Papers presented by Lucy Newton since 2019

2024 Providence, Rhode Island

"Piggy banks, money boxes and saving stamps: how British retail banks used artefacts to encourage children’s savings habits"

Abstract:

British retail banks tended to serve affluent members of British society in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. However, after 1945, banks increasingly sought new types of account holders to diversify their customer base. One tactic was to offer savings accounts, in particular to children. A means to encourage children to open a savings account was to provide free gifts, including piggy banks, savings stamps (with wallets), novelty money boxes, sports bags, and magazines. Encouraging saving had many broad ‘public’, as well as individual, benefits. These included saving to enable future life goals; to relieve financial stress and withstand financial hardships in adulthood; to allow the saver to help others; to gain financial independence and avoid debt; and help to achieve a ‘good’ life for the saver. But British retail banks were also facing increasing competition, and this served as a motivation to seek new business. Therefore, British retail banks in the twentieth century offered a new savings service that potentially provided a broad ‘public’ good and individual benefits but was also motivated by the need to meet increasing competition. This paper will examine how the banks approached these savings initiatives through an examination of artefacts held in the archives, in addition to supporting written material promoting savings schemes. This follows previous work by the authors using physical artefacts of British retail banks by analysing uniforms, war memorials, bank notes, portraits of bankers, and bank architecture. We believe that using artefacts provides a fruitful and novel methodological base from which to analyse historical issues. In this case, it will help us answer questions around the provision of savings accounts to children in the second half of the twentieth century. For retail banks, did this promote public ‘good’ or private gain? Or both?