ABSTRACT
While the consequences of the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 were serious enough for the provincial stock exchanges they were certainly not on the scale experienced by the London market. The provinces did not have London’s large volume of international business and they were therefore more or less free from the difficulty of obtaining payment on foreign transactions. Neither were they involved in as much dealing on the basis of borrowed money and were thus less open to problems arising from calls for additional cover for margin loans, or at worst outright recall of the loans. They were not entirely without speculative activity, but contemporary accounts apportion the bulk of their business to investment activity in local and national securities. 1
