The Trustee Savings Banks, 1817–1861*

Albert Fishlow ()

The Journal of Economic History, 1961, vol. 21, issue 1, 26-40

Abstract: The economic historian is well aware of the philanthropic origins of savings banks. Both in Western Europe and the United States they were initially established by public spirited individuals as a depository for the funds of small savers. It is not so widely appreciated that such banks were encouraged officially as a part of social policy in England during the nineteenth century. In an age in which self-help and individual thrift were conceived as the only solutions for lower-class poverty and distress, a means of spreading such virtues was sure not to go unnoticed. Brought forward in those critical years at the end of the Napoleonic wars, “here was the first constructive and practical proposal for counteracting the growing pauperization of the community, restoring independence to the masses, stopping the growth of the poor rate, and giving the ordinary man and woman some interest in the financial stability of the country.”

Date: 1961
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