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The Trustee Savings Banks, 1817–1861*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Albert Fishlow
Albert Fishlow
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

The economic historian is well aware of the philanthropic origins of savings banks. Both in Western Europe and the United States they were initially established by public spirited individuals as a depository for the funds of small savers. It is not so widely appreciated that such banks were encouraged officially as a part of social policy in England during the nineteenth century. In an age in which self-help and individual thrift were conceived as the only solutions for lower-class poverty and distress, a means of spreading such virtues was sure not to go unnoticed. Brought forward in those critical years at the end of the Napoleonic wars, “here was the first constructive and practical proposal for counteracting the growing pauperization of the community, restoring independence to the masses, stopping the growth of the poor rate, and giving the ordinary man and woman some interest in the financial stability of the country.”

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 1961 , pp. 26 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1961

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References

1 Home, H. Oliver, A History of Savings Banks (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 71.Google Scholar

2 Lewins, William, A History of Banks for Savings (London, 1866), pp. 99–103.Google Scholar

3 Scratchley, Arthur, A Practical Treatise on Savings Banks (London, 1860), p. 21.Google Scholar

4 Lewins, History, p. 94.

5 Home, History, p. 98.

6 Clapham, J. H., An Economic History of Modern Britain, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), I, 592.Google Scholar

7 Horne, History, pp. 94 ff. A few of the early records are here reproduced.

8 The data to which the equation is fitted come from Marshall, John, Digest of All the Accounts of the United Kingdom (London, 1833)Google Scholar, whose contents are derived from Parliamentary reports. Depositors are those as of Nov. 20, 1830, and the occupational distribution is that of the Census of 1831. Farmers include occupiers of land both employing and not employing hired labor.

9 This means that there is a 90 per cent chance that these limits will include the true average.

10 The null hypotheses tested were that each of these occupational groups comprised the same percentage of depositors as servants, and that laborers, manufacturing employees and agricultural laborers, taken as one group, were as important as domestic servants. If these hypotheses were true, the test employed would nevertheless reject them five times out of a hundred. Hence, the assertion that 95 per cent confidence can be attached to the rejection of the hypotheses takes account of the possibility of this sort of error. An even higher confidence level applies to the assertion that each of these occupations, singly, was as important as the servant class.

11 Lewins, History, pp. 54–55.

12 Cole, G. D. H., A Short History of the British Working-Class Movement, new ed. (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1948), pp. 130–35.Google Scholar

13 Quoted in Horne, History, p. 205.

14 Smelser's, Neil J.Social Change in the Industrial Revolution (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1959)Google Scholar appeared after this paper had been accepted for publication. On the basis of his study of the banks, pp. 358–77, he reaches much the same position as that taken here. The bank's impact upon the classes directly affected by the Industrial Revolution is considered meagre.

15 Among the reasons for the banks' failure to attract a wage earning clientele as standards of living improved was the publicity associated with the act of saving. In the debate on the Post Office Savings Bank bill in 1861, it was remarked that “…under the present system the masters were then concerned in the management of these banks and could know exactly how each man's account stood.” (Hansard, third series, CLXI, p. 265). It is significant that the Post Office banking facilities were kept secret.

A more important factor was the role of Friendly Societies in insuring against the contingencies of sickness and death, which reduced the incentive to have personal accounts. Individual savings were of primary advantage to those who had no such collective schemes at their disposal or were concerned with accumulating sufficient capital to rise above their class.

16 Quoted ibid., p. 75. The Radicals' opposition to the banks has tended to be misinterpreted. Their objection was not to an institution for small savings, but rather to its creation for, and use as, social policy in lieu of other measures.

17 Report from the Select Committee on Trustee Savings Banks, 1888 (XXIII), p. 141.

18 Scratchley, A Practical Treatise, pp. 115 ff.