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Henry Duncan and the Savings Movement in the UK

Michael MOSS

March 2011

World Savings Institute - aisbl – European Savings Banks Group – aisbl Rue Marie-Thérèse, 11 ■ -1000 Bruxelles ■ Tel: + 32 2 211 11 11 ■ Fax: + 32 2 211 11 99 E-mail: first [email protected] ■ Website: www.savings-banks.com HENRY DUNCAN AND THE SAVINGS BANK MOVEMENT IN THE UK

Michael Moss, Professor Archival Studies, University of Glasgow

Michael Moss is a professor of archival studies in the School of Humanities at the University of Glasgow. He was responsible for surveying and rescuing the records of the savings bank movement in and before flotation. In collaboration with Iain Russell, he was commissioned by Sir Nicholas Goodison, Chairman of the TSB, to write a history of the movement, which was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 1994 as An Invaluable Treasure: A History of the TSB. In 2000 he published a history of Standard Life, the life assurance company, which had similar values to those of the savings bank movement. He is a member of the board of the National Archives of Scotland and of the Advisory Council on Records and Archives.

Reverend Henry Duncan was born at Lochrutton, , on 8 October 1774, the third son of the minister Reverend George Duncan. Lochrutton is about six miles south-west of in south-west Scotland. In the late 18th century it had a population of some 550 people, who were engaged mostly in farming. Reverend George Duncan complained that the landowners showed no enthusiasm for Reverend Henry Duncan. improving the agriculture of the parish, even though there was a flourishing export trade with the west coast of England. Henry Duncan was educated at Dumfries Academy before attending St Andrews University for two sessions from 1788 to 1790. At the time it was common for children as young as 14 to go to university, and for young men in general to spend a year or two at university before entering a trade.

11 He left St Andrews in 1790 to take up a position as a junior clerk in the Liverpool banking house of Arthur Heywood Sons & Co. The attraction of Liverpool for Henry Duncan was that his two brothers were already working there. However, unlike his brothers, he did not find the world of commerce to his liking. His employers complained he devoted too much time to literary pursuits and theological study. Deciding to follow his father into the church, he returned to Scotland to take classes at Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities where he was influenced by the jurist John Miller and the moral philosopher Dugald Stewart. He went back to Lochrutton in 1798 and the following year he was appointed minister of where he was to remain for the rest of his life.

The church in Ruthwell, where Henry Duncan was minister.

The weather in 1799 and 1800 in much of Scotland was cold and wet and the harvest poor. Henry Duncan responded to the plight of his congregation by arranging with his brothers to send supplies of Indian corn from Liverpool, which he sold to the needy at cost price. In a spirit of self-help, he encouraged women to take up spinning woollen yarn to supplement their family income and employed destitute labourers on his own land.

12 Recognising that such measures offered only partial solutions to the problems of poverty, he revived the local friendly society that had been founded in 1795 and had quickly become moribund. He rewrote the rules and regulations and improved its management. So successful was this initiative that he formed another society specifically for women. Soon over a quarter of the parish, some 300 people, were members of the two societies. Opposed to compulsory taxation, to provide relief to the poor and destitute, he was a passionate supporter of “self-help”. Such attitudes begged the serious question as to whether the very poor had sufficient marginal income to save, even in good times – a debate that still continues between those who are committed to state-sponsored social welfare and those who oppose it or at least wish to curtail the level of spending. After the resumption of the war with France in 1803, the price of food climbed and hardship, particularly in rural areas, became more acute.

From 1808 Henry Duncan tried to inculcate ideals of thrift in the local community by publishing a series of tracts and articles in the Dumfries and Galloway Courier, which he had created with financial support from his brothers. These had a strong moral message – the provident and well- behaved could look forward to a secure independent future, while the improvident and dissolute, especially the intemperate, could anticipate ruin and destitution. Such moralising has continued to this day.

