Description:Mr Joseph Lloyd Phelps of Lee Crescent was idly looking through his morning post : bills from the coal merchant and grocer, note from his brother in law, subscription request from the local improvement society and a letter from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The humble clerk from the Birmingham Canal Offices put on his spectacles and checked the signature.
There was no mistake; it was signed “Your humble servant, W E Gladstone, Downing Street, London. 21 April 1853” and it wasn’t a tax demand either, well not quite.
Meanwhile, down in Downing Street, Mr Phelps’ correspondent was having a rough old time of it. He had just been accused by a complete stranger of pedestrian kerb crawling. A mistake, it turned out, but somewhat embarrassing nonetheless.
Coupled with that, he had just presented his first budget, offering a radical restructuring of the country’s taxation system, and a switch from indirect to direct taxation.
Gladstone’s budget had reintroduced the Income Tax for middle-income families. Anyone earning between £100 and £150 per annum would now be subject to a 5d in the pound tax. If this sounds curiously familiar, it only goes to show that 150 years is a very short time in politics.
Joseph Phelps was just one of many whose pips were squeaking. A clerk, married, with eight children and an annual income of just about £100. he wrote to Mr Gladstone. He told him to think again.
Now a very clever cat can write to a king, but the king tends not to write back. But Gladstone did write back. His letter has just arrived on Mr Phelps’ desk (see above).
In a reply six times as long as the Clerk’s squeak, the Chancellor explained that though the tax inspector would be calling upon Mr Phelps in January (£1 10d) and in July (£1 10d), there would be ample compensation for him.
The new rate would be in operation for only seven years, by which time the country’s economy would have improved. Moreover, the shift from indirect to direct taxation would mean that his tea and soap would now be cheaper.
Gladstone made some rough calculations and worked out that Mr Phelps would be 4s out of pocket. But the cheap soap would be with him forever.
Joseph Phelps was not prepared to be soft-soaped. He wrote back, thanked the Chancellor for his courteous reply and suggested that the Income Tax, as well as the cheap soap, was likely to be with him forever too.
The correspondence between the humble Birmingham clerk and the Chancellor of the Exchequer became big news. From the local paper it graduated to The Times and The Sun, and from there to the House of Commons.
Joseph Phelps was recreated as Mr Average of Lee Crescent, the man who took on the Chancellor and won – or lost, depending on your political views. It was said that as long as Gladstone was remembered, people would remember the Income Tax and as long as they remember the Income Tax, they would remember Joseph Phelps.
It did not help Gladstone’s cause that the tax was doubled the following year.
Peacetime economics had been overtaken by events in the Crimea. The course of politics never did run smooth, but neither does the life of a clerk, married with eight children.
(the image is of two pages of the first response from Gladstone to Phelps)