This four-volume primary source collection examines the links between the financial world and British culture in the nineteenth-century. This multi-volume collection of primary source materials, accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, document the origins, growth, and impact of Britain’s financial system.
This four-volume primary source collection examines the links between the financial world and British culture in the nineteenth-century. The twenty-first-century financial world had its origins in nineteenth-century Britain with industrialism, imperial expansion, and a robust securities market. New developments in limited liability and financial journalism democratized investment, rendering Victorian Britain a nation of shareholders. The City of London and the London Stock Exchange sat at the very centre of international finance, much as the New York Stock Exchange does today. The history of nineteenth-century finance is also the history of culture and cultural change. Finance cut across all aspects of life in the nineteenth-century. It was central to many social and political issues, including the “woman question” (should women invest their own money?) and Liberal reform (did a laissez-faire economy adequately protect ordinary investors?) The ups and downs of the stock market were also central to the plots of Victorian novels and plays.This multi-volume collection of primary source materials, accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, document the origins, growth, and impact of Britain’s financial system.
Volume IV: Financial Crises and Financial Fraud
Part
1. Financial Manias and Panics
1. David Morier Evans, The History of the Commercial Crisis, 1857-58 (London:
Groombridge and Sons, 1859), pp. 1-12, 148-57.
2. Walter Bagehot, What is a Panic and How It Might be Mitigated, Economist
24 (12 May 1866), pp. 554-55.
3. [ Anon.], The Panic in the City, Saturday Review 21 (12 May 1866), pp.
547-48.
4. Robert H. Patterson, The Panic in the City, Blackwoods Magazine 100
(July 1866), pp. 78-93.
5. Alexander Innes Shand, Against Time (Boston: Littell and Gay, 1870), pp.
149-53.
6. George Bartrick Baker, The Crisis of the Stock Exchange, Contemporary
Review 58 (November 1890), pp. 680-92.
Part
2. Financial Frauds
7. John Francis, Chronicles and Characters of the Stock Exchange (London:
Willoughby and Co., 1849), pp. 187-90.
8. David Morier Evans, Facts, Failures, and Frauds (London: Groombridge and
Sons, 1859), pp. 226-37, 391-413.
9. John Hollingshead, Convict Capitals, and Very Singular Things in the
City, All the Year Round (9 June and 14 July 1860), pp. 201-4, 325-26.
10. The Truth about the Liberator, Pall Mall Gazette (27 October 1892), p.
5, The Liberator Relief Fund, Pall Mall Gazette (21 June 1893), p. 3, and
Liberator Relief Fund, Pall Mall Gazette (23 February 1895), p.
3.
11. Mr. Hooleys Bankruptcy, The Hooley Failure, and Results of the
Hooley System of Finance, Economist 56 (11 June, 30 July, 20 August 1898),
pp. 869, 1113-14,
1213.
12. William R. Lawson, Company Promoting à la Mode, National Review 32
(September 1898), pp. 103-15.
13. S.F. Van Oss, Whitaker Wright Finance, Blackwoods Magazine 175 (March
1904), pp. 397-409.
14. Henry Osborne OHagan, Leaves from My Life, 2 Vols. (London: John Lane,
1929), Vol. 1, pp. 141-48, Vol. 2, pp. 186-88, 409-18.
15. American Woman is Accused of Forgery, New York Times (3 September
1901), p.
3.
Part
3. Criticism and Calls for Reform
16. Herbert Spencer, Essays: Moral, Political and Aesthetic (New York: D.
Appleton and Co., 1868), Excerpt, pp. 127-33.
17. Humphrey Lyttleton, Sins of Trade and Business (London: W. Ibister and
Co., 1874).
18. Alfred Emden, The Crying Need for Reforms in Our Company Law,
Nineteenth Century 35 (June 1894), pp. 1033-50.
19. Hugh E.M. Stutfield, The Company-Mongers Elysium, National Review 26
(February 1896), pp. 836-48.
20. Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Companies Bill, Minutes of
Evidence, Parliamentary Papers (1898), Vol. 9, pp. 7-25.
21. Companies Act, 1900, 63/64 Vict., Cap.
48.
22. Herbert Spencer, The Reform of Company Law, Facts and Comments (New
York: D. Appleton and Co., 1902), pp. 234-44.
Part
4. Literary Representations of Financial Fraud
23. Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (London:
Chapman and Hall, 1844), pp. 321-37.
24. George Henry Lewes, The Game of Speculation (1851) in Lacys Acting
Edition of Plays, Vol. 5 (London: Thomas Hailes Lacy, 1852), pp. 104-24.
25. Mrs. Henry Wood, Oswald Cray (Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson and Brothers,
1864), pp. 279-89.
26. Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now, 4 Vols. (Leipzig: Bernhard
Tauchnitz, 1875), Vol. 1, pp. 97-107.
27. Headon Hill, Guilty Gold (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1896), pp. 13-24.
28. Harold Frederic, The Market-Place (London: William Heinemann, 1899), pp.
26-38.
29. Guy Thorne and Leo Custance, Sharks (Toronto: William Briggs, 1904), pp.
147-58.
Index
George Robb is a Professor of British history at William Paterson University of New Jersey. For more than thirty years he has researched and written about British and American financial history.
