There are matters of conduct and behaviour which are not less important, though they cannot be so dealt with. Thus it is required of every person in the service of the Bank that he behave himself honourably in all the private and social relations of life, and that his general conduct, whether within the Bank or not, be that of a gentleman and a man of principle … Discipline throughout the Bank is strictly enforced, and any insubordination is severely visited. It is essential and required of each Clerk that he be punctual in his duties, and intelligent in the performance of his work; and also that he should observe propriety in his dress and in his general habits.
The Governors have so often had before them cases of great distress arising from early or imprudent marriages on the part of the younger clerks, that they think it necessary to warn them earnestly against such a course. They leave the question to the judgment of those whom it concerns: but if embarrassment, as is almost sure to be the case, arises from imprudent conduct in this respect, the Court have decided that they will afford no pecuniary relief, and Clerks must bear in mind that irretrievable embarrassment, from whatever course, involves the loss of their position.
By this time, moreover, clerks on their election to the Bank also received what was known as ‘The Governor’s Charge’ (probably introduced in 1812):
Your Salary is sufficient to maintain you in a suitable manner if expended with strict economy and a reasonable measure of self-denial …
You are warned against contracting habits of dissipation, and you are enjoined to be careful in the selection of your companions, and to maintain a respectable character in all relations of life.
The Library, which has been formed within the Bank for the use of the Clerks, affords facilities for reading at small expense, and it will furnish a resource for the leisure hours.
Governors came and went, but a governor of a particularly high moral tone was William Lidderdale. ‘It has become evident to the Governor that the cause of most of the troubles which have befallen Messengers and Porters, and of very much of the ill-health from which many of them have suffered, is to be found in present or past habits of intemperance,’ stated a notice posted on his behalf in July 1890 by the chief accountant. ‘In the Porters’ and Messengers’ own interests, therefore, the Governor gives distinct warning that any men brought before him for want of sobriety will be severely dealt with.’14
In practice, when it came to disciplinary action, one’s overall impression is that the Bank tried if possible to be merciful to transgressors and to give them another chance. The fate in the late 1850s of Ernest Stephens was instructive. A young clerk in the Accountant’s Bank Note Office, he was up before the Committee of Inspection first in February 1858, when he was found guilty of having certified that he had checked notes when in fact he had not; but having expressed his ‘sorrow and a sense of shame’ for his ‘neglect’, he got away with a ‘severe reprimand’ from the governor. Barely a year later, however, he was back in the dock:
On the 7th May it was the duty of Stephens to read the file containing the £100 Notes sorted and entered in the course of the day, in number about 1800. He should have requested some other clerk to take the books in which they had been entered and check the entries as he (Stephens) read over the Notes. It was then the duty of each to sign the check books and the file, the one as having read and the other as having checked the same. All this Stephens neglected to do. He selected no partner, but simply took the pile of Notes, tied it up as though it had been read and checked, and then signed the label on the outside of the file and the end of each check book with his own name and the names of two other clerks as having read and checked the Notes in question.
This time, inevitably, he was ‘called upon to send in his resignation’ – which at least meant that, unlike being outright dismissed, he would be able to find a berth elsewhere in the City. Then, just over two years later, in July 1861, occurred the ‘extremely difficult’ case of Richard Denison of the Bill Office, a case prompted by this twenty-six-year-old clerk applying to the Bank for a loan of £200. On inquiry, it emerged not only that he had been during his four and a half years at the Bank ‘generally careless and wanting in zeal and attention’, albeit showing ‘a slight improvement lately’, but that he had got himself in a pretty pickle:
In November, he married a widow, in whose house he previously lodged, and whose husband had died about a year and a half before that time. Prior to his marriage he had the distinct assurance both from herself and her mother, that she was quite free from debt, and that the furniture of the house, with slight exceptions, was her own. Very shortly after his marriage however, he discovered that his wife’s former husband had died insolvent – that she was considerably in debt, and that the furniture was the property of her brother-in-law, who immediately commenced an action for its recovery. Another brother-in-law who, it appears, is a professional money-lender, then advanced the sum claimed on the furniture, which advance Denison was to pay off by instalments, but this money is now called in, and Denison is threatened with imprisonment … His wife has one child by her former husband, and another child, by her present husband, is just born.