Despite the success of the friendly societies, Duncan was not convinced that their rules and regulations, which required regular subscriptions, were appropriate, for they entailed collecting the uncertain savings of the poor. This led him to propose that savings banks with very simple regulations should be opened in every parish in Scotland. Although Scotland’s banking system, with interest bearing accounts, was more advanced than those of other countries, it did not provide services to individuals with only small amounts to deposit, and who were thus often obliged to keep their savings in cash or lend them in the local money market, which could be very risky. In May 1810 Henry Duncan opened the Ruthwell Savings Bank in the Friendly Society’s rooms.

13 Deposits were invested in interest-bearing accounts. In a practice that became familiar in Scotland, the Kirk Session (the church elders) and the minister were trustees, while prominent locals were Deposit box of the Ruthwell Parish Bank. extraordinary members of the court of directors. Ordinary members had to make an initial deposit of GBP 1, while extraordinary members had to pay GBP 2 and honorary members GBP 5. This was very prescient of Henry Duncan, as the better-off depositors made only occasional additional deposits and almost no withdrawals, while ordinary members could be expected to make a large number of small deposits. The subsidy of small depositors by those with large balances persisted and was eventually a factor in the erosion of the savings bank ideal that led inexorably to privatisation.

In deciding to open the Ruthwell Savings Bank, Henry Duncan drew on the experience of other savings schemes and friendly societies. In 1797 the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed the establishment of what he called “Frugality Banks” or savings banks that would pay interest on deposits and that would be built The Wakefield family, with Mrs Priscilla and managed by a proposed Wakefield who created the ‘first distinct National Charity Company. Bank for Savings publicly set on foot for The following year Mrs Priscilla the benefit of the lower classes’. Wakefield established a Female Benefits Club incorporating a Children’s Bank in the parish of Tottenham to the north of London.

Anybody could open an account for a child by making regular monthly contributions of a penny or more. At the turn of the century she converted her Female Benefit Club into a Benefit Bank, recognised at the time “as the first distinct Bank for Savings publicly set on foot for the benefit of the lower classes”. The Wakefields were a remarkable family. Her son Edward Gibbon Wakefield pioneered emigration to the Antipodes as a way of reducing the cost of poor relief.

14 The political economist Thomas Malthus, in the second edition of his celebrated 1803 Essay on the Principles of Population, writes, “To facilitate the saving of small sums of money for this purpose [he is referring to the purchase of a cow] and to encourage young labourers to economise their earnings with a view to a provision for marriage, it might be extremely useful to have County Banks, where the smallest sums would be received and a fair interest granted for them”. He elaborated on these ideas in the 1817 fifth edition, going so far as to suggest that by postponing marriage until sufficient capital had been accumulated there would be less need for the state to support needy families, as there would be fewer of them. Although he admitted that such a transition could not be effected quickly, his concept of “saving a portion of present earnings for future contingencies” has remained the bedrock of much of the rhetoric of thrift and providence ever since. Nevertheless, he later recognised that “the principle of saving taken to excess would destroy the motive to production”. While he extolled saving “as a most sacred private duty”, he had doubts about its public application, which a century later economist J. M. Keynes crystallised into his well known paradox of thrift: “a private virtue and a public vice”.

In 1804 George Rose, a member of Parliament for Christchurch and vice- president of the board of trade, called for imaginative ideas to help solve the intractable problem of poverty. He was later to play a crucial role in promoting the savings bank ideal. Within a year John Bone responded to this challenge by advocating the abolition of poor relief and, along with what amounted to sheltered accommodation for old people, suggested that “a Bank should be opened to receive the small savings of the youth of both sexes, who have no dependence but their labour and economy, and to return them on the day of their marriage with the interest and premiums proportional to the amount”. With wartime inflation running high, Patrick Colquhoun, a stipendiary magistrate in London, expanded on these ideas by outlining a scheme for a National Deposit Bank for Parochial Savings managed and guaranteed by the government. The bank would be a powerful force for social change and “unquestionably give a new and more provident character to menial servants and thereby rescue females from the walks of prostitution”. Samuel Whitbread, the reforming member of Parliament for Bedford, attempted to introduce legislation to establish a national savings bank based on post offices. There were other local initiatives, such as the West Calder Friendly Bank outside Edinburgh established by Reverend John Mackersy in 1807, and at Bath, in south-west England, a society was formed in 1808 to attract the savings of servants.

