the world of private banking

BANKING AND FAmILy ARcHIVES 105
order cash into your hands to the amount of £1000 at a time if it should be worth
our while for you to send us bills payable in London in lieu thereof’.
In November he wrote again, advising the Tippings of the dispatch of a box
of over £2000 in gold coin, noting ‘last night I sent the box to my friend Mr.
Southwell to prevent suspicion, but neither he nor anyone else knows the contents
except my clerks, but Mr. Southwell guesses it is cash as I have often employed
him on the same occasion.’
Other letters were more personal. In 1762 he wrote to the Reverend Ward about
his eldest son: ‘I had expected the assistance of my eldest son who is now fit for
business, but he has desired to go to Cambridge and I did not choose to deny his
request. This will put me under some difficulty till Abel is ready for business which
has determined me to send him to Derby … where he will have the opportunity of
making further progress with the languages and the same time qualify himself in
writing and accounts as I shall soon want him in the counting house’.
Other correspondence included letters to another son, William; letters to the
Commissioner of Taxes (as Smith collected taxes for remittance to London);
letters to his partner René Payne in London; and correspondence on other matters,
such as the purchase of an assembly room in Nottingham and local politics.
NatWest archives also hold a letter book dated 1778–1809 belonging to Samuel
Stuckey (1740–1812), general merchant and banker of Langport in Somerset. 21
Initially the letter book contains copies of letters to and from Stuckey’s daughter,
Elizabeth. Soon afterwards, however, the book is used to record the business
correspondence of her father, Samuel. While most letters concern the trade in salt
and other goods, others contain references to banking. 22 The survival of this letter
book is significant because so few other records document the family’s banking
activities before the private Stuckey banks merged into a joint-stock bank in 1826.
In addition, the letter books reveal a close business connection with Simon
Pretor of Sherborne, who was also a banker. Although most of their correspondence
concerns trade in salt, Pretor recommended his London bankers, Langstone,
Lockhill Towgood and Amery, to Stuckey. In November 1779, Stuckey wrote to
them about opening an account: ‘It will be my object to make it as much worth your
while as possibly I can, at sometimes I may have a few hundreds in your hands at
others be rather shorter; but at no time over draw my amount…. I presume I may
pay about seven or eight thousand per annum through your hand’.
In 1807, Samuel’s nephew, Vincent, appears as a new signatory in the letter
book. Vincent joined Samuel in business following his marriage to Samuel’s
daughter in 1801. He later took over direction of the banking business. By 1809 his
uncle appears to have been withdrawing from active management of the business,
for the letter book contains a letter from Vincent to Thomas Farley at Worcester,
21
NatWest Group Archives, ref. 10257.
22
S. Snell, Stuckey’s Bank. The Importance of a Family Banking Concern on the
Economy of Langport and Somerset, 1770–1909, paper delivered at the Langport and
District Historical Society, Feb. 1998.