddit

The Bank of England I’m sure would have a safe vault?

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TheMusicArchivist@reddit

A bank vault isn't always the best place to store fragile documents. You need temperature and humidity control but also a place that avoids human or animal touch as much as possible

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probablyaythrowaway@reddit

I would have thought the BoE would have something like that. No doubt they store paper bonds and artwork etc they took as collateral

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uk_kyrus@reddit

Have been in the BoE archives, they have a lot of stuff WAY older than that preserved very well. It's very cool.

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probablyaythrowaway@reddit

Did they know you were in there?

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bisikletci@reddit

How would you pay for it? You need them to keep it for you for well over a century, and you have 15 pounds minus the cost of the paintings. They're unlikely to agree to give you 140 years of credit.

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probablyaythrowaway@reddit

It’s the equivalent of £1500 today an exceptionally large amount of money in 1875. Alternatively you invest along side and use that to pay for the box.

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bisikletci@reddit

I'd be surprised if 1500 pounds in today's money would buy 140 years of BoE vault storage, and again you don't have most of that, as you've bought paintings with it. The investing idea could work.

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probablyaythrowaway@reddit

Not now days but £15 was half a years wages for a laborer in 1880 so wandering in with that in cash is not an insignificant amount of money. You could probably convince them to.

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Additional_Breath_89@reddit

Lloyds of London is where I would store it.

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drunkemonkee@reddit

OP says you could bring anything you buy back with you. Wouldn't need to store them.

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flaninacupboard2@reddit

But they wouldn’t have aged, they would look like brand new items, so discounted as modern forgeries.

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uncertain_expert@reddit

OP states you are allowed to bring them back with you.

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DogTakeMeForAWalk@reddit

No one is saying you can't, only that if you bring something back and try to sell it then you'll have difficult convincing a buyer that it's 150 years old.

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hazehel@reddit

Time to get the tea bags and craft scissors out I say

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FloydEGag@reddit

Dickens first editions would already be worth quite a bit - he’d already been dead five years by 1875 and was incredibly popular so who even knows how many editions some of his novels would have run to by then. If you went back to about 1860 on the other hand you’d probably get a first edition of A Tale of Two Cities for a song.

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ramapyjamadingdong@reddit

Monet, Manet, Renoir and Cezanne were all active at the time. I perceive £15 to be the average man's half year salary and I'm hoping I could pick up a picture now worth millions. Ailing that, van Gogh would be early 20s and I'd sponsor some early work.

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Dry-Clock-8934@reddit

A town house in Mayfair

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WyvernsRest@reddit

I would go to the Oval to watch the first [Ireland England Rugby Match](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland_national_rugby_union_team). I'd get them drunk after the match and tell then tales of matches from the future. Of days to come when the Irish team are on top of the world. I'd then buy them a decent kit and split the rest of the money between them. (Bringing back their original kit as my momento)

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Alarmed_Crazy_6620@reddit

Lead paint. It's quite sweet

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behavedave@reddit

Yeah, yeah yeah, they also said artificial sweetener was 200 to 700 times sweeter than sugar (John Hopkins calls it a fact). Aspartame taste like aspirin, not sweet at all.

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LuckyNumber003@reddit

Charlie are you drinking paint?

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shellevanczik@reddit

Ha!

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No-Village7980@reddit

I'd go to the boozer and spunk the lot.

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Small-Low3233@reddit

Are slaves outlawed?

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brokenbear76@reddit

It'd probably be syphilis...

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CandourDinkumOil@reddit

Why are people saying cocaine as if it isn’t available today?

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singeblanc@reddit

£15 of cocaine, please!

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countrymouse73@reddit

Pure pharmaceutical quality. The Cocaine available today is very likely to be laced with fentanyl and kill you.

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hollywol23@reddit

The one time I wish I'd paid attention in History and knew more about what was happening in 1875! 🤪

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CasfromBri@reddit

I'm sure £15 would have been enough back then, to get to Germany and kill Hitlers parents.

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Rutankrd@reddit

you are going to be very wealthy with that much in coins

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Maleficent_Goose_233@reddit

Bitcoin, obvs

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Choice-Bid9965@reddit

Invest the whole lot in Loyds of London, shipping insurance, any clever folks know what that would be worth now?

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Flat__Line@reddit

Whip and top!

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TyrannicHalfFey@reddit

Tickets to see Gilbert & Sullivan's Trial by Jury, of course!

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Constant_Voice_7054@reddit

I pay my way to meet Charles Babbage and Lovelace, teach them some modern computing knowledge for fun, and use the rest to get a professional painting/drawing of me, Lovelace and Babbage, names included. When I'm back in the future, I'll make my fortunes doing the chat shows as "the guy who time travelled to the 19th century".

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Guh_Meh@reddit

Bitcoin!

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simondrawer@reddit

A small plot of land in central London.

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Straight_Bass_1076@reddit

Invest in bitcoin.