15 Such concepts and developments were critical in shaping Henry Duncan’s ideas for the parish bank in Ruthwell. What set him apart from the others who could lay claim to be the founder of the savings bank movement, such as Priscilla Wakefield, was his unstinting effort to publicise his achievement and promote the formation of savings banks in every parish in Scotland. Because the concept of thrift and self-help had been so heavily promoted and followed, additional banks were formed spontaneously both in Scotland and England. John Henry Forbes, the son of the Edinburgh Sir William Forbes, promoted a savings bank as a branch of the City’s Society for the Suppression of Beggars, in 1813. When GBP 10 had been deposited it was to be transferred to Sir William Forbes & Co. Within less than two years the bank had almost 750 subscribers. In England the Liverpool Mechanics, Servants & Labourers Fund was founded in 1812 and the Bristol Savings Bank the following year. By the time these banks were beginning to make an impact, the war with France was over.

The sudden cessation of government wartime expenditure after the victory at the Battle of the Nations in 1814 triggered a catastrophic economic recession that was compounded by appalling weather due to exceptional volcanic activity. Confronted by unprecedented demand for poor relief, parishes throughout the looked for ways to reduce the burden, especially by encouraging saving. During 1815 several savings banks were formed in Scotland and England, which were modelled on the ideas of Henry Duncan and other commentators. In England, where there was no tradition of commercial bank interest- bearing accounts, deposits were invested in government stock, which became common practice. As the savings movement in England gathered pace during the remainder of the decade, its principal advocate was George Rose, who was still a member of Parliament for Christchurch and an effective publicist with strong links to the national press. Unlike Duncan, Rose was a Tory who believed savings banks “would gradually do away with the evils of the system of poor laws”. His Observations on Banks for Savings, published in 1816, relied heavily on the example of Forbes’s Edinburgh bank and ignored Henry Duncan’s Ruthwell venture.

16 Rose was vehemently attacked by William Cobbett, the social reformer and political thinker, who again warned that the poor lacked the marginal propensity to save. Nevertheless, in 1817 Rose successfully introduced legislation “to encourage the Establishment of Banks for Savings in England”. All deposits in England and were to be placed on account with the Commissioners of the National Debt which would pay interest at the rate of just over 4.5% per annum.

The purpose of this substantial premium on the prevailing rate on government stock was to attract savers. The principals of this legislation were to remain in force until privatisation, and in some senses George Rose can lay claim to being the founder of the savings bank movement. Although Henry Duncan came to London to advise Rose, the legislation did not apply to Scotland, as Duncan and his fellow Scots wished to retain the ability to place deposits with commercial banks.

Government protection stimulated a wave of publications supporting the savings ideal. By the close of 1817, 101 savings banks had opened in England and Wales with more than GBP 250,000 in deposits, with an additional 125 banks established in the following year. In his 1818 Annals of Banks for Savings the political reformer and radical Sir Francis Burdett saluted Henry Duncan as having founded the first successful savings bank and fully supported his vision of a future Utopia, with savings banks at the centre ensuring an absence of poverty. The experience of the banks did not support the naivety of this rhetoric. The majority of savers were drawn from the ranks of shopkeepers, skilled craftsmen, domestic servants, school teachers, farmers, and their wives and children, confirming that there was a genuine gap in the financial market for the surplus income of wage earners. However, this initial experience corroborated the opinion of commentators, such as William Cobbett, that savings banks would do nothing to reduce expenditure on poor relief, which indeed proved to be the case. Ironically, the government could be encouraged in a period of heightened political tension, as it was argued that depositors were unlikely to be radicalised or to rebel if their savings were invested in guaranteed public funds, as many savers were artisans, who were most prominent in the radical causes supported by Sir Francis Burdett.

17 As the concept of saving amongst those who had benefitted from the rapid industrialisation of the late 18th century took hold, so the rhetoric shifted towards self-improvement and self-help for the “respectable classes”. Inextricably linked to “self help” was the emerging temperance movement. Temperance literature contrasted the ruin that accompanied overindulgence in drink and riotous living with the prosperity that accompanied saving and temperate behaviour.

