ABSTRACT
During the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century the numbers of bankruptcies in England varied between three hundred and fifty and over two and a half thousand each year. 2 The legal machinery for dealing with the affairs of these many thousands of individuals and businesses in financial difficulties inevitably brought together vast quantities of accounting material through the collection of bankrupts' own books and the creation of new records showing the size and distribution of debts, the valuations of assets and their realisation and the distribution of the proceeds between creditors. The aim of this article is to examine the statutory provisions vis à vis accounting records in bankruptcy proceedings to see how these were implemented, what material has survived and the problems involved in using it as a result of irregular and fraudulent practices by bankrupts and others.