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Normal_Human_4567@reddit

For £15? A house and stables, and then put the remaining £14 in the bank to gain interest

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pdf27@reddit

HSBC was founded in 1865 with a value of HK$5 million, which is about £500k sterling. So if you can find someone with shares to sell, that gets you 0.003% of HSBC. Not a big fraction, but worth 5.8 million today not accounting for accumulated dividends which you should be able to reinvest. 3% compound interest gets you to about half a billion pounds in value...

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punekar_2018@reddit

Scotch

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stoatwblr@reddit

By way of tempering expectations that's equivalent to around £2200 in today's pounds. You're not going to purchase Nonsuch House or similar

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7ootles@reddit

Get the money changed to fifteen £1 coins = AKA gold sovereigns. The value of gold has increased *much* more rapidly than the value of money. Either that three £5 notes, which might be worth even more than the gold, from that time period. Basically inflating £15 from then beyond the \~£1450 it would grow to in a bank account to \~£12000 or more.

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sockhead99@reddit

The coin collector in me just had a little squeel of excitement when I read OP's question and then your response. There is also another way to get massive bang for your buck. early Queen Victoria 1D (penny) coins between 1860 and 1875 in uncirculated condition are worth very very good money. Certain varients, key dates or errors in that period can fetch £3k. So my plan would be:- 1) Go to a bank and withdraw £15 in 1D (3600 coins). Search through for above varients, key dates and errors. 2) Return the remainder to the bank. 3) With what is left, head to a coin dealer and see what they have in stock 4) get the rest in gold 5) Get home and go all Smeegol, refuse to let my preciouses out of my sight

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7ootles@reddit

I used to be a coin collector so I'm still up on some things. The jewel of my collection as it still stands is a 1798 spadeback Guinea. I paid £100 for it when I was ten (God it took my forever to save up my pocket money and birthday/Christmas money for it), around the turn of the century. Going by others in similar condition on eBay, it would now be worth ~£1700. I also have a Henry III long-cross penny I paid a fiver for about fifteen years ago. Coins in similar condition are now going for anywhere up to £50. Now would *not* be the time for a person to get into collecting, haha.

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Ok_Net_5771@reddit

The prices of historical coins today is still cheaper than they will be in 25 years 🤷🏻‍♂️

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sockhead99@reddit

I was talking about this with a fellow collector the other day, tracking sold prices of particular pre-decimal coins over the last 10 years. 25 years ago, the internet and google were young. Ebay only started operating in the UK in 1999, so there was no real way to track live data on coins sales and values, people were heavily relient on coin dealers and traditional auctions. Bring in factors now like how prevalent ebay is, facebook selling groups and the general decline in people interested in the hobby or being focused on current circulating coins, yeah prices of historic coins are going to fall. Personally I would much rather spend £150 on a nice gothic florin than a kew gardens 50p!

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Ok_Net_5771@reddit

I appreciate the small lesson but your i have no idea about coins, i have some very old ones that were gifted to me but they arent worth much of anything

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sockhead99@reddit

share them over on r/UKcoins

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Ok_Net_5771@reddit

Its one from 1774(?) and one from 1800’s but they are both in terrible condition, id have to go dig them out anyway

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ScottOld@reddit

Still bargains like that to be had, I was sorting through last month and found the rarest variety of 1861 penny in my collection

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sockhead99@reddit

Which obv/rev combination? My long term goal is to go for a complete set of all circulated varieties 1860-1967

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ScottOld@reddit

Well not the rarest but R18 rated 5+G I also have 4*+D 1860, I have a near complete Edward VII set just missing the rare 1908 variety

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sockhead99@reddit

Nice! My rarest are 1\*\*+B 1860 (Some debate as to population, R18 or 17 depending on who you ask) and 3+E 1860 which is only an R15

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sockhead99@reddit

I got into collecting a few years ago, complete the 10p/50p/£2 circulating collection very quickly and moved on to pre-decimals. My 40th birthday present to myself was an ex-mount 1797 spadeback half-guinea! Cost a bit more that £10.... I also have a Henry III longcross! There are still some absolute bargains to be had - I know, because I fish in the shallow end! I picked up an E/VF 1774 half-penny for £1 in a bucket of coins at an antiques centre - thats worth a few hundred, and I have a couple of 1860 penny varients that are in the sub 250 know examples rarity bracket that I picked up on the cheap. Most of my finds I've shared in subs here if you are feeling nosey!

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Chemical_Sir_5835@reddit

The soon to be occupied 6 counties of Ireland

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HalikusZion@reddit

I wonder how much land £15 would have bought back then. In say Knightsbridge or Chelsea?

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Perhaps_I_sharted@reddit

Get Benjamin Disraeli to autograph 100 copies of lothair. Sell when back.

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Honest_Chain4675@reddit

I would buy a word or a heald etc and display it on the wall at home but say to my family to sell it when I die to pay for stuff

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CarpeCyprinidae@reddit

Go and visit the 1-year-old Winston Churchill, bring him a nice toy, leave him a letter marked "Do not open until August 1945" containing a note congratulating him on his part in beating Hitler.

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mybeatsarebollocks@reddit

Add a ps..... Ps. The NHS is going to happen, stop opposing it.

