THE FIRST LADY BANK MANAGER

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7139, 28 May 1910, Page 6

THE FIRST LADY BANK MANAGER

A very significant event in the annals of the women’s movement was the opening lately of Farrow’s Bank for Women, tho first women’s bank in England. Even more important, from a woman’s point of view, is the appointment of a woman to the responsible billet of manager, as well as of a staff composed cxclusivcly of women.

To Miss May Bateman, well, known in literary circles as a writer of poems, novels, and articles on foreign literature in the reviews, has fallen this pioneer honour of directing Great Britain’s first bank for women. The following account of her life appears in the pages 'of "Woman"

"I had always a feeling for figures,” she said, "and I began to put them into practical use when I was only eighteen. I then became private secretary to Sir Douglas Galton, of the Board of Trade. He was a man of affairs with many interests and many irons' in tho fire, among them being the treasurership of a large hospital. I was • continually handling and checking figures under his guidance; moreover, 1 entirely managed the accounts of bis .private farm. That was the beginning of my practical experience. Then for the last sixteen years I have kept all the accounts of our own estate for my mother. "It was going to South Africa that made a 'man of me.’ It was all done at red heat. I wanted some money for tho troops, and the best way of getting it that occurred to me was to get out to the scat of war and earn it. In two days I secured H 250 worth of orders to start withj and .every penny I earned, after deducting hare expenses, was spent on the troops. I was at Fourteen Streams when Mafeking was relieved.

"This stay in South Africa was tho best moral tonic I ever had. I went out an idealist: I came home a business woman, realising as I never could otherwise have done, the value and necessity of organisation oven in the smallest of details. My father was a man who believed that there were no limits to what a man or woman could do, provided he possessed average mental ability and chose to 'put his back into it.’ And Sir Douglas Galton was just like this, too. He did not stop to ask you if you could do a particular thing; he just assumed that you could, and gave it you to do. And so I found myself doing all sorts of queer things of which though I knew nothing I very soon found out something.” Diseussirig the business of banking for women, and the particular value of Parrow’s Bank, on its new side, she said: "We take small accounts, our principle being that nothing is too small to undertake. By the way, I Jiav; just had one of my pet mottoes framed in gold. It is this: ‘A little thing is a little thing; but faithfulness in little -things is a great thing.’ It seems to rno that this strikes a very essential note in our work.

"An obvious advantage of a. "woman's banking in a woman's bank is that she will fed less diffident about asking advice in the maiuy small matters which harass the unbusinesslike female!" went on Miss Bateman. “Many a girl, too, will he able to start a cheque book with only a small dress allowance or with very limited means, and will thus learn how to managa hex own money properly. Mothers may deposit a sum with .a view fb a daughter's prospective trousseau; say she deposited .£SO, it would have turned into .£52 10s at the end of a year. Also, I personally think that every mother ought to set aside a small sum at tho birth of .her child. This, if deposited with Barrow's Women's Bank, would have grown to quite a largo amount by tho time the child had reached the going-to-schcol age."