Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T13:21:43.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Savings bank depositors in a crisis: Glasgow 1847 and 1857

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2013

Duncan Ross
Duncan Ross*
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Savings banks were created as a means to encourage the newly created working class to save for the uncertainties of urban industrial life. This article explores the success of the Savings Bank of Glasgow, and pays particular attention to the response of savers to the financial and commercial crises of 1847 and 1857. The crisis of 1847 was shallower but longer lasting in Glasgow, while that of 1857 was greatly exacerbated by local conditions in the short term, but of little long-term importance to savers. It suggests that, in both crises, some elements of contagion may have been present but that those who panicked in 1857 were systematically different from those who did not.

Keywords

savings banksScotlandbanking crisesworking-class savings

JEL classification

N13: Europe: Pre-1913 G21: Banks • Depository Institutions • Micro Finance Institutions • Mortgages G1: General Financial Markets N23: Europe: Pre-1913
Type
Articles
Information
Financial History Review , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , August 2013 , pp. 183 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © European Association for Banking and Financial History e.V. 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Sources

The primary sources on which this article is based are the records of the Savings Bank of Glasgow, TSB63 in the records of the Trustee Savings Bank Scotland. These records were held at the Glasgow University Archives (GUA) until shortly after the completion of this article, and they are cited as being located in Glasgow. They have, however, since been moved to the Lloyds TSB Group Archives, Edinburgh. I have not consulted the records in Edinburgh.

