On January 1, 1871, the American financial house of Cooke, McCulloch & Co. opened its doors in London. Hugh McCulloch, the high-profile former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, was the figurehead of the new investment bank, drawing a considerably higher salary and entertainment allowance than the U.S. minister to the Court of St James. His wife, Susan Man McCulloch, received no additional remuneration. Yet it was Susan who manufactured the real competitive advantage for the business.
Public and private events were venues for assessing trustworthiness and standing, essential to the international ventures of an investment bank. This put the onus on sociability and household, which were invariably Susan’s domain. If the hosts showcased ”wealth, refinement and tact”, according to one observer, they could “command almost any society in London”. Susan thus also created and maintained the social ties that bound the overlapping worlds of finance and politics, and she fulfilled tasks consistent with those of a diplomatic wife. Brokering diplomatic and business relations alike relied on feminine intermediaries and their unpaid logistical, practical, and representational work of creating social arenas to determine credibility and generate goodwill. In the interconnection of public and private, socialising became negotiation and representation; a performance of trustworthiness which impacted the knowledge creation behind investment decisions.
Through the story of Susan Man McCulloch, this paper investigates how the constitution of spaces of sociability mediated the intersection of politics and finance in mid-nineteenth-century London and, as venues of reputation-building, offered well-positioned actors a comparative advantage. The (re)presentation of investment opportunities within the right social circles and rituals exceeded mere branding and advertising efforts. Drawing from their own social credibility, female financial actors like Susan Man put themselves in position to project political backing onto the firm, producing and in some cases fabricating confidence in U.S. securities.