Böcker av Anne Murphy

An intimate account of the eighteenth-century Bank of England that shows how a private institution became "a great engine of state"The eighteenth-century Bank of England was an institution that operated for the benefit of its shareholders-and yet came to be considered, as Adam Smith described it, "a great engine of state." In Virtuous Bankers, Anne Murphy explores how this private organization became the guardian of the public credit upon which Britain's economic and geopolitical power was based. Drawing on the voluminous and detailed minute books of a Committee of Inspection that examined the Bank's workings in 1783-84, Murphy frames her account as "a day in the life" of the Bank of England, looking at a day's worth of banking activities that ranged from the issuing of bank notes to the management of public funds. Murphy discusses the bank as a domestic environment, a working environment, and a space to be protected against theft, fire, and revolt. She offers new insights into the skills of the Bank's clerks and the ways in which their work was organized, and she positions the Bank as part of the physical and cultural landscape of the City: an aggressive property developer, a vulnerable institution seeking to secure its buildings, and an enterprise necessarily accessible to the public. She considers the aesthetics of its headquarters-one of London's finest buildings-and the messages of creditworthiness embedded in that architecture and in the very visible actions of the Bank's clerks. Murphy's uniquely intimate account shows how the eighteenth-century Bank was able to deliver a set of services that were essential to the state and commanded the confidence of the public.

"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"--