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Kitchen_Part_882@reddit

P.s. don't trust Stalin.

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MinorAllele@reddit

maybe leave 1 year old winnie a letter asking him to please not starve millions of bengalis to death

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KingofCalais@reddit

He didnt do that anyway so no need

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MinorAllele@reddit

if you dont think he bears any responsibility for that then you need a history lesson. I know brits love to suck winstons cock but he was a complicated character that did a bunch of bad shit.

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just_some_other_guys@reddit

He was a complicated character. He also didn’t cause the Bengal famine. As you said to the other poster, you need a history lesson

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MinorAllele@reddit

You're being intellectually dishonest here. His policies contributed to a famine that killed millions. If you \*genuinely\* read me claiming he, personally, took food out of millions of mouths then you need a reading comprehension lesson as well as a history one.

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KingofCalais@reddit

Ive had plenty of history lessons during my history degree. You need to head over to the Churchill archive and read the personal requests from him to divert grain shipments from Australia to Bengal. You might also direct your notice to the repeated denial of a famine by Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, or the Famine Comission which absolved the British Government of all blame.

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EFNich@reddit

Nah, a congratulations letter to an already inflated ego works much better.

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Gauntlets28@reddit

I don't think old Winnie needs the additional ego boost!

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1980Ravenous@reddit

Buy a fucking house.

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SkomerIsland@reddit

Land in west London - Kensington?

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General-Sun-2611@reddit

Buy a horse and run people over

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namtaruu@reddit

I'd come to Reddit to ask what to do, and half of the people would come up with some profitable thing, then I'd go back and do them, like writing a letter for myself about investments. Then I'd go sightseeing in the City, pose for a photograph and would hunt for a first edition of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin and if my time would allow I'd go and ask him to sign it. Yeah, that would be an awesome time.

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MrBozzie@reddit

Best answer yet. You managed to do the inevitable 'tell my future self how to get rich' and add in the actual cool stuff at the same time. Goodness, the auction value today of a signed first edition of the Origin of Species would be amazing. Imagine getting to tell him how much of a difference his work makes to the world in the future. I mean he'd think you're mad claiming to be a time traveller. But you could still try to convince him.

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namtaruu@reddit

They could only auction that copy taken from the nightstand next to my dead body though.

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Clamps55555@reddit

Buy as much land in zone 1 as possible?

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Miserable-Goose-1170@reddit

Thats literally 2 grand in 1800s money. Buy shares in H Samuel, or some other long lasting stock or fund or something and make so much money.

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HotSplitCobra@reddit

£15 back then would put me better off financially. I'm not coming back.

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Artaheri@reddit

If you used it to buy even a teeny bit into a business or industry you know is going to flourish shortly, you could have a very nice life.

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Arrakis_Is_Here@reddit

I would bury a time capsule listing all the major events of the 20th and 21st century WW1&2, Vietnam War, Moon Landing, JFK assassination, fall of the Soviet Union, 9/11, Facebook, Indian Ocean Tsunami, Genocide in Palestine, among many others and the last event on the list would be something like Extinction Level Event or Zombie Apocalypse

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Artaheri@reddit

You, my dear, are an evil genius.

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Maximum_Scientist_85@reddit

Oh, I love this. :)

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Command_Then@reddit

Bitcoin

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No-Needleworker-3103@reddit

My freedom from Slavery

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matthewkevin84@reddit

I am interested in the justice system/true life crime so perhaps I might purchase something on this topic, I am not sure what exactly but public executions were stopped in 1868 so perhaps something related to public executions I.e memorabilia.

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Matttthhhhhhhhhhh@reddit

A house probably.

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Realkevinnash59@reddit

as much land I could. £15 would be about £2200 today. whatever that got me.

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the-TARDIS-ran-away@reddit

Cat foot and premium bonds

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Hashenjoyer@reddit

Laudanum

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EntertainmentBroad17@reddit

A strip of Penny Blacks.

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Fando1234@reddit

I’d wait 115 years and buy Apple Stock.

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morbid909@reddit

Laudanum mostly

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Conscious_Bet7394@reddit

Heroin in a bottle of it was around then

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HackReacher@reddit

A sword.

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cagfag@reddit

Hide? Being brown I would be lynched

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5TART@reddit

Sad I know but investing in something with a rate of return of only 5% will end up giving you at least 3-4m in 2024, so I’d be happy with that

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opopkl@reddit

Bitcoin.

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CliffyGiro@reddit

You’d be able to buy property with that kind of money.

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FloydEGag@reddit

Most people rented, the only difference being class-based (as usual); if you were rich you paid by the year, if you were very poor you might well be paying by the night for a bed in a flophouse

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CliffyGiro@reddit

Goodness, people are still writing serious replies to this sarcastic comment.

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FloydEGag@reddit

Eh, it’s all fun

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Apprehensive-Exit547@reddit

Houses were expensive then at around 9x average income, so relatively similar to today. £15 was half the annual wage of a manual labourer, or the typical wage of a female servant. As far as renting a nice house in London, one in Adelaide Rd, NW3 cost around £70 a year to rent in 1856.

