# What did Bilbo Baggins do for a living? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 11, 2012, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426 "2012-04-11T01:59:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/1 "2012-04-11T01:59:14Z")
I mean before the events of _The Hobbit_. I assume afterwards he lived off the treasure he got from that. But he was fifty when he met Gandalf and the dwarves so what had he been doing for an income up to then? Was he a farmer? A land owner who lived off rents? Did he have inherited family money? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/2 "2012-04-11T02:00:40Z")
He worked at the Safeway, baggin’ groceries. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/3 "2012-04-11T02:04:06Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I mean before the events of _The Hobbit_. I assume afterwards he lived off the treasure he got from that. > > But he was fifty when he met Gandalf and the dwarves so what had he been doing for an income up to then? Was he a farmer? A land owner who lived off rents? Did he have inherited family money? Your last question got it I think. He had family money. His dad wasn’t poor, but his mom, Belladonna Took, had the bucks. I remember a line from the book, where it says Bilbo’s father built his wife that wonderful hobbit hole, and it was mostly with her money. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/4 "2012-04-11T02:15:50Z")
Bilbo was a “gentleman”. He had family money, probably derived from renting property. While not seen in the book, he probably had some hobbits employed to maintain the property, collect the rents, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/5 "2012-04-11T02:24:58Z")
> [@](#): > > While not seen in the book, he probably had some hobbits employed to maintain the property, collect the rents, etc. I think it’s said somewhere that Hamfast Gamgee worked for Bilbo as a gardener before Sam and Frodo. ---
**Author:** ![Civil\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d78d45/32.png) [@Civil\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civil_Guy)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/6 "2012-04-11T02:27:00Z")
Samwise Gamgee - and probably other Gamgees before him - did at least some of the gardening around Bag End. Well, okay… It really only says that on the one instance, Sam was close enough to the window to ‘accidentally’ overhear the conversation between Gandalf and Frodo (not Bilbo), and that Sam’s excuse was that he was trimming the bushes or some such. It says somewhere else that Sam was integral to the young hobbits’ ‘spy ring’ keeping track of Frodo. But the whole state of affairs implies a bit about the social standing of both Sam and Frodo, and by extension, the elder Bilbo. And **Chronos** is correct, I’m sure. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/7 "2012-04-11T02:49:26Z")
If the series is about anything it’s about the English class system. And how wonderful it was. In ways it wasn’t anymore. Tolkien wasn’t a classicist because it paid well. He was a believer. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/8 "2012-04-11T05:46:16Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > If the series is about anything it’s about the English class system. And how wonderful it was. In ways it wasn’t anymore. Tolkien wasn’t a classicist because it paid well. He was a believer. I’d go further than that. Tolkein loved a past that had never really existed. I think he was, like many people, actually nostalgic for his childhood but got it confused with the setting of that childhood. Tolkein probably did have the happiest period of his life in Sarehole in 1898. But that’s because he was a six year old not because Sarehole was a particularly wonderful place in 1898. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/9 "2012-04-11T11:45:25Z")
I always got the sense, (without any direct textual evidence, admittedly,) that the Gaffer was a tenant of Bilbo’s - that, in fact, the Bagginses owned all of Bagshot Row. But mostly the inheritance. ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/10 "2012-04-11T11:57:35Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > If the series is about anything it’s about the English class system. And how wonderful it was. In ways it wasn’t anymore. Tolkien wasn’t a classicist because it paid well. He was a believer. Are you confusing classicist with classist, here? Because otherwise I don’t know what you mean. Tolkien’s subject was English, not Classics. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/11 "2012-04-11T15:18:55Z")
Regardless of what he may have believed about the class system, Tolkien spent most of his childhood in genteel poverty. His father was a bank employee, and had he lived the family would have been reasonably well off but not rich. When his father died, it became harder to get by. Because his mother converted to Catholicism, both his father’s and his mother’s family didn’t get along with his mother and didn’t want to help them financially. Then his mother died and a Catholic priest became his guardian for the rest of his childhood. Tolkien and his brother barely scraped by. ---
**Author:** ![well\_he\_s\_back](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3ab097/32.png) [@well\_he\_s\_back](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/well_he_s_back)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/12 "2012-04-11T16:47:09Z")
Baggins were landed gentry, old money. tenants did the agricultural work. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/13 "2012-04-11T16:51:06Z")
The class system in Britain is correlated with wealth but means large amounts more, which is how the concept of genteel poverty came about. When I said he didn’t get into his field because it paid well I thought that it was obvious that I was separating money from class. His field was the past. All of his writings indicated long and loving study of earlier England - language, history, myths, writings - and I’m pretty sure you can find plenty of examples of him hating the new world around him. He deified a way of life and thinking that was visibly dying around him in wartime England. Why it is surprising that it came out in his fiction? ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/14 "2012-04-11T19:18:55Z")
It was quite clearly stated that Bilbo was a Burglar. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/15 "2012-04-11T20:15:24Z")
He was appointed the party’s burglar by the dwarves. That wasn’t his prior profession. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/16 "2012-04-11T20:23:27Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I think it’s said somewhere that Hamfast Gamgee worked for Bilbo as a gardener before Sam and Frodo. Er, yeah, but that would be an expense for Bilbo, not a source of income. Anyway, what **BrotherCadfael** said (and probably what **Baker** and **MrDibble** said, too). ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/17 "2012-04-11T21:07:11Z")
[This reference piece](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFoytXbjjWI) may have the answer. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2012, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/18 "2012-04-11T22:16:33Z")
> [@](#): > > Er, yeah, but that would be an expense for Bilbo, not a source of income. Yes, of course. I was just mentioning it as support for the notion that he’d hire people to maintain the property. The money to hire said folks presumably came from inheritance and/or land ownership, as others have said. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2012, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/19 "2012-04-12T04:19:31Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > [This reference piece](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFoytXbjjWI) may have the answer. Noooooooooo! ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2012, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426/20 "2012-04-12T04:26:40Z")
> [@saint cad](#): > > [this reference piece](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfoytxbjjwi) may have the answer. bilbooooooooooooooo!!! [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-bilbo-baggins-do-for-a-living/618426.md?page=2)