You could bank on them
Introduction
Victorian Bournemouth (245) finds that several bank managers, retired there by 1901, had built active community careers elsewhere. The article reports on how they undertook community involvement for both personal and professional reasons. Plotting their retirement location within the resort adds nuance to the analysis of their social backgrounds. Testimonials received on their retirement illustrate the elevated position that a Victorian bank manager might attain within their community.
Victorian Bournemouth (245): background
The men
The 1891 census lists a handful of former bank managers who retired to Bournemouth. By 1901, however, the resort had attracted a larger number. Some perhaps visited on holiday, but others appeared to have settled in their final resting place. Genealogical analysis reveals aspects of their social background and professional careers. Some men worked a nomadic life, while others took root. Henry Stokes, for example, ran the Christchurch branch of the Wiltshire and Dorset Bank for over fifty years before retiring to Southbourne. Frederick Cooke, in contrast, travelled with the National Provincial Bank around the West Country and Yorkshire. They came from respectable social backgrounds. Paternal jobs included retailers (draper, grocer) and professionals (solicitor, the Revenue, banker). On average, excluding two outliers, they left estates worth £3,000. Joseph Birkbeck (£28,000) and Charles Stokes (£46,527), however, created substantial wealth. Thus, these bank managers, continuing their families’ respectability, accrued appropriate wealth.
A wide role
In addition to his everyday tasks of administering the financial affairs of local individuals and businesses, a Victorian bank manager might find that his skills qualified him for community involvement. Local societies, clubs, and churches valued him as their treasurer or even secretary. In some cases, his personal interest and professional skills might intertwine. For example, Thomas Kirkby kept the books for his local chess club (Caistor), while William Pennyfeather became president of his club in Richmond, Surrey. Other involvement might incline towards the common interest. Some helped with local school administration or even activities of a more political nature. Examples exist of acting as treasurer to a Union or a civic group. Such bodies benefited not just from financial skills but from a bank’s associated integrity. Some men, on retirement, won public testimonials and gifts. In more than one case, the mayor presided over the occasions.
Victorian Bournemouth (245): exemplary managers
Homegrown
John Cholditch’s long career working in Newnham, Gloucestershire, illustrates the social role that banks and their managers might assume. He acted as treasurer or secretary for the vestry, the Town Improvement Society, and often attended National School events. He also held shares in a Market Hall company and ran a wine shipping business with a partner. In 1854, he laid down two pipes of port, perhaps in waiting for his sons. At a public dinner, the press reported that he ‘for many years had been very active in several public matters’. At William Pennyfeather’s testimonial, given on his retirement, ‘some notice should be taken of his long services for the town, not only as manager of the London and County Bank, but in connection with many public bodies and local movements.’ His ‘prominent position in the town’ fitted with the bank’s status, ‘one of the most important institutions they had’.
Exotic creatures
Another type featured among the home-grown financial warriors enjoying Bournemouth’s sea breezes in retirement: global citizens. Robert Darling (1843-1931), born in Tirunelveli, the Madras Presidency, had worked in the local branch of the Imperial Bank of India. He brought his second wife, a bank clerk’s daughter, to Bournemouth at the end of the century. Positive memories of their previous life appear in the name they gave to their villa on Richmond Road. They called it ‘Coonoor’ after one of the Madras hill stations. Charles Stewart (1842-1916) belonged to the English globe-trotting elite. Born in Recife, Brazil, his father a merchant, he married a brewer’s daughter in 1890 at Bolton. Two years later, she died in childbirth in Mexico City. By 1901, however, he arrived in Bournemouth, retired, accompanied by his second wife, born in the Roorkee cantonment, Bengal. Stewart died in the Riviera Palace, Nice, in 1916, leaving almost £50,000.
Victorian Bournemouth (245): social geography
Elevation and trust
During their working career, therefore, several, if not all, of these bank managers had occupied an elevated position within their local societies. Together with clergymen and physicians, they formed a triumvirate of respectability around which the community clustered. Their position depended in part on their respectable origins, but also on the extent to which they embodied trust. They handled people’s money, advised about insurance, and acted as executor for their estates. Beyond that, they performed trustworthy roles within the community’s structure. The men’s employers would have approved such projections, if not expected them. Through these extra-curricular activities, the bank would have widened its presence, an important marketing asset. Some men, of course, would have undertaken such roles for personal needs, but marketing by professionals often did not recognise a division between work and leisure contacts. Apart from acting as their Union’s treasurer, such men would not have included working people within their orbits.
Chosen resting spots
Plotting where retired bank managers settled in Bournemouth adds texture to this assessment of their social position. Bournemouth’s respectable people often lived on the East Cliff, the town centre, or further west, around Alum Chine and Westbourne. The suburbs of Springbourne and Winton housed, for the most part, working people. Further east, in the communities of Boscombe and Pokesdown, residents appear to have lived without such sharp social delineation. Thus, most of the retired bank managers chose to reside in the elite areas: the town centre or Alum Chine. Here, along streets lined with substantial mansions, evocative of Bournemouth’s genteel origins, resided people of private means: retired army officers, physicians and the like. Thus, in retirement as in labour, these bank managers rubbed shoulders with people of quality, those whose self-imposed role of society’s pillars guaranteed them a place within the borders of geographical apartheid.
Takeaway
Victorian Bournemouth (245) has analysed the social and career profiles of bank managers who had retired to the resort by 1901. They emerge as community stalwarts. The study also reveals how, during this period, banks and staff hid their marketing activities within a cloak of social respectability. This apparent generosity seems in sharp contrast with the advertised pursuit of Mammon practised today.
References
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