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lovepeacefakepiano@reddit

Not in 1875 in London. Maybe you could manage to get your hands on something in the countryside.

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MrBozzie@reddit

Read many of the answers so I now have my plan. I'm taking a copy of all of the horse racing results from 2005 onwards. I'm then off back in time to buy a load of stamps. A few select first edition books and some small gold trinkets, sovereigns etc and a damn fine metal chest and a shovel. I'm then getting a horse and cart to a place I know is still a field today and burying the lot including the racing results in a time capsule for myself. On my return, 2005 me will get the letter from Lloyds, find the capsule and then sell on some of the collectables I buried for the equity so I can make good sized bets on the horses using online betting sites. This way, the only people losing out are the betting companies. Which I'm really cool about. Sharking Bitcoin is taking money out of a system put in mostly by small investors. Taking lottery numbers would be at least halving the winnings for someone who already won in the original time line.

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Responsible_Trash199@reddit

Blow peoples minds with porn on my iPhone. Bring £5000 with me and be a millionaire

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FloydEGag@reddit

Tbf I don’t think you’d even get as far as the porn before minds were blown by your iPhone

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icantbearsed@reddit

Bottles of Scotch, it research what is the rarest now and go get myself some to bring back

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Napalmdeathfromabove@reddit

Land. Outskirts of 1875 London, scrub land. Make sure the paper work is watertight.

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FloydEGag@reddit

It would be so weird to return to 2024, go to your land parcel and see this random bit of scrub in the middle of a load of buildings. ‘Historians have never been able to explain why this patch of land wasn’t built on, and the owner could never be traced, as no Napalmdeathfromabove appears in the 1881 census’

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Napalmdeathfromabove@reddit

I know of such a place. It's called telscombe tye. Bronze age landscape within sight of Brighton. Last strip of undeveloped land connecting the south downs to the sea.

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GrossWordVomit@reddit

Id be more interested in finding my relatives, but I'd have no idea how id find them

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MiltsInit@reddit

A house. I believe they were 9 shillings and sixpence in 1875.

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bradpitt3@reddit

1875 is just after the First Impressionist Exhibition held in Paris in 1874 so I would buy myself an art collection. A few Renoir, Manet, Cezanne, Degas, Pissarro, Sisley, Morisot.

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PrimaryChance0@reddit

Go to an opium den, then once I’m able to move I’d head for the streets to slur riddles at passers by, offering a quid if they get it right. I’d be spotted by some local lads and end up getting battered and mugged, though thankfully the opium would dull a good chunk of the pain. I’d come around half an hour or so later and see someone from earlier who got the riddle correct and I ask for the quid back, or even 50p. They just laugh at me with their grim teeth. Then jd probably just look for a bench to sit on until I’m transported back to the present

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Ana_of_troy7979@reddit

A lot of medicine

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Ashie2112@reddit

Pre Raphaelite art. And a fling with Rossetti whilst I’m there … 😉

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Ugolino@reddit

Dante or Christina?

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purply_otter@reddit

Christina and Dante can paint us

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Ashie2112@reddit

Maybe both 😉😁

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Ugolino@reddit

Correct answer!

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FloydEGag@reddit

If you mean Dante, by 1875 he was bald, overweight, had one testicle and was an alcoholic 😭 I need to google to see who was around and hot in 1875. Can’t ruin my reputation if I don’t have one in the first place!

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Practical_Scar4374@reddit

Current partner doesn't even need to approve. "It happened WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY before I met you!"

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OrdoRidiculous@reddit

Gold - deposit in a bank, return to deposit box in 2024.

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GrimQuim@reddit

> Gold - deposit in a bank, return to deposit box in 2024. Or I'd put out a hit on Hitler's parents. Would the 2024 you left from be updated so that the WW2 & holocaust never happened, leaving only you with the memory of what you did, or would everyone be aware of what you did but magically there's a load of extra people in the world - do those people have back stories back to pre 1939?

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Civil_opinion24@reddit

It would create a paradox. You go back in time to kill Hitler. You return to the future. Only now your reason for going back in time never existed. You don't go back in time. You don't kill Hitler. Reason for time travel now exists. And on and on

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KatVanWall@reddit

Ah yeah but ‘to kill Hitler’s parents’ wasn’t their *reason* for going back in time, it was just a useful side-effect. They originally went back in time just because it’s a cool thing to do, which would still apply.

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Civil_opinion24@reddit

Hmmmm....a loophole. You son of a bitch, I'm in.

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astromech_dj@reddit

Only in the linear time theory. Branching would mean you don’t go home.

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astromech_dj@reddit

Yes but the world would be under Yuri’s mind control.

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OrdoRidiculous@reddit

I'd just be transported into a new reality, I wouldn't exist otherwise as my maternal grandparents met in the armed forces in WW2. It's more of a curiosity thing.

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GrimQuim@reddit

Just take the gold dude, fuck 'em.