Much of this literature was directed at women and children, who were portrayed as the victims of male dissolution. Henry Duncan shared such concepts and they came increasingly to colour his later writings, in which the dissolute drunkard could anticipate the direst consequences, even public execution. Scotland was also home to the first Sunday school in the United Kingdom, in Glasgow, in 1815-16, and the first temperance society, in Greenock, in 1829. Just like the savings banks, Sunday schools and temperance societies were quickly established throughout the United Kingdom, attracting large numbers of supporters. As enthusiasm for the twin gospels of “self-help” and temperance grew, so did concern that the government was subsidising the savings movement by paying interest at an above-market rate, particularly as the anticipated decrease in poor relief had not materialised. In 1829 interest rates were cut and the ceiling on annual and total deposits reduced, leading to a decline in savings. This was followed in 1834 by a root and branch reform of the Poor Law in England and Wales, largely designed to save money. The ability to deposit funds with the Commissioners of the National Debt was extended to Scotland the following year in an effort to revitalise a movement that was in danger of becoming moribund.

Although the new Poor Law paid lip service to the savings movements, the connection between poor relief and savings was now broken and when in 1844 interest rates were cut again there was almost no mention of the social benefits of the savings banks. There was suspicion in government circles that those better off were taking advantage of the generous rates paid on deposits in savings banks. This was a contradiction implicit in the savings banks from the outset. To finance their services they needed major depositors who exercised few transactions.

18 Henry Duncan died in 1846 at age of 72. A true son of the , his interests were wide ranging, encompassing antiquarian pursuits, drawing, modelling, sculpture, gardening and architecture. In his later years, he could take satisfaction that he had been in some sense the progenitor of a movement that now covered the whole of the United Kingdom, even though its customer base and purpose was fundamentally different from his original concept, with the one exception that “saving for a rainy day” was to remain a core value until the coming of the welfare state in the early 20th century.

After his death the savings movement and friendly societies were hit by a succession of frauds that damaged their standing and restricted progress. By 1861 there were 645 individual banks with total deposits of GBP 41 million. Two years earlier, the concepts of thrift and improvement had received a ringing endorsement in Samuel Smiles’s best-selling book Self Help, which has never been out of print since. To a modern reader the text may seem overburdened with Victorian platitudes from the opening sentence (“Heaven helps those who help themselves”). Like Henry Duncan, Samuel Smiles was a Scot who chose medicine rather than the church as a career, but abandoned his calling in favour of the industry. In his view the struggle to live prudently was an achievement because man’s natural state was Samuel Smiles, author prodigality. Saving was for him a matter of of the best-selling book investment that provided the opportunity to Self Help. work, which for all its tedium was honourable. The notion that there was a moral duty to save was novel: “A penny is a very small matter, yet the comfort of thousands depend upon the proper spending and saving of pennies”. Smiles has been criticised by left-wing historians, who condemn him as a champion of an unbridled selfish capitalism. Such attacks overlook his efforts to illustrate the rhetoric of “self-help” with well chosen examples from all walks of life that tempered hedonistic self-interest with a mutual respect for others.

19 Smiles had much in common with Henry Duncan, believing that the role of government was to be a benevolent spectator of its hard-working, industrious and thrifty citizens. His rhetoric struck a chord with many but was not entirely shared by the Liberal government of William Gladstone, which in 1861 established the Post Office Savings Bank to complement the savings banks and achieve nationwide coverage through the network of sub-post offices. Many in the savings bank movement distrusted the government’s motives, perceiving the Post Office Savings Bank as a competitor, which indeed proved to be the case. By the close of 1862 the Post Office Savings Banks had attracted over 178,000 customers and total deposits of almost GBP 1.7 million at the expense of savings banks, which experienced a sharp decline in the number of depositors throughout the country. There was an urgent need for the movement to speak with a common voice. A national extension committee was formed in London in 1862 and led in 1886 to the formation of the Trustee Savings Banks Association. Savings banks were facing competition not only for small deposits from the Post Office, but also for their greater, customary role from commercial banks that were seeking additional retail deposits through evolving branch networks to shore up their balance sheets. Savings banks were unable to offer competitive rates of interest on their current accounts.