What was to be done? ‘The young man has no friends who can aid him, and urges that he has no course, if assistance be withheld, but to go to prison or to hide himself. The Committee [of Investigation] believe him to be the victim of evil disposed persons, from whom he is well inclined, if he can, to free himself.’ The eventual conclusion was that ‘had Denison’s previous character been praiseworthy’, and had it been possible to ascertain more clearly ‘the amount of his liabilities’, then ‘they would have been strongly inclined to recommend that the advance should have been made’; but in the circumstances the Committee felt compelled to recommend that Denison ‘be called upon to hand in his resignation forthwith’.15
Much of the responsibility for staff relations attached to the secretary, and it seems that in the long-serving Hammond Chubb the staff had a firm but sympathetic chief. Forman in his reminiscence of the late 1860s evokes him vividly:
I was sent to work on the ‘Stock Side’, and while there had experience of what was called ‘the Shutting’, when for some days the public were excluded and the clerks prepared lists of Stockholders in duplicate or triplicate; I forget which … In the morning, to each clerk was given a packet of slips on which were the names and addresses of Stockholders, and the amounts of their holdings. Here one might be lucky or unlucky. A slip might, for instance, be inscribed: John Smith, 12 Rye Lane, Peckham, £200, or it might have the names of a dozen trustees whose addresses were lengthy, and whose ‘godfathers and godmothers in their baptism’ had been inordinately generous. But, lucky or unlucky, your portion of slips finished you were free for the day. This led to great carelessness in writing, everything being sacrificed to pace. To make matters worse, we had sweepstakes of 6d or 1s a sheet among ourselves … At eighteen my hand was boyish and unformed, and quickly degenerated sadly. My ‘sheets’ were, doubtless, shocking. However, ‘shutting’ being over, I thought no more about them till, one day, a week or so later, I was sent for by the Secretary, a small gentleman of mournful mien and suave address. When he interviewed me, turning upon me ‘a countenance rather in sorrow than in anger’, he looked not unlike a mediaeval saint in a painted window, substituting, of course, for robe and halo, a black frock coat and grey trousers. ‘He washed his hands with invisible soap’ (a habit of his) while he gently dressed me down, and then, so to speak, rubbed my nose in those unfortunate ‘sheets’ written in the ‘Shutting’. ‘Sheets’ that had been returned as illegible by Somerset House, and which looked, I confess, as if an irresponsible spider had dipped his legs in ink and pranced gaily up and down the paper.
‘Well,’ added Forman, ‘I was never invited to take a stool in the Secretary’s office’; but almost certainly under Chubb’s say-so, the Bank kept him on, and he was soon transferred to the Western branch.
Not long afterwards, in late 1870, Chubb report
ed on the ‘peculiarly painful’ case of Robert Gerard. Elected a clerk in July 1866, and now almost twenty-four, he was the son of a clerk at the Bristol branch who had died in 1862. ‘During the early part of Gerard’s Service, he was absent very seldom. He was a good, well-conducted Clerk, and earned for himself an excellent character throughout the house.’ In 1867 he got scarlet fever; in 1868 ‘his attendance was very regular’; and then, early in 1869, ‘he showed distinct symptoms of want of mental power, which showed itself in a feeling of almost horror for the Bank’, and he missed almost the whole year. Alfred Smee in May 1870 tried out Gerard on ‘some simple duties’, but he ‘soon broke down’; between August and October he was only intermittently present, though when at the Bank he ‘conducted himself exceedingly well, showing himself capable of performing all the ordinary work of the Office’; and finally, in early November, he sent Chubb a letter which ‘showed symptoms of a return of his previous state of mind’. The humane secretary summed up the sad case:
His Mother, Mrs Gerard, was left with six children and very limited means … It is known that Gerard felt very acutely the position in which his Mother was placed, and believed that, as the eldest Son, a grave responsibility rested upon him. There is some reason to believe his present state had its origin in the fever of 1867, or rather of his coming to work before he was really strong enough to work. But whether this did affect his brain or not, those who know something of his family and have had opportunities of watching him, believe that he has given way under the constant strain of mind arising from his efforts to aid his Mother and his family.