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blindio10@reddit

cue hell march the minute you get back, WE LEAVE HITLER ALONE, it can only get worse

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KatVanWall@reddit

Was gonna say, are we allowed to research beforehand? Cos if Hitler had a relative living in London at that time I’d probably be frantically trying to track them down on the off chance

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Civil_opinion24@reddit

They already tried killing Hitler in Red Alert. It didn't end well

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OrdoRidiculous@reddit

Hell march intensifies.

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Alarmed_Crazy_6620@reddit

Looks like you'd get around \~1000 quid. Not awful but worse than most other assets. Gold bug L

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OrdoRidiculous@reddit

It was about £3.70 per troy oz then, which is \~ £7500 today

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811545b2-4ff7-4041@reddit

First, £15 now was worth £1,450 - so not life changing money and certainly not enough to buy a property. Some nice stamps? Mint condition penny reds might be nice, although billions were produced. Anything 'historic' .. newspapers, books ect. of interest. First edition of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" or "Around the World in Eighty Days".

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turboNOMAD@reddit (OP)

> not enough to buy a property This was exactly why I set the sum a bit low. Makes this thought experiment more interesting and filters out obvious answers like "a parcel of land in Hammersmith".

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811545b2-4ff7-4041@reddit

Yeh, you'd need around £100 to be buying property I believe.. plus hope that it wasn't destroyed 65 years later in the blitz.

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snoopswoop@reddit

Well, you could buy something that you know is still standing.

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Caddy666@reddit

probably wouldn't matter - its the land under it that'd sell, not necessarily the property itself.

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smushs88@reddit

My first thought was newspapers in thinking was the date chosen by OP coincidental to some big news of the time like Jack the Ripper. But it’s 10 odd years too early. First editions would be the play for sure.

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811545b2-4ff7-4041@reddit

Anything 'transported to the future' would look and seem fake unfortunately. Radiocarbon dating wouldn't be able to show it's true age.

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minimalisticgem@reddit

Oh my god I’d die for an original Alice’s adventures in wonderland

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811545b2-4ff7-4041@reddit

Worth saying they sell for $2-$3m, but only 2000 were made in the first print so might not even be easy to buy. Only 23 copies survive.

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minimalisticgem@reddit

Only if I had a spare 2mil :(

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Pinkd56@reddit

I'd probably try and find a game of one of the old London football clubs like N.N. Kilburn or Crusaders. Afterwards I would then probably just go and drink gin and stout in a pub.

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CompanionCone@reddit

A coat. A beautiful embroidered 19th century coat. I am not sure 15 pounds would be enough for that but I think it would be.

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DarkLordsDaughter@reddit

Custom fitted top hat. Unless it has some give, I can never find a hat that fit my head well.

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FloydEGag@reddit

First off I’d get a smallpox vaccination - not sure how much that would cost but I’d go to a decent doctor for it. Then buy a bunch of clothes which I’d sell to a museum or collector back in the 21st century. I would also sample laudanum because come on, who wouldn’t?!

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IanM50@reddit

A few houses in Central London.

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MattHatter1337@reddit

A house.

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Mark_fuckaborg@reddit

Penny Black stamps

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Pale-Resolution-2587@reddit

Buy land or 17th century coins.

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WarmTransportation35@reddit

I would buy shares in Barclays, Lloyds and Marks and Spencers then sell them when I come back to 2024. I will become a billionair doing whatever I want.

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modem7junior@reddit

A house

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Big_Mad_Al@reddit

Heroin

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Proof_Drag_2801@reddit

A plot of land large enough to build a house on which is as close to London as possible.

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bibby_siggy_doo@reddit

If buy land in central London

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Bubbly_Inspection270@reddit

Gold

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Temporary_Ad_6922@reddit

A shit ton of Van Goghs and other printers lol

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parkylondon@reddit

Land.

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dwardo7@reddit

I’d go to a good old fashioned boozer and have a right old knees up

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PleasantMongoose5127@reddit

As many Penny Black stamps as I could get.

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OriginalPlonker@reddit

The problem here is that they need to be old, not brand new, so you have to somehow store them until the present day for them to be considered genuine.

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astromech_dj@reddit

Seal them up and stash them.

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OriginalPlonker@reddit

Where are you going to stash them, and how, that they will remain safe for 150 years? Not saying is can't be done, but it'll be tricky.

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astromech_dj@reddit

Maybe in a grave you know will be around still? Or somewhere else you know will be untouched.

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OriginalPlonker@reddit

Brings up another question: WHERE do you arrive in 1875? If it's at home I'm going to materialise in the middle of a muddy field, lol.

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811545b2-4ff7-4041@reddit

They'd totally fail radiocarbon dating if you yeeted them from the past. Put them in a vacuum sealed glass container somewhere dark for 130 years and you're good. I'd try to find a 77-plate penny red though.

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Vertigo_uk123@reddit

no interest in stamps but you just sent me down a rabbit hold which culminated in me attempting to plate cheap penny blacks on ebay lol

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devandroid99@reddit

The problem here is bringing a load of them back would kill the market

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PleasantMongoose5127@reddit

I think my biggest problem would be time travel but let’s forget about that minor detail.

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PuzzledFortune@reddit

They weren’t in circulation in 1875. Just about any unused stamp from then will be valuable though, more so if you have a block of them.

