My daughter is reading Great Expectations for school. She’s just come to a passage where Mr. Jaggers gives Pip a banknote for 500 Pounds.
What would be the approximate value of that in 2011 dollars?
This is not a homework question, I promise (although it might be a Cafe Society question).
according to this currency converter from the UK National Archives, £500 would be the equivalent of £21,580.00 today, which turn would be $35,941.56 US according to this site.
This is a notoriously complex question. If you go to http://www.measuringworth.com/ it will give you (for 1833 to 2011) an answer of about 40,000 pounds (1833 to 2011) but 412,000 pounds measured by average earnings. There are pages on that site on the different ways of looking at it, but I think what it is saying is that in terms of what that amount would have bought you back then the lower figure is applicable, but in terms of where the money would have put you relative to others back then, the latter figure is applicable.
Thanks very much to both of you.
Asked and answered, as far as I am concerned.
Imagine somebody giving you a banknote worth $36,000. 
Let’s see… in Jane Eyre Jane asks Mr. Rochester for her pay: six months’ salary of 15 pounds. He offers her 50 because that’s all he has, or the smallest amount he has on him.
Fifteen pounds is about $849; 50 pounds is about $2,800. So you make about $1,700 a year (plus room and board) and your boss carries more than that around in his pocket!