the world of private banking

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THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
Of the private banks which later became part of NatWest, only the Smith banking
partnerships have been thoroughly investigated. By contrast, Beckett and Co., the
last large private banking partnership in England, merely warrants an appendix in
T.E. Gregory’s history of the Westminster Bank. Similarly, private banks in the
City of London such as Prescott’s and Jones Loyd remain largely unresearched.
The study of private banking undoubtedly provides ample opportunities for new
research.
Sources for the Study of Private Banks
The primary sources for those undertaking research into private banks are the
banks’ own corporate records. Typically, these will include partnership agreements,
correspondence and accounting records. Unfortunately, there are few equivalents
of that major source for joint-stock banks – the board of directors’ minutes. With
the exception of Prescott’s Bank, where partnership minute books exist from 1839,
and Beckett & Co., who recorded the partners’ meetings from 1904, the decisions
of partners were rarely minuted. Indeed, there would be little need to do so in
small local partnerships where the partners were actively involved in running the
business on a daily basis.
Lost or Destroyed
Regrettably, many records of small private banks have long since disappeared.
While this might be expected in the case of those that failed, leaving no successor,
it is also true of those that were taken over. In the case of NatWest’s private
banking constituents, for example, only four small volumes remain from the firm
of Hankey & Co., which operated for 150 years in the City of London. Likewise,
Shilston Coode & Co. of St. Austell and Thomas Butcher of Tring both traded for
over a century. Their only surviving records identified to date, however, comprise
those drawn up in connection with forthcoming amalgamations. Indeed, a brief
review of A Guide to the Historical Records of British Banking by L.S. Pressnell
and J. Orbell confirms this is the case for many private banks. The survival of
additional papers that throw further light on these banking businesses becomes,
therefore, far more significant.
J.A.S.L. Leighton-Boyce, Smiths the Bankers 1658–1958 (London, 1958). H.T.
Easton, History of a Banking House (1903).
T.E. Gregory, The Westminster Bank Through a Century, vols 1 and 2 (London, 1936).
However, D. Kynaston, The City of London, vols 1 and 2 (London, 1994, 1995) does
include original research on these banks.