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homelaberator@reddit

About 3600, I think.

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ahhwhoosh@reddit

I’d buy travel tickets to West Ham Lane in east London, pop into my great great great grandads greengrocer shop, say hello to him and buy an apple.

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abw@reddit

I'd stop by Drury Lane and have a chat with John Sainsbury and his wife Mary. At this point they've had their first shop open for about 6 years and have recently opened their second in Kentish Town. I'd offer them my money as an investment in their business in return for a small percentage of shares. The current Market Cap. of J Sainsbury PLC is around £6 billion, so 1% of that would be worth around £60 million.

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RachelCake@reddit

I'd just be really frivolous. Buy a dress, some books, chocolates in a fancy box, a bottle or two of Laudanum. Find a teashop to have tea and fancy cakes. Maybe see a show or the opera in the evening. Finish up at a bar for a glass of absinthe.

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Direct_Cat2767@reddit

Shares in the East India Tea Company

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Firstpoet@reddit

No. Paris please. Renoir couldn't even afford paint that year and was looked down on as a rubbish painter. I'd buy as many of his early works as I could for a few francs. Back in 1990 one sold for around £80 million.

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RihhamDaMan@reddit

Invest it in bitcoin and wait... *checks calendar* 149 years

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ScreenshotShitposts@reddit

Bitcoin

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Eryeahmaybeok@reddit

Shares in Lloyds of London.

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aaron2933@reddit

Bitcoin

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quellflynn@reddit

why not buy it today? 2010 was 9c each, and 2024 its 73k, with a very unstable life, but has a very linear increase over mass time. why would it not follow the same trend over the next 15 years? just imagine if you looked back at this thread in 15 years, and wonder why you didnt buy at 73k now that its at 1.5mil...

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kurtanglesmilk@reddit

Least delusional crypto investor

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catchiestclown@reddit

...in 1875?

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aaron2933@reddit

You know what they say, time in the market over timing the market

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otocan24@reddit

Please be a joke... please be a joke...

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fezzuk@reddit

I was gonna make the same joke but decided it was a bit shit so I'm pretty sure it's a joke.

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NectarineNo2982@reddit

A succulent Chinese meal of course.

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Thick_Crust_@reddit

£15 then had the purchasing power of £2169 today. I'd buy as much land as I could with that money, travel back to 2024 and sell it to the highest bidder.

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aemdiate@reddit

A house

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ToastOfZeals@reddit

Buy some 20-cent American coins. Released this year and stopped 3 years later. Safety deposit box them

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EAGLE-EYED-GAMING@reddit

A train ticket to Gloucestershire (If possible) so I can meet my relatives.

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WerewolfNo890@reddit

Too late to see the Crimean war. Too early to see WW1. Guess I would just buy some gin.

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MikeSizemore@reddit

A copy of The Birds of America by John James Audubon. Sells for around $10m.

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Ayyyyylmaos@reddit

A house, probably.

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sbammers@reddit

Witness the birth of my great-great Grandfather in Bethnal Green. Spend the money on gold, frankincense, and myrrh for the child. Disappear back to 2024. That would really mess with them.

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rocuroniumrat@reddit

I'd buy a box of doxycycline before I went!

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dth300@reddit

You could probably pick up a few Monets for that amount

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stumac85@reddit

As much imported Chinese ceramics as possible. That stuff is a goldmine nowadays.

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Temporary_Book_7351@reddit

Most likely gold or silver, maybe jewels, Diamonds should be cheap before de beres marketing sheme? Something like a Bankaccount would nearly Impossible to claim, even If the interest would be great. There are many companies I would love to buy shares, but how would I explain, that my papers are new and not 150 years old? Everyone would think they are forged, same problem with any artwork...

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intrepidanon@reddit

I'd buy some bread

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PatTheCatMcDonald@reddit

A house. Assuming it's in pristine condition, it will have appreciated the most of any time. Alternatively, a firearm. It would be worth a helluva lot in mint condition, and would be more portable. Final choice would be a piece of jewelry, but that wouldn't have appreciated much in value.

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thepitcherplant@reddit

I'd visit the crystal Palace and probably buy a decent suit.

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nacnud_uk@reddit

The problem with buying a first edition book is that it may just look like a fake when you get it back to 2024, as it will not have aged at all. Reading is a con :D

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sobrique@reddit

I'd have to do a bit of homework on storage options, to leave behind and retrieve 'later'. E.g. banks that are still intact, or a legal firm that would hold on to a 'family heirloom' until claimed by a descendant or something. Might cost you a useful fraction of your £15 to set that up though.

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UnicornStar1988@reddit

Food and drink.

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sagima@reddit

I could probably buy Suffolk. If not then mining rights for the North Sea

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ArmandTanzarianJr@reddit

The crown owns the seabed and all mining rights. I doubt Vicky will sell you them for £15.

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minimalisticgem@reddit

Bruh Suffolk is worth more than that😭

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Dolphin_Spotter@reddit

I'd just keep the coins.

