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For All Intents and Purposes: Depositor Behavior and Strategy in a London Savings Bank

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2020

LINDA PERRITON Open the ORCID record for LINDA PERRITON [Opens in a new window]  and
STUART HENDERSON
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Abstract

In this paper, we offer an alternative to class-based studies of saving behavior by using individual-level ledger records from accounts opened in 1830 in the Limehouse Savings Bank, London. Our analysis suggests that such banks served a valid financial purpose for a much wider constituency of savers than the targeted “industrious poor.” True gaming of the system by the middle classes appears to be relatively limited, and instead depositors were using accounts for a variety of means and motivations. We suggest that the contemporary consternation around class was misplaced and that we can better understand and predict depositor behaviors through analysis of transaction data.

Keywords

Savings BanksEnglandPhilanthropySavings Behaviour
Type
Article
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 289 - 324
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved

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References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Checkland, Sydney. Scottish Banking: A History, 1695–1973. Glasgow: Collins, 1975.Google Scholar
Gommersall, Meg. Working-Class Girls in Nineteenth-Century England: Life, Work and Schooling. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goose, Nigel, and Honeyman, Katrina. Childhood and Child Labour in Industrial England: Diversity and Agency, 1750–1914. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.Google Scholar
Horne, H. Oliver. A History of Savings Banks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul. Saving and Spending: The Working-Class Economy in Britain, 1870–1939. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Munn, Charles W. The Scottish Provincial Banking Companies, 1747–1864. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1980.Google Scholar
Pratt, John T., The History of Savings Banks in England, Wales, and Ireland: with the Period of the Establishment of Each Institution, the Place Where it is Held, the Days and Hours When Open, the Rate of Interest Payable, and the Number of Depositors, Classed According to the Latest Official Returns; &c. &c. &c. London: C. J. G. & F. Rivington, 1830.Google Scholar
White, Jerry. London in the Nineteenth Century: A Human Awful Wonder of God. London: Bodley Head, 2011.Google Scholar
Aidoo-Mensah, Daniel. “Savings and Income Relationships among Households: A Review of the Literature.” Agricultural Socio-Economics Journal, 18, no. 3 (2018): 133–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alter, George, Goldin, Claudia, and Rotella, Elyce. “The Savings of Ordinary Americans: The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society in the Mid-Nineteenth Century.” Journal of Economic History, 54, no. 4 (1994): 735–767.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anbinder, Tyler, Gráda, Cormac Ó, and Wegge, Simone A.. “Networks and Opportunities: A Digital History of Ireland’s Great Famine Refugees in New York.” American Historical Review, 124, no. 5 (2019): 1591–1629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Browning, Martin, and Crossley, Thomas F.. “The Life-Cycle Model of Consumption and Saving.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 15, no. 3 (2001): 3–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Gregory, “The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1209–2004.” Journal of Political Economy, 113, no. 6 (2005): 1307–1340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cunningham, Hugh. “How Many Children Were ‘Unemployed’ in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England?: Reply.” Past and Present, no. 187 (May 2005): 203–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fishlow, Albert. “The Trustee Savings Banks, 1817–1861.” Journal of Economic History, 21, no. 1 (1961): 26–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folbre, Nancy. “The Unproductive Housewife: Her Evolution in Nineteenth-Century Economic Thought.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 16, no. 3 (1991): 463–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphries, Jane, and Weisdorf, Jacob. “The Wages of Women in England, 1260–1850.” Journal of Economic History, 75, no. 2 (2015): 405–447.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirby, Peter. “A Brief Statistical Sketch of the Child Labour Market in Mid-Nineteenth-Century London.” Continuity and Change, 20, no. 2 (2005): 229–245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maltby, Josephine. “‘The Wife’s Administration of the Earnings’? Working-Class Women and Savings in the Mid-nineteenth Century.” Continuity and Change, 26, no. 2 (2011): 187–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maltby, Josephine. “‘To Bind the Humbler to the More Influential and Wealthy Classes’. Reporting by Savings Banks in Nineteenth Century Britain.” Accounting History Review, 22, no. 3 (2012): 199–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLaughlin, Eoin J. “Microfinance Institutions in Nineteenth Century Ireland.” PhD Thesis, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2009.Google Scholar
Ó Gráda, Cormac. “Savings Banks as an Institutional Import: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Ireland.” Financial History Review, 10, no. 1 (2003): 31–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gráda, Ó. “The Early History of Irish Savings Banks.” UCD Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series, WP08/04 (February 2008). Dublin: University College Dublin, School of Economics, accessed September 15, 2019, https://researchrepository.ucd.ie/bitstream/10197/494/3/ogradac_workpap_010.pdf.Google Scholar
