BANKER SHOPKEEPERS

Evening Star, Issue 19062, 3 October 1925, Page 13

BANKER SHOPKEEPERS

FINANCING BRITAIN IN THE PAST

The banks of to-day are substantial alike in resources and architecture; and tlioy_ specialise in rendering financial services. But not one word of this description could be applied to most of the banks of upwards of a hundred years ago. In those days, says ‘John o’ London’s Weekly.’ much of the business now done by hankers was in the hands of shopkeepers. Thus it is recorded that in 1792 there were about 400 bankers in England (excluding London), “ the great majority being grocers, tailors, drapers, and petty shopkeepers.” Some of the banks thus founded afterwards became well known, and preserved their identity until recent years. One of these was the London banking house of Messrs Smith, Payne, and Smiths, now amalgamated with the National Provincial Bank. Early in the eighteenth century a Nottingham man named Smith added the business of banker to that of draper. His son extended the business to Hull and Lincoln; and his grandson, taking a Mr Payne as partner, transferred it to London. It was on this bank that the publishing house of Longmans drew the cheque for £IO,OOO in favor of Lord Macaulay in payment of his ‘ History of England.’ Very similar in its origin was the Old Gloucester Bank. In 1716 James Wood, who kept a chandler’s shop, undertook the duties of banker. “At length,” it is said, “be became the guardian of half the floating wealth of the western counties.” His grandson died in 1830 worth a million pounds. In Scotland the banking of the eighteenth century was conducted on practically identical lines. Tho leading bankers were tho Couttscsj but they were also “ tho largest and the most adventurous corn dealers in Scotland, perhaps in all Great Britain.” The purely banking part of the business is still carried on in London. It was John Coutts who incurred the disEleasure of Queen Charlotte, one of is customers. She called upon him at his bank and threatened to withdraw her balance. When told that it was about £SOO, Coutts replied! “ If it had been half a_ million, your Majesty, could have had it here and now.” The Queen departed, “staggered at the resources or a man who could calmly contemplate paying. half a million at a moment’s notice'.” Scotland can also claim an eighteenth-century draper who founded an important banking house. He was James Mansfield, of Edinburgh ; his bank eventually assumed the title of Messrs Ramsay. Bonars, and Co. Another important Edinburgh bank was first allied with the cloth business, while a second evolved from a firm of tobacco merchants. But the passing of time has left little trace of many of these banks which so strangely entered upon their careers.