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DonaldDuckley@reddit

a burger probably

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DonaldDuckley@reddit

and fries obv

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beachyfeet@reddit

Gold sovereigns. Buy for a quid each in 1875 and sell back in 2024 for around £500 each.

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juanjo47@reddit

25 houses in Mayfair

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Melchior_Chopstick@reddit

A pie

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travelingwhilestupid@reddit

the Dodo went extinct in 1600. I really want to have a Dodo omelette.

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Kitchen_Part_882@reddit

There was talk of bringing them back by splicing DNA found in skeletons with Pigeons or something.

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travelingwhilestupid@reddit

this gives me faith in mankind

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Nok1a_@reddit

I'll buy a small plot of land, do a time capsule and store everything there, to let the time do his work, dont think a painting from that time brought to our time without the time wear on it, will be taken as authentic nowadays. to be honest, dont know how much would be 15£ in 1875 but If I could I would just travel away from UK, that time was not a pleasent time to be around Londo, mainly sanitary conditions, I would go some places with better weather and enjoy life there instead coming back to 2024, but knowing that I will take with me lot of medicines to 1875

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Plantagenesta@reddit

Attend the opening night of [*Trial by Jury*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KPbeNeqpnM). Try to convince Arthur Sullivan to give me a copy of the score of [Thespis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thespis_(opera)), which I will "miraculously" discover among some old papers in my attic 150 years later.

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halapert@reddit

It’s actually quite an interesting question. I frequently dress in the fashion of the 1800s — cravat, top hat, waistcoat, etc — and as I walk around I have thought idly what might happen if I were blipped back to 1800s. I’d probably get my hands on some original sherlock holmes merch. Sell one copy, keep one — and so forth.

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Sicsempertyranismor@reddit

Bitcoin

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PomegranateEither768@reddit

Some China cups. Might not seem a big deal but I've seen things like antiques roadshow that few quid then quickly turns into a fortune now

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xX8Havok8Xx@reddit

Invest in a small textiles company called Berkshire Hathaway.

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Holyskankous@reddit

With £15?? Everything

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Athleticathiest82@reddit

Land

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trainpk85@reddit

I think I’d ask Claude Monet to draw me a little picture and sign it. I think I could sell it nowadays for a few million.

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Extra-Fig-7425@reddit

Use it to leverage a meeting with the king, then convince him to invest in me.

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turboNOMAD@reddit (OP)

You'd find it difficult to even find a King anywhere in the UK in 1875. Your best chance is some foreign monarch visiting. Or, waiting 26 years until Queen Victoria dies and Edward inherits the throne...

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

The trouble is, £15 isn't \*that\* much money - even then.

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Shporpoise@reddit

Bitcoin

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wierdy-beardy@reddit

Property for the great great grandchildren

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ViscountessdAsbeau@reddit

I access the 19thc newspapers database the day before and armed with notebook and pen, write down the racing results for later in that day, the following week, month and year...

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GreenManMedusa@reddit

I'd buy some Amber and blue Codd/hamilton hybrid bottles and stash them somewhere safe. When I return to the present I'd dig em up and become fabulously wealthy.

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neuronez@reddit

Bitcoin

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bofh000@reddit

A house?

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mordenty@reddit

As much land as I could just outside Harmondsworth in Middlesex. Nobody was interested in Heathrow in 1875 - even the coach road passed it by.

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bandicootrelay@reddit

Poison and use it on Jacob Rees mogg then transport back home

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No-Photograph3463@reddit

Hire a hit man to kill certain recent politicians great/great great grand parents. Would make life today alot better.

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Physical_Willow_5694@reddit

A slave

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International-Chip99@reddit

the easiest 'portable wealth' would have to be gold. You could buy about 3.5 troy ounces with £15 for a return of about £6500. There are certainly more valuable things you could get hold of, but turning up with a suspiciously fresh stamp or something will set off alarm bells even before people try carbon dating. If you knew your stuff about antiques, there are metal artefacts (which can't be carbon dated) you could probably buy for a massive return, but you would need unbroken provenance to get their best value, which makes things difficult.

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ScaredCrowww@reddit

A good piece of land, as big as I could get!

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QueenofAvalonia@reddit

Drugs, lots of fun drugs like cocaine and opium.

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Spare_Tyre1212@reddit

Overdose, then die? Not an ideal outcome.

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therobohourhalfhour@reddit

Give it to the irish

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madpiano@reddit

For £15??? I'd buy a couple of houses in Chelsea, it used to be really cheap there until the 1960s, but they'd be worth a fortune now

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jbkb1972@reddit

A house, then get back to sell it in todays value

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SarkyMs@reddit

Ensuring continuous ownership so the house is now yours, is hard work

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jbkb1972@reddit

Yes suppose so, not even sure you could have bought an house for £15 even back then.

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lovepeacefakepiano@reddit

You couldn’t have, that was my very first thought so I looked it up. Not in London, at least.

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jbkb1972@reddit

So even in them days London was more expensive?

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SarkyMs@reddit

I know my family would have sold it because they were broke at some point in that time. And then got drunk.

