Virtuous bankers : a day in the life of the eighteenth-century Bank of England

"In March 1784 a Committee of Inspection completed a yearlong examination of the Bank of England following calls for economic reform in the light of disruption in the Empire, recession at home, and a rising tide of public debt. Drawing on the minute books of this inspection and numerous other original sources, Virtuous Bankers follows a day in the life of the Bank of England, beginning as the gates open at dawn and continuing through a 24-hour cycle focussing on the clerks and all those who managed the daily business of banking. The book covers the full range of the Bank's daily activities, from the quiet mundanities of Clerks issuing notes and keeping ledgers to the noise and chaos of the financial market and the threat from rioting crowds. This book reveals not only the inner workings of the Bank, but also increases our understanding of the emergence of the service sector, the nature and value of human capital, and debates about the causes of the industrial revolution. The narrative explores the practicalities of the business of banking from the manufacture of banknotes and the discounting of bills of exchange to the maintenance of accounts. Murphy positions the Bank as part of the physical and cultural landscape of the City, as an aggressive property developer shaping its environment to suit its business model, as a vulnerable institution seeking to secure its buildings, and as a public institution which needed to be accessible and developed an aesthetic that spoke of its service to the state and the public. Murphy explains why the Bank, while privately owned by and operated for the benefit of its shareholders came to be thought of as 'a great engine of state' and how this private organisation became the guardian of the public credit upon which was based the economic and geopolitical strength of Britain during the long eighteenth century."