Immigrants, Savers, and Runners: The Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank in the 1850s.

The records of a New York savings bank founded by Irish immigrants in 1850 are used to shed light on immigrant savings patterns and the early history of savings banks. The analysis of the occupations and addresses of individual account holders reveals a very broad cross-section of the New York Irish and some representation - about ten per cent in the 1850s - of other nationalities. Accounts tended to be held for relatively short intervals, and the numbers of deposits and withdrawals small. Most account holders used the bank for current account rather than nestegg purposes. The final section of the paper contains a preliminary analysis of account-holder behaviour during the panic of 1854.