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MustardKingCustard@reddit

Antibiotics. Lots and lots of antibiotics. For myself, to sell and to donate to science. Alexander Fleming? Who's that? This was my discovery 😛

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PolarPeely26@reddit

Bitcoin.

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Xanf3rr@reddit

I'd probably grab some antique books or rare artifacts. They'd make cool decor and could fetch a good buck later on.

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Dirty2013@reddit

A small plot of land

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lovepeacefakepiano@reddit

£15 in 1875 was a decent chunk of change but apparently nowhere near “buy a house in London” money. So I’d take 10 and get them changed into an assortment of coins to take back, just don’t know much about coins so I’d have to hope one or two of them is worth something. Maybe I’ll go for gold to be on the safe side. Then I’ll see what I can get for the remaining five as a keepsake for myself, might be enough for a nice bit of jewellery.

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EasyPriority8724@reddit

Syphilis!

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JulesSilvan@reddit

Try as many stouts and porters as possible.

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kipha01@reddit

I'd find bank that is still around today, leave the money to gain interest until the SP500 goes live with strict instructions to then move the investment into that.

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Temporary-Zebra97@reddit

Books, I would buy as many first editions £15 would get me and and see if I could track down a copy of "The birds of America" (last one sold for $8.8 million)

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Basschimp@reddit

Infinite Freddos

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royalblue1982@reddit

I'm probably going to like, try and stop the holocaust somehow . . . .

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hazehel@reddit

15 quid bounty on hitler's mum

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MickeyMatters81@reddit

Can I buy some land in central London? Doesn't need to be much to make a fortune

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arduousmarch@reddit

Legal cocaine

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Lonely-Job484@reddit

Assuming a little time to work out logistics, I'd probably buy a couple of quid worth of shares in some of the big banks (Lloyds, Barclays) and maybe insurers (not sure who was listed back then).

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DeviousWhippet@reddit

Ceramic pots of drugs (the blue and white ones) Cus I'm an addict and the lots are valuable and some gold coins for the same reason

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RSENGG@reddit

Convert the cash into a resource that was much cheaper back then and would be worth a lot without needing to demonstrate genuine age - gold most likely.

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_testingdude@reddit

Bitcoin

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Kriton420@reddit

Cocaine

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VegetableWeekend6886@reddit

I am a simple soul so just a massive house somewhere east or north and then maybe as others have said some first edition books to sell on to help furnish my new/old house. Property in London is the best souvenir money could buy

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VegetableWeekend6886@reddit

Not sure if I could buy a house for £15 but would I be able to bring some extra pocket money?

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StephaneCam@reddit

Fabric. Hats and shoes. Undergarments. Studio photography!

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DiligentCockroach700@reddit

£15 would be like a year's wages in 1875 so I'd go and spend my time in a posh hotel

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Effective_Horror_972@reddit

In 1875 an oz of gold was £4.75. I'd buy 3 oz and hopefully a flagon of ale or 2 with the change. Come back pissed, with nearly 6k worth of gold. (Probably more with the numismatic value of them)

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fake_cheese@reddit

When did they start selling leases for railway arches?

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Sure-Junket-6110@reddit

Shit load of laudanum

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Antergaton@reddit

Some old pocket watches. Although I have no idea of their value back then, probably just pop into a jewelers and see what they have. Some older ones go for a lot and bringing it back with me means it's basically in perfect nick.

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ZePanic@reddit

Cocaine. Laudanum.

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seanwhat@reddit

Bitcoin

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the_Athereon@reddit

I'd invest in gas mask manufacturing. I'll make a mint in 50-80 years.

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LaSalsiccione@reddit

How would you get a return on your investments if you had to come back to 2024 after a day?

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Tricky_Moose_1078@reddit

You can never go back in time to change your past as it would stop the reason for you going back in time. But what you can do is go back in time to change your future. Eg going back in time buying rare books, Art etc and then leaving the it in storage with and letter to be delivered to you tomorrow.

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Welshhobbit1@reddit

Opium, eel pies and more opium

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bigsillygiant@reddit

A street

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WinkyNurdo@reddit

Some land — any land — in London.

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iMightBeEric@reddit

Two notebooks and a pen. And an account with a delivery company. I would record major future events that I can recall, in each notebook, with instructions on what to invest in and when. I would get the notebooks delivered to my grandparents upon the birth of my parents.

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SoggyBird1384@reddit

Realise I'm a woman and probably can't do shit 💀

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EFNich@reddit

First editions of the classics, some antique jewellery, and the rest on the good gin that makes your brain melt accompanied by some top quality prostitutes. Because life is about balance.

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rev9of8@reddit

If I'm allowed to do what I want with it then laudanum. I did wonder if cocaine would be readily available in 1875 and, whilst it had been isolated by that point, it seems that would be just a little bit too early - although not by much.

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barrybreslau@reddit

Laudanum was compulsory.

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LOLLER4879X@reddit

It didn’t see much presence in the UK untill the early 1900s where one of its initial uses or found uses was as a local topical anaesthetic for corneal surgery

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heliskinki@reddit

Cornwall.

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sandwichkiller420@reddit

Emmet

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