Olmstead, Alan L. “New York City Mutual Savings Banks in the Ante-bellum Years: A Dissertation Summary.” Journal of Economic History, 31, no. 1 (1971): 272–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Payne, Peter L. “The Savings Bank of Glasgow, 1863–1914.” In Studies in Scottish Business History, edited by Payne, Peter L., 152–186. London: Routledge, 1967.Google Scholar
Perriton, Linda. “Depositor Trends in the Limehouse Savings Bank, London, 1830–1876.” Brussels: World Savings Bank Institute, 2012, accessed September 15, 2019, https://www.wsbi-esbg.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/perriton.pdf.Google Scholar
Perriton, Linda, and Maltby, Josephine. “Savings Banks in England and Wales in the Nineteenth Century: A New Insight into Individual Spending and Savings.” Business Archives, 105 (2012): 47–64.Google Scholar
Perriton, Linda. “Working-Class Households and Savings in England, 1850–1880.” Enterprise and Society, 16, no. 2 (2015): 413–445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, Gordon D. “Aspects of Thrift in East End Glasgow: New Accounts at the Bridgeton Cross Branch of the Savings Bank of Glasgow, 1881.” International Review of Scottish Studies, 32, (2007): 117–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodriguez, Meyer. “The Analysis of Saving Behavior: The Case of Rural Households in the Philippines.” Philippine Institute for Development Studies Working Paper Series 8820, Manila: Philippine Institute for Development Studies, 1988, accessed September 15, 2019, https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/123456789/3829.Google Scholar
Ross, Duncan M. “Savings Bank Depositors in a Crisis: Glasgow 1847 and 1857.” Financial History Review, 20, no. 2 (2013): 183–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stebbings, Chantal. The Private Trustee in Victorian England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Turvey, Ralph. (2010) “The Cost of Living in London, 1740–1834.” London School of Economics Economic History Department Working Paper No. 147/10. London: London School of Economics, October 2010, accessed March 12, 2020, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/29960/1/WP147.pdf.Google Scholar
Vechbanyongratana, Jessica. “Personal Savings in Nineteenth-Century America.” Journal of Economic History, 70, no. 2 (2010): 499.Google Scholar
Venables, Anthony J., and Wills, Samuel E.. “Resource Funds: Stabilising, Parking, and Inter-generational Transfer.” Journal of African Economies, 25, no. S2 (2016): ii20–ii40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wadhwani, Rohit Daniel. “Banking from the Bottom Up: The Case of Migrant Savers at the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society during the Late Nineteenth Century.” Financial History Review, 9, no. 1 (2002): 41–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wegge, Simone A., Anbinder, Tyler, and Gráda, Cormac Ó. “Immigrants and Savers: A Rich New Database on the Irish in 1850s New York.” Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 50, no. 3 (2017): 144–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Samantha. “The Maintenance of Bastard Children in London, 1790–1834.” Economic History Review, 69, no. 3 (2016): 945–971.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wotherspoon, Gary. “Savings Banks and Social Policy in New South Wales 1832–71.” Australian Economic History Review, 18, no. 2 (1978): 141–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
BPP (British Parliamentary Paper), Savings Banks [HOC 905] (1850).Google Scholar
BPP, Post-Office Savings Banks [HOC 262] (1861).Google Scholar
Checkland, Sydney. Scottish Banking: A History, 1695–1973. Glasgow: Collins, 1975.Google Scholar
Gommersall, Meg. Working-Class Girls in Nineteenth-Century England: Life, Work and Schooling. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goose, Nigel, and Honeyman, Katrina. Childhood and Child Labour in Industrial England: Diversity and Agency, 1750–1914. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.Google Scholar
Horne, H. Oliver. A History of Savings Banks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul. Saving and Spending: The Working-Class Economy in Britain, 1870–1939. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Munn, Charles W. The Scottish Provincial Banking Companies, 1747–1864. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1980.Google Scholar
Pratt, John T., The History of Savings Banks in England, Wales, and Ireland: with the Period of the Establishment of Each Institution, the Place Where it is Held, the Days and Hours When Open, the Rate of Interest Payable, and the Number of Depositors, Classed According to the Latest Official Returns; &c. &c. &c. London: C. J. G. & F. Rivington, 1830.Google Scholar
White, Jerry. London in the Nineteenth Century: A Human Awful Wonder of God. London: Bodley Head, 2011.Google Scholar
Aidoo-Mensah, Daniel. “Savings and Income Relationships among Households: A Review of the Literature.” Agricultural Socio-Economics Journal, 18, no. 3 (2018): 133–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alter, George, Goldin, Claudia, and Rotella, Elyce. “The Savings of Ordinary Americans: The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society in the Mid-Nineteenth Century.” Journal of Economic History, 54, no. 4 (1994): 735–767.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anbinder, Tyler, Gráda, Cormac Ó, and Wegge, Simone A.. “Networks and Opportunities: A Digital History of Ireland’s Great Famine Refugees in New York.” American Historical Review, 124, no. 5 (2019): 1591–1629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Browning, Martin, and Crossley, Thomas F.. “The Life-Cycle Model of Consumption and Saving.