The Savings Bank of Glasgow, 1836-1914 (1)

with total funds of over £153 millions, the Savings Bank of Glasgow is by far the largest trustee savings bank in the United Kingdom. ⁽²⁾ The history of this institution is a record of almost continuous growth and ingenious adaptation, and its officers have been among the leading personalities in the savings bank movement since the mid-nineteenth century. Because of the significant part the Bank has played in this movement, aspects of its story have been accorded a major place in H. Oliver Horne’s standard work on the history of savings banks, where there can be found a detailed and cogent survey of the political, social and economic background against which these banks came into being and developed. ⁽³⁾ A systematic history of the Glasgow Savings Bank—the records of which are comprehensive and voluminous—would be a most rewarding undertaking. ⁽⁴⁾ This paper has more modest objectives. Its purpose is to shed some light on the question of the occupational and social composition of savings bank depositors in the nineteenth century; to indicate some noteworthy features of an analysis of the accounts of individual depositors; and to examine the factors that produced seasonal and annual fluctuations in small savings in the West of Scotland before the First World War. In short, it tries to produce answers to the following questions: Who were the savers? How much did they save? Why did their savings vary over time?