With competition from commercial banks and an increasing volume of transactions, savings banks had to find ways of offering higher interest rates to their major depositors, on whom they depended to meet their overheads. A legislative provision enabled them to do this by opening special investment accounts that were invested in local government stocks, which paid higher returns than the National Debt Commissioner. During the 1870s the savings banks and thrift movement in general gained ground in the north of Britain, particularly Scotland, while it lost ground to the Post Office Savings Bank in the south. This was to have important consequences in Scotland and northern counties, which were synonymous with provident institutions. Several savings banks closed. One victim was the bank at Ruthwell which in 1875, faced with a dwindling number of depositors, amalgamated with the Annan Savings Bank that eventually was acquired by the .

20 By the mid-1880s attitudes were beginning to change, with social commentators and philosophers, such as T. H. Green, arguing that personal freedom could only be achieved through a degree of state direction and control and by finally laying to rest the notion that the poor had a marginal propensity to save. This was very different from Samuel Smiles’s conviction that hardship and struggle allowed an individual to escape from a natural state of prodigality into one of self-determination. Such ideas were confirmed by the first systematic social surveys conducted in the 1890s, and led in turn to the beginnings of the welfare state by the Liberal government just before the outbreak of the First World War and to the emergence of the Labour Party. With the rhetoric of thrift off the political agenda, the government could afford to allow the Post Office Savings Bank, aimed directly at the poorest in society, and the savings banks, whose customer base was better-off, to coexist. In the southern half of Britain the result was that more savings banks closed and handed over their funds to the Post Office, while in the north they prospered, helped by rising real wages and increases in both the annual limit on deposits and the ceiling on total deposits. Once again, craftsmen and artisans fuelled an increase in business, particularly in the economy’s service and tertiary sectors. Saving by and for children also grew. By 1899 the savings banks had achieved a 7% market penetration. Much of this growth seems to have been driven more by saving for a short-term purpose – for example, holidays and entertainment – than for the long term. In the century’s prosperous final decade a rise in savings occurred throughout the thrift movement, accompanied by a huge increase in the membership of friendly societies and a sharp rise in the sale of products. In the face of criticism of their rhetoric by social commentators, the movement questioned its purpose but was encouraged to persist when analysis showed that the majority of customers held small deposits of about GDP 10.

The long recession that began at the turn of the century and lasted for almost a decade confirmed Keynes’s observation that the propensity to save correlates with disposable income. By 1905 total withdrawals of savings exceeded deposits but turnover did not decline, suggesting that savings accounts were being used effectively as a form of current account. There were those who rejected a Keynesian explanation for a decline in savings ratios during periods of austerity and preferred to blame Edwardian Britain’s extravagant spending on luxuries and amusements.

21 Many in the savings bank movement clung to the old rhetoric that for most families thrift was an essential virtue that safeguarded health and happiness. Such ideas were finally debunked by evidence presented in 1906 to the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress by Charles Booth, who from his detailed investigations of household incomes showed that a large part of the population “ha[s] not the ambition or the ability to establish out of their wages a fund to which they may turn in times of stress”. In keeping with these findings many savings banks ceased to promote thrift as a way out of poverty, but instead attacked extravagance, amusements, gambling and particularly overindulgence in alcohol. The National Insurance Act of 1911 provided, for the first time, and unemployment benefits to those engaged in certain cyclical industries, and paved the way for the introduction of old age pensions. Although the state might have appeared to be taking over the original role of the savings movement, the Liberal government went out of its way to emphasise that thrift was no less the handmaid of the new welfare state, as “a new and very general desire will arise among men to augment the State allowances, which is theirs in certain emergencies, by some effort of their own, for they will have the State’s assurance that sickness and unemployment, the grim spectres which have hitherto confronted working men, will not rob them of a penny of their savings”.

The progress of welfare reform, including the introduction of old age pensions, was interrupted by the First World War. Extensive campaigns organised by the National War Savings Committee reached a crescendo in 1918 and were designed in part to cool the economy by deferring spending until the war was over.

