‘Writes a fair hand and appears to be well qualified’: the recruitment of Bank of England clerks, 1800-1815

Anne Murphy

doi:10.1017/S0968565015000013

‘Writes a fair hand and appears to be well qualified’: the recruitment of Bank of England clerks, 1800-1815

Anne Murphy

History

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Abstract

The financial strains of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had a significant impact on the Bank of England. In its position as banker to the state and manager of the state’s debt, it experienced a significant increase in workload and thus was forced rapidly to expand its workforce. From a complement of around 300 in the mid-1780s, the number of clerks employed had increased to over 900 in 1815. Using a unique set of records preserved in the Bank’s archives, this article investigates the backgrounds and skills of the men recruited during the expansion of the early nineteenth century. It finds a significant gap between the skills required by the Bank and the skills possessed by its potential workforce.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	19-44
Journal	Financial History Review
Volume	22
Issue number	1
Early online date	9 Jun 2015
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565015000013
Publication status	Published - 6 Sept 2015

Keywords

banking; recruitment; human capital; skills.

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10.1017/S0968565015000013Licence: CC BY

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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
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‘Writes a fair hand and appears to be well qualified’: the recruitment of Bank of England clerks, 1800-1815

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