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 15, no. 3 (2001): 3–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Gregory, “The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1209–2004.” Journal of Political Economy, 113, no. 6 (2005): 1307–1340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cunningham, Hugh. “How Many Children Were ‘Unemployed’ in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England?: Reply.” Past and Present, no. 187 (May 2005): 203–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fishlow, Albert. “The Trustee Savings Banks, 1817–1861.” Journal of Economic History, 21, no. 1 (1961): 26–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folbre, Nancy. “The Unproductive Housewife: Her Evolution in Nineteenth-Century Economic Thought.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 16, no. 3 (1991): 463–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphries, Jane, and Weisdorf, Jacob. “The Wages of Women in England, 1260–1850.” Journal of Economic History, 75, no. 2 (2015): 405–447.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirby, Peter. “A Brief Statistical Sketch of the Child Labour Market in Mid-Nineteenth-Century London.” Continuity and Change, 20, no. 2 (2005): 229–245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maltby, Josephine. “‘The Wife’s Administration of the Earnings’? Working-Class Women and Savings in the Mid-nineteenth Century.” Continuity and Change, 26, no. 2 (2011): 187–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maltby, Josephine. “‘To Bind the Humbler to the More Influential and Wealthy Classes’. Reporting by Savings Banks in Nineteenth Century Britain.” Accounting History Review, 22, no. 3 (2012): 199–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLaughlin, Eoin J. “Microfinance Institutions in Nineteenth Century Ireland.” PhD Thesis, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2009.Google Scholar
Ó Gráda, Cormac. “Savings Banks as an Institutional Import: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Ireland.” Financial History Review, 10, no. 1 (2003): 31–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gráda, Ó. “The Early History of Irish Savings Banks.” UCD Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series, WP08/04 (February 2008). Dublin: University College Dublin, School of Economics, accessed September 15, 2019, https://researchrepository.ucd.ie/bitstream/10197/494/3/ogradac_workpap_010.pdf.Google Scholar
Olmstead, Alan L. “New York City Mutual Savings Banks in the Ante-bellum Years: A Dissertation Summary.” Journal of Economic History, 31, no. 1 (1971): 272–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Payne, Peter L. “The Savings Bank of Glasgow, 1863–1914.” In Studies in Scottish Business History, edited by Payne, Peter L., 152–186. London: Routledge, 1967.Google Scholar
Perriton, Linda. “Depositor Trends in the Limehouse Savings Bank, London, 1830–1876.” Brussels: World Savings Bank Institute, 2012, accessed September 15, 2019, https://www.wsbi-esbg.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/perriton.pdf.Google Scholar
Perriton, Linda, and Maltby, Josephine. “Savings Banks in England and Wales in the Nineteenth Century: A New Insight into Individual Spending and Savings.” Business Archives, 105 (2012): 47–64.Google Scholar
Perriton, Linda. “Working-Class Households and Savings in England, 1850–1880.” Enterprise and Society, 16, no. 2 (2015): 413–445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, Gordon D. “Aspects of Thrift in East End Glasgow: New Accounts at the Bridgeton Cross Branch of the Savings Bank of Glasgow, 1881.” International Review of Scottish Studies, 32, (2007): 117–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodriguez, Meyer. “The Analysis of Saving Behavior: The Case of Rural Households in the Philippines.” Philippine Institute for Development Studies Working Paper Series 8820, Manila: Philippine Institute for Development Studies, 1988, accessed September 15, 2019, https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/123456789/3829.Google Scholar
Ross, Duncan M. “Savings Bank Depositors in a Crisis: Glasgow 1847 and 1857.” Financial History Review, 20, no. 2 (2013): 183–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stebbings, Chantal. The Private Trustee in Victorian England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Turvey, Ralph. (2010) “The Cost of Living in London, 1740–1834.” London School of Economics Economic History Department Working Paper No. 147/10. London: London School of Economics, October 2010, accessed March 12, 2020, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/29960/1/WP147.pdf.Google Scholar
Vechbanyongratana, Jessica. “Personal Savings in Nineteenth-Century America.” Journal of Economic History, 70, no. 2 (2010): 499.Google Scholar
Venables, Anthony J., and Wills, Samuel E.. “Resource Funds: Stabilising, Parking, and Inter-generational Transfer.” Journal of African Economies, 25, no. S2 (2016): ii20–ii40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wadhwani, Rohit Daniel. “Banking from the Bottom Up: The Case of Migrant Savers at the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society during the Late Nineteenth Century.” Financial History Review, 9, no. 1 (2002): 41–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wegge, Simone A., Anbinder, Tyler, and Gráda, Cormac Ó. “Immigrants and Savers: A Rich New Database on the Irish in 1850s New York.” Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 50, no. 3 (2017): 144–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Samantha. “The Maintenance of Bastard Children in London, 1790–1834.” Economic History Review, 69, no. 3 (2016): 945–971.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wotherspoon, Gary. “Savings Banks and Social Policy in New South Wales 1832–71.” Australian Economic History Review, 18, no. 2 (1978): 141–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
BPP (British Parliamentary Paper), Savings Banks [HOC 905] (1850).Google Scholar
BPP, Post-Office Savings Banks [HOC 262] (1861).Google Scholar