Accordingly, Chubb recommended that Gerard’s name be removed from the list of clerks, but that a donation of £100 be made to his mother.16
In broader terms, it is fair to depict the Victorian Bank as an increasingly paternalistic organisation, seeking to create for its staff a secure, stable and morally improving environment in which to spend their working lives. Take three emblematic developments, the first of them described by the Illustrated London News in May 1850:
On Wednesday afternoon, a handsome reading-room, which has just been formed for the Bank of England Library and Literary Association, instituted by the directors for the use of the clerks, was opened by Thomson Hankey, junior Esq., Deputy-Governor of the Bank. There was a very numerous meeting of the members; when the Chief Cashier, as President, and the Chief Accountant, the Treasurer of the Institution, moved and seconded a vote of thanks to the Court of Directors for the handsome manner in which they had fitted up the Library, and for the liberal support which had been accorded the Association.
Several hundred of the staff were soon members of the library, paying an annual subscription of 10 shillings, at a time when the concept of the public library was still only slowly taking hold; and members were allowed to borrow two books, with an especially strict time limit (eight days) for novels. The second development followed shortly, with the founding in 1854 of the Bank Provident Society – essentially a savings society that also undertook life assurance business, and whose 4 per cent interest on premiums paid was guaranteed by the directors. Finally, there was the whole stomach-rumbling question of the inner man. In 1881 a detailed memo (probably written by Chubb) on lunch arrangements found that, of the 650 clerks in the Bank, some 110 to 130 managed to knock up a scratch meal within the building, about 100 stayed in their offices and got porters to fetch something from outside, and the rest went out for lunch. The memo continued:
That the present arrangements are unsatisfactory in every way is admitted on all sides. They are unsatisfactory to the Clerks, many of whom earnestly desire some means by which their wants can be simply but decently met. The underground Drawing Office kitchen is a most uninviting room – it is close to the cooking place, lavatories, etc; the food may be good, but it is roughly served, and the surroundings are so disagreeable that it is repugnant to men of any refinement. In the case of those who remain in the Offices, the meal furtively eaten behind a desk cover cannot be desirable; and though many no doubt will always desire to go outside The Bank during the ½ hour, it is known that the places where a cheap good meal can be obtained are becoming fewer each year and it is felt, especially as regards the younger clerks, that the alternative of obtaining what they require within the walls would be better for their health and keep them from the temptations of the Bars and Wine rooms.
As regards the Porters, the present practice is equally unsatisfactory. During much of the morning they are engaged on duties, which though, in a measure, recognised, are wholly undefined and cannot be supervised: it leads them to go out of The Bank to buy what is required, and it gives rise to the very objectionable practice of their making money out of the Clerks, with whom it begets a certain undue familiarity. The time occupied by the porters in this way cannot be estimated, but it is undoubtedly very great: and indeed it is a question whether if these duties were taken from them, the number might not be reduced.
