The price of chicken

In this post I am meandering back in time again with a photograph of my mother when she worked for Mac Fisheries, a nationwide fishmonger, as a cashier in the shop on Market St in Loughborough.

Mac Fisheries Girls

This photograph was taken before the war and my mother is the young woman on the left.  What interested me in particular is the price of the 'local chickens and boiling fowls' which must be a bargain with prices from 4/6.  I wondered how much that would be in 'today's money' and came across a website that does the calculation for you (http://www.measuringworth.com/ ).  So I input the data - 4/6, 1938, 2011 - and hit the calculate key, only to discover that a range of values was given based on the comparator used:

£11.70	using the retail price index
£11.80	using the GDP deflator
£33.50	using the average earnings
£46.40	using the per capita GDP
£61.70	using the share of GDP

Using the RPI would be the most relevant comparator, but whatever I came to the conclusion that in 1938 chickens were bloody expensive.