A LADY STOCKBROKER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9094, 30 June 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

A LADY STOCKBROKER.

-oI had (writes a correspondent, of a London contemporary) a delightful visit the other day from a woman stockbroker, or more correct from .Miss Bell, the first and only woman stockbroker in the United Kingdom. At first sight stockbroking would seem to be one of the most unfeminine and unsuitable occupations in which any one of hevast army of working women could possibly engage. So thought L some two years ago when Miss Bell first informed me of her new enterprise. Visions of a half-hour 1 once spent in Liverpool " On "Change," together with a kind old stockbrocking friend who was showing me the sights, caused me to shrink from the bare idea of a lady spending her days in the midst of such an excited and boisterous throng. Miss Bell undertakes the private consulting work, but the actual buying and selling in " the house" is done, according to her instructions, by an eminent firm of city brokers. She has some men clients, although chiefly laying herself out for lonely women, who, perhaps, are too timid to make their way to an ordinary city office, or whose capital is so small that they shrink from appealing for long explanations or serious advice from some large, influential firm. Mr. Goschen's National Debt Conversion scheme, as might, be expected, is a subject 011 which many ignorant women are now turning to Miss Bell for advice. "I am," said she, "always taking trouble, and am constantly explaining to women left alone in the world, and perfect babes in business matters, the fidgetty little minuti.e which few men will have the patience to repeat to them." It was only after many years of careful training under a very capable guardian, and after an early life literally spent in an atmosphere of stocks and shares, that Miss Bell ventured to curve out her now successful career.