With the coming of peace Thomas Henderson of the Savings Bank of Glasgow articulated a widely accepted view when he wrote: “To many thoughtful minds in the savings bank movement it has been apparent for some time that, if savings banks are to maintain their hold upon the community, then they must adapt their methods to the changing needs of the day, they realise that the old conceptions of their functions which was limited very largely to making provision for a rainy day, must give place to a wider conception and meet, more adequately, present day requirements”. The managers of the Coventry Savings Bank were struck by the number of depositors who withdrew savings in 1925 to buy houses: “The purchase of a house is an excellent use to make of savings, and the most satisfactory way of doing so is to save the money to pay for it”.

22 As enthusiasm for house ownership swept Britain, particularly the south of England, savings banks could not match the growth of building societies in attracting depositors, usually with much higher rates of interest. They were not, however, eclipsed and the number of depositors and total deposits continued to grow, while those of the Post Office Savings Bank fell. During the economic slump of the early 1930s savings banks went to great lengths to counter Keynes’s claim that depositors were saving when they should have been spending. They could be forgiven, as advice from economists was conflicting and thrift remained very much part of the government agenda, through the National Savings Campaign. However, a debate emerged over what might be the appropriate level of savings at various points of the economic cycle.

Before this argument was resolved, Hitler had come to power and Britain once more found itself at war and desperate for savings to support the war effort. The saving campaign continued after the war, during the long period of austerity that lasted into the early 1950s and witnessed a fall in saving ratios from 10% in 1945 to less than 3% in 1950. Under the post- war Labour government the welfare state was extended with the creation in 1948 of the National Health Service and a costly programme of nationalisation of essential services and industries. Against this background the whole savings movement had no alternative but to return to the interwar rhetoric of saving for future consumption – for a purpose, particularly the purchase of household goods and for holidays and recreation. The Oxford Savings Bank was typical in telling depositors:

In many cases saving through the Bank is for short periods only, but the Committee believes that the type of savings, for example, to meet commitments for household expenditure, or for holidays or Christmas, is a form of Thrift no less valuable than the old established conception of saving as being the accumulation of small sums over a longer period of years, often with no particular end in view. Experience has shown that the short-term saver, having learnt the values of his short-term saving, becomes a long-term saver.

23 This did not mean that the old rhetoric was completely abandoned, as it could be applied to both long- and short-term savers. Advertisements still contrasted the contented provident saver with the dismal improvident. The predominance of short-term saving aligned savings banks much more closely with commercial retail banks that by now had greatly extended their branch network and were competing directly for deposits, particularly those of larger better-off customers, which made it difficult for savings banks to service smaller accounts.

The 20 years from 1950 to 1970 can best be characterised as an unequal struggle between the whole of the thrift movement in the United Kingdom and commercial banks that were rapidly extending their services to retail customers who were themselves coming to expect a range of that savings institutions lacked the power to provide. Savings banks responded by amalgamations that were stimulated by the need to automate processes to reduce the cost of managing thousands of small accounts and the need to introduce movement-wide services, such as cheque payment, which often required either legislation or government approval.

As is well known, this led inexorably to the amalgamation of nearly all the banks into regional groupings and finally into a single, broader UK organisation – the TSB, which was floated on the stock exchange in 1986. Although the decision to float rather than leave the TSB as a mutual organisation was taken by the Conservative government, which was opposed to any involvement by the state in the market for financial services, with hindsight it would probably have happened in any event. The problem for the TSB and its managers was that they lacked any experience of commercial banking and most of the capital raised at flotation, which was much in excess of capital requirements, was lost in very risky ventures into merchant banking and insurance. After a period of reorganisation and restructuring around its core business of retail financial services, , an established UK commercial bank, acquired TSB in 1995 and traded under the name Lloyds TSB until 2009, when it was renamed . This transition from a network of savings banks of various sizes with deep local roots into a fully fledged commercial bank was painful and not without its critics. A recent report from the Lloyds Banking Group suggests that far from being dead the old rhetoric of thrift is alive and well: in the current downturn, household saving is at its highest ever level and pension and welfare payments much reduced. In other words, people are saving for a rainy day, which Henry Duncan would have approved.

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