Guilty Money:

The City of London in Victorian and Edwardian Culture, 1815–1914

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Ranald C Michie

Financial History

Guilty Money combines fact and fiction in order to understand not only what the City of London did but also the place it occupied within British cultural life during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. To the financial historian the impression occurs that the City of London was an ever larger and more important financial centre before the First World War.

In contrast to this account of the rise and rise of the City of London as a global financial centre, two rival views exist. One focuses on frauds, scandals, booms, collapses and speculative excesses. The other focuses on the emergence of an increasingly influential group of individuals in the City of London who were able to gain an unrivalled place within society. Though evidence for both these rival views is to be found in the factual accounts, especially contemporary newspaper reports, a major source has been the novels written at the time. In turn these novelists have drawn heavily upon the daily reports about City activities gleaned from the newspapers of the day. Through the writings of major novelists like Dickens, Galsworthy, Thackeray, Trollope, Wells and Wodehouse a picture of the City as either corrupt or powerful has become ingrained in British culture.

By comparing novels written at different times it becomes possible to establish whether these views changed or remained constant. Rather than rely upon the pronouncements of a few prominent opinion formers, as identified by posterity, the evidence for cultural shifts, or the lack of them, will rest upon the generality of the population as reported by a wide variety of novelists. For this purpose it becomes important to use not only the writings of the literary giants but to survey as many novels and novelists as possible in order to ensure that they are representative of their generation. Such is the volume of Victorian and Edwardian fiction that it is an impossibility to do anything other than sample the output.

Guilty Money aims to marry the approach of the literary expert with that of the economic historian, so that the novel can emerge as a valuable tool of analysis, allowing the culture of a time, and its longevity, to be captured.

Readership

Financial History, Nineteenth-Century Literature

Contents

Introduction: Reality, Perception and Money

Chapter 1: Economic Decline, British Culture and the Nature of Capitalism.
Under economic decline the chapter will question the assumption that the economy was in decline before 1914. This will provide an essential corrective to those who see a causal link between the growth of an anti-industrial culture and Britain’s economic failure before the First World War. Under capitalism it will indicate the difference between bank based and market based capitalism and indicate how the financial sector in Britain was changing and expanding. Finally, in terms of culture it will raise such issues as the antagonism between the town and the country, the widespread envy of those who had become suddenly wealthy, the pervasive fear of poverty and destitution, the threat to the established order posed by the nouveau riche, the undermining of the confidence of the landed gentry, the suspicion of newly arrived foreigners, et al.

Chapter 2: The City of London 1815–1850: Booms and Manias
This chapter will contrast the development of the banking system and the increasing sophistication of the financial markets with the popular focus upon the speculative boom of the mid 1820s and the railway mania of the mid 1840s and the power and influence of the great City financiers. It is the instability of money made in trade and finance that is most prominent in the emerging fiction of this period.

Chapter 3: The City Of London, 1850–1870: Joint Stock and Limited Liability
This chapter will trace the advances made in finance with the ability to form easily joint stock companies that limited the liability of the investor to the amount invested. However, much of the fiction was concerned with the promotion of joint-stock companies where investors lost all their money at the hands of powerful financiers, with profound implications for themselves, their families and the community at large.

Chapter 4: The City of London, 1870–1890: Globalisation and Technology
Prior to 1870 the City of London can be regarded as a largely British financial centre though with an increasingly significant orientation towards the international economy. After that date, the City of London becomes increasingly involved in placing British money abroad, especially in the United States and the Empire. These themes are taken up in the literature, especially the international nature of investment and the involvement of cosmopolitan merchant bankers.

Chapter 5: The City of London in the 1890s: The Lure of Gold
In this decade the City of London experiences a number of financial crises as well as a massive speculative boom. The crises are all international in origin emanating as they did from British investments in Argentina, Australia and the United States. The speculative boom was also international as it focussed upon gold mining companies in South Africa and then western Australia. It even involved international tension and then open warfare as the British sought to establish control over the gold producing areas in South Africa. It is events such as these that provided the material for novels of the time.

Chapter 6: The City of London, 1900–1914: Home and Abroad
London is now the centre of international banking both attracting branches and offices from abroad and expanding its own activities into Asia, Africa and Australia. Such was the power and influence of the City of London that it attracted bankers and brokers from across the world, but especially Europe. Under these circumstances it was inevitable that a wide variety of authors would find material in the City’s activities for their novels.

Conclusion: Facts and Figures versus Smoke and Mirrors
Evidence indicates that the City of London was the largest and most successful financial centre in the world between 1815 and 1914. Conversely, what emerges from the fiction was the fact that the City of London occupied a rather ambiguous, and even contradictory place in British culture. The City of London is seen as both marginal and essential, powerful and dangerous. However, in one sense there was no ambiguity and no change, and that was the belief that the City was both alien and corrupt, even though the evidence for this belief varied over time.

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