Page:Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham.djvu/29

Rh £1,000,000, in £20 shares, £5 paid. London agents, the City Bank. It has since been taken over by the Midland Bank.

Banks.—A popular Penny Bank was established in 1851, but came to grief in 1865, closing March 16, with assets £1,608, to pay debts £9.418. Another penny bank was opened in Granville Street, April 13, 1861, and is still carried on at the Immanuel Schools. Tennant Street, with about 5,000 depositors at the present time.

A Local Savings Bank was opened in May, 1827, and legalised in the year after, but ultimately its business was transferred to the Post Office Savings Bank, which opened its doors in Cannon Street, Dec. 1, 1863. By a Government return, it appeared that at the end of 1880 the total amount to the credit of depositors in the Post Office Savings Banks of the Kingdom stood at £30,546,306. After the Metropolitan counties of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent. Warwickshire comes next with a deposit of £1,564,815, the average for the whole of the English counties being but little over £500,000.

Banks Defunct.—The old-established concern known so long as Attwood and Spooner's closed its doors March 10, 1865, with liabilities amounting to £1,007,296. The Joint Stock Bank took the business, and paid 11s. 3d, in the £.

Bank of Deposit stopped Oct. 26, 1861.

The Borough Bank, a branch of Northern and Central Bank of England, stopped Feb. 24, 1840.

The Commercial (Branch) Bank, closed July 27, 1840.

Coates, Woolley and Gordon, who occupied the premises at corner of Cherry Street and Cannon Street in 1814, was joined to Moilliet's, and by them to Lloyds.

Freer, Rotton, Lloyds and Co., of 1814, changed to Rotton, Onions and Co., then Rotton and Scholefield, next to Rotton and Son, and lastly with its manager transferred to National Provincial.

Galton, Galton and James, of 1814, retired in 1830.

Gibbins, Smith, and Co. failed in 1825, paying nearly 20s, in the £. Gibbins and Lowell, opened in 1826, but was joined to Birmingham Banking Co. in 1829.

Smith, Gray, Cooper and Co., of 1815, afterwards Gibbins, Smith, and Goode, went in 1825.

Banknotes.—Notes for 5/3 were issued in 1773. 300 counterfeit £1 notes, dated 1814, were found near Heathfield House, January 16, 1858. A noted forger of these shams is said to have resided in the immediate neighbourhood about the period named on the discovered "flimsies." When Boulton and Watt were trying to get the Act passed patenting their copying-press the officials of the Bank of England opposed it for fear it should lead to forgery of their notes, and several Members of Parliament actually tried to copy banknotes as they did their letters.

Bankrupts.—In the year 1882 (according to the Daily Post) there were 297 bankruptcies, compositions, or liquidations in Birmingham, the total amount of debts being a little over £400,000. The dividends ranged from 2d. to 15s. in the £, one-half the whole number, however, realising under 1s. 6d. The estimated aggregate loss to creditors is put at £243,000.

Baptists.—As far back as 1655, we have record of meetings or conferences of the Baptist churches in the Midland district, their representatives assembling at Warwick on the second day of the third month, and at Moreton-in-the-Marsh, on the 26th of the fourth month in that year. Those were the Cromwellian days of religious freedom, and we are somewhat surprised that no Birmingham Baptists should be among those who gathered together at the King's Head, at Moreton, on the last named date, as we find mention