References

Alter, G., Goldin, C. and Rotella, E. (1994). The savings of ordinary Americans: the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society in the mid-nineteenth century. Journal of Economic History, 54, pp. 735–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Américi, L. (2002). Preparing the people for capitalism: relations with depositors in a French savings bank during the 1820s. Financial History Review, 9, pp. 5–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, M. and Collins, M. (1999). Financial crises and structural change in English commercial bank assets, 1860–1913. Explorations in Economic History, 36, pp. 428–44.Google Scholar
Best, M. H. and Humphries, J. (1986). The city and industrial decline. In Elbaum, B. and Lazonick, W. (eds.), The Decline of the British Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
BPP (1850). Report from the Select Committee on Savings Banks, Together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence and Index. 649, XIX.I.Google Scholar
BPP (1857–8). Report from the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the Operation of the Bank Act of 1844 and of the Bank Acts of Ireland and Scotland of 1845, together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index. 381, V.I.Google Scholar
Calomiris, C. (2007). Bank failures in theory and history: the Great Depression and other ‘contagious’ events. NBER Working Paper, 13597.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calomiris, C. and Gorton, G. (1991). The origins of banking panics: models, facts and bank regulation. In Hubbard, R. Glenn (ed.), Financial Markets and Financial Crises. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, J. D. (1986). The Savings Bank of Glasgow. Glasgow: Bell & Bain.Google Scholar
Campbell, R. H. (1955). Edinburgh bankers and the Western Bank of Scotland. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 2(1), pp. 134–48.Google Scholar
Capie, F. H. and Rodrik-bali, G. (1982). Concentration in British banking, 1870–1920. Business History, 24, pp. 280–92.Google Scholar
Clapham, J. H. (1930). The Economic History of Modern Britain, 2nd edn.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Collins, M. (1988). Money and Banking in the UK: A History. London: Croom-Helm.Google Scholar
Collins, M. (1989). The banking crisis of 1878. Economic History Review, 42, pp. 504–27.Google Scholar
Collins, M. (1991). Banks and Industrial Finance in Britain, 1800–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, M. and Baker, M. (2001). Sectoral differences in English asset bank structures and the impact of mergers, 1860–1913. Business History, 43, pp. 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daunton, M. J. (1995). Royal Mail: The Post Office since 1840. London: Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Diamond, D. W. and Dybvig, P. H. (1983). Bank runs, deposit insurance and liquidity. Journal of Political Economy, 91, pp. 401–19.Google Scholar
Dornbusch, R. and Frenkel, J. A. (1984). The gold standard and the Bank of England in the crisis of 1847. In Bordo, M. and Schwartz, A. (eds.), A Retrospective on the Classical Gold Standard, 1821–1931. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Duet, D. (1983). Les caisses d'épargne françaises et leur activité: tradition ou évolution (1818–1981). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Duncan, H. (1815). An Essay on the Nature and Advantage of Parish Banks. Edinburgh: Oliphant, Waugh & Innes.Google Scholar
Fishlow, A. (1961). The trustee savings banks, 1817–1861. Journal of Economic History, 21, pp. 26–40.Google Scholar
Garon, S. (2004). Savings-promotion as economic knowledge: transnational insights from the Japanese experience. In Daunton, M. and Trentmann, F. (eds.), Worlds of Political Economy. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
HC (House of Commons). Savings Banks. Accounts of the number of depositors, and of charitable institutions and friendly societies depositing their funds in savings banks, and of the sums deposited, divided into classes, on the 20th day of November. Various years.Google Scholar
HC (House of Commons ). Savings Banks. Return of savings banks in the United Kingdom, showing the number of officers, their salaries and allowances, and amount of security given, with total expenses of management; also, number of accounts remaining open, amount owing to depositors, amount invested with Commissioners for Reduction of National Debt, rate of interest paid, surplus fund, and annuities granted; also, annual number of receipts and payments to depositors, and average amount of receipts and payments to depositors, during the year ended. Various years.Google Scholar
Highland Society of Scotland (1815). Report of the Committee of the Highland Society of Scotland to Consider What is the Best Mode of Forming Institutions of the Nature of Savings Banks for Receiving the Deposits of Labourers and Others. Edinburgh: Highland Society of Scotland.Google Scholar
Hollen-lees, L. (1998). The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Horne, H. O. (1947). A History of Savings Banks. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, P. (1985). Saving and Spending: The Working Class Economy in Britain 1870–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kelly, M. and ó gráda, C. (2000). Market contagion: evidence from the panics of 1854 and 1857. The American Economic Review, 90, pp. 1110–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, W. P. (1987). Industrial Structure, Capital Markets and the Origins of British Economic Decline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kidd, A. (1999). State, Society and the Poor in Nineteenth Century England. Basingstoke: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Lemire, B. (2005). The Business of Everyday Life: Gender, Practice and Social Politics in England c. 1600–1900. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Levitt, I. and Smout, C. (1979). The State of the Scottish Working Class in 1843: A Statistical and Spatial Enquiry Based on the Data from the Poor Law Commission Report of 1844. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.Google Scholar
Malcolm, C. A., (1950). The History of the British Linen Bank. Edinburgh: privately printed.Google Scholar
Meikle, W. (1875). On savings banks, penny and school banks. Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, Glasgow 1874, pp. 933–5.Google Scholar
Moss, M. and Slaven, A. (1992). From Ledger Book to Laser Beam: A History of the TSB in Scotland from 1810–1990. Edinburgh: TSB Scotland.Google Scholar
Munn, C. W. (1988). Clydesdale Bank: The First 150 Years. London: Collins.Google Scholar
Munro, N. (1928). The History of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Edinburgh: R&K Clark.Google Scholar
ó gráda, C. (2003). Savings banks as an institutional import: the case of nineteenth-century Ireland. Financial History Review, 10, pp 31–55.Google Scholar
ó gráda, C. (2009). Savings banks, famine and financial contagion: Ireland in the 1840s and 1850s. Irish Economic and Social History, 36, pp. 21–36.Google Scholar
ó gráda, C. and White, E. N. (2003). The panics of 1854 and 1857: a view from the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank. Journal of Economic History, 63, pp. 213–40.Google Scholar
Olmstead, A. (1976). New York City Mutual Savings Banks, 1819–1861. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Payne, P. L. (1967). The Savings Bank of Glasgow, 1836–1914. In Payne, P. L. (ed.), Studies in Scottish Business History. London: Cass.Google Scholar
Poynter, J. R. (1969). Society and Pauperism: English Ideas on Poor Relief, 1795–1834 London: Routledge & Keegan Paul.Google Scholar
Ross, D. M. (1998). Introduction. In Ross, D. (ed.), History of Banking II, 1844–1859. London: Pickering & Chatto.Google Scholar
Ross, D. M. (2002). ‘Penny banks’ in Glasgow, 1850–1914. Financial History Review, 9, pp. 21–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, D. M. (2005). Pobreza y cajas de ahorros en Escocia a mediados del siglo XIX. Papeles de Economia Espanola, 105/106, pp. 82–92.Google Scholar
Saville, R. (1996). The Bank of Scotland: A History, 1695–1995. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Searle, G. (1988). Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Smelser, N. (1959). Social Change in the Industrial Revolution: An Application of Theory to the Lancashire Cotton Industry, 1770–1840 London: Routledge & Keegan Paul.Google Scholar
Stedman-jones, G. (2004). An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate. London: Profile.Google Scholar
Wysocki, J. (1996). Introduction. In Mura, J. (ed.), History of European Savings Banks, vol.1. Stuttgart: Deutscher Sparkassen Verlag.Google Scholar