Altogether, concluded the memo, if ‘a General Luncheon Room’ were introduced, and ‘if the room were bright and the service well conducted’, this ‘might lead, in many cases, to a higher tone amongst the Clerks’. Chubb then circulated a notice, eliciting strong support for the concept of ‘fitting up Dining Rooms within the Bank, in which, at a cost to cover actual expenses only, gentlemen could have lunch or light dinner’; and by 1884 a fully fledged staff canteen was in existence, though known by the more dignified title of the Luncheon Club.17
What the Victorian Bank was not was a meritocracy. In 1869 the Court ordered that ‘the practice, now becoming prevalent, of private canvassing of Directors, through their personal friends, on the part of Clerks seeking to be appointed to vacant offices, be prohibited’; but almost certainly this had little effect, and some twenty years later a young, ambitious and capable clerk like de Fraine found that ‘no one believed any effort would help towards promotion in the Service’:
The only way to ‘get on’ was to pull strings with Directors or Chiefs of Departments. As one caustic colleague said to me, ‘It doesn’t matter what you are; it’s what you can persuade the other fellow to think you are.’ I saw the string-pulling in action several times, the men who were on to a good thing being perfectly frank about their progress. One told me that on approaching his Director he received the suggestion, amounting to a command, that he should show a keen interest in the House – join the Volunteers, for instance, or stand for the Luncheon Club or Clerks’ Library Committees. He followed this advice, and in a few weeks was seconded as ‘Assistant’ (a hitherto non-existent post) to a Principal in another office. From that moment he never looked back, and eventually became a Personage.
Still, an institution does not need to be meritocratic in order to have a very clear appreciation of its own worth and a very clear attitude towards the outside world. A reply in November 1845 to one Joseph Hartnell of Hawkhurst in Kent, who had had the temerity to write directly to a former governor, might have been sent at any time in the ensuing half-century and was just the sort of missive that Henry Adams would have imagined emanating from behind those ‘insolent’ walls:
I beg to inform you in reply to your letter of the 27th Inst. to Mr Palmer, that the present balance to the credit of your acct is £920.14.0 and to request that your pass Bk may be forwarded by Post for the purpose of being made up.
Be good enough in future to address your official communications to ‘The Chief Cashier of the Bank of England’.18
8
Money Will Not Manage Itself
‘THE GREAT IMPORTANCE OF THE LATE MEETING OF THE PROPRIETORS OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND’ was the Economist’s punchy headline on 22 September 1866, and it quoted at length from the speech of the Bank’s governor, Lancelot Holland, looking back on the Overend Gurney crisis some four months earlier:
This house exerted itself to the utmost – and exerted itself most successfully – to meet the crisis. We did not flinch from our posts. When the storm came upon us, on the morning on which it became
known that the house of Overend and Co had failed, we were in as sound and healthy a position as any banking establishment could hold; and on that day and throughout the succeeding week we made advances which could hardly be credited …
We could not flinch from the duty which we conceived was imposed upon us of supporting the banking community, and I am not aware that any legitimate application for assistance made to the this house was refused.
The paper’s editor was Walter Bagehot, who spelled out the momentous lender-of-last-resort implications of the Bank’s welcome sense of responsibility – ‘If no other reserve is kept but that of the Bank, and if the Bank at a crisis are bound to lend all that any one asks on good security, how large ought not that reserve to be, and how careful ought not the Bank to be of it?’ – before ending by congratulating Holland and his colleagues ‘on the safe issue of a period of great anxiety, and great responsibility, such as few men have to meet during their lives, and still fewer would consent to meet, when so little personal gain can conceivably be obtained by it’.
Two of those colleagues were Thomson Hankey and George Warde Norman, directors since 1835 and 1821 respectively, and neither the type to succumb to flattery. Hankey was preparing a treatise on The Principles of Banking, and that autumn of 1866 he wrote his preface, pulling no punches:
The Economist newspaper has put forth what, in my opinion, is the most mischievous doctrine ever broached in the monetary or Banking world in this country; viz., that it is the proper function of the Bank of England to keep money available at all times to supply the demands of Bankers who have rendered their own assets unavailable. Until such a doctrine is repudiated by the Banking interest, the difficulty of pursuing any sound principle of Banking in London will be always very great. But I do not believe that such a doctrine as that Bankers are justified in relying on the Bank of England to assist them in time of need is generally held by the Bankers in London.
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