Telephone (01344) 774155 19, The Brackens,
E-mail:
johnny.quinn@lineone.net Crowthorne,
Berks. RG45 6TB
October 23rd 2019.
Monday 4th November.
·
Billies and Charlies By P. Mernick.
Monday 2nd December.
Monday 6th January.
Meetings are held
at the Abbey Baptist Church, Abbey Square, commencing at 7.00 p.m.
Notices
·
A Skittles evening has been arranged at the Jack O’Newbury, Terrace Rd N,
Binfield, Bracknell RG42 5HZ on 26 October 2019, starting at 18.45. The
price including supper will be about £18 per person. We used to go to The Red
Lion in Theale but that is now a private house. If you would like to come (no
previous experience necessary) please get in touch with a Committee member or
directly with Peter.
Club guests are very welcome. For limited details about
the Pub please see http://www.jackonewbury.co.uk/
·
The annual Christmas Dinner has been arranged for 14 December
2019 at the usual pub - The Cunning Man, Burghfield Bridge, assembling at
18.45. The price is £25 (as last year) to include the Festive Season three
course dinner and coffee and tea. Menus were circulated at the last Club
meeting and copies are available from Peter or at the October Club
meeting.
We
will need your choices by end-November but I should
like to confirm numbers in mid-October.
·
Please continue thinking about Short Talks for
January, and Auction lots for March!
October Meeting
Apologies were
received from Graham Kirby.
Our own member Alastair
gave a talk on Home Safes. These were a way of saving, essentially locked boxes
whose keys were kept by either the Bank or Building Society who issued them.
Every so often you would take the locked box in to have the contents
transferred to your account and have your pass book ‘made
up’. Alastair came across these boxes while he was collecting old pass books, share
certificates and the like. Most of them are fairly cheap.
There is a huge variety, the simplest being just money boxes, others allowing
you to see the coins inside and how many of each there were and some with
mechanisms that allowed you to change the date every time you ‘saved’ a sixpence.
They seem to have been limited to England and Wales, no Scottish or Irish ones
having yet appeared.
Home safes were around from the start of the twentieth century
until about 1970. The claim for the oldest (1903) is by the Co-op and it was an
idea that came from America. These safes were the moneybox type and made of
steel. From 1921 chrome boxes (oval or round) were introduced and also book types. They were aimed at children the idea
being to develop the idea of saving early (one of the audience members
remembered being given one as a Xmas present!). Coins from 1d upwards could be
saved in the chrome boxes and some even had a hole in the bottom for notes. They
did not take 1/2d, 1/4d or the brass threepences - possibly
because the Home Safes were on the way out when the brass threepence
was coming in. A deposit was taken when the account was opened and the safe first
issued, it would be returned when the account closed if the safe was returned
in good condition.
The original steel
safes were made in the US. From the designs of the boxes, the history of the business
mergers and also manufacturing details on the boxes it
is often possible to date the safes to within a few years. Alastair then showed
a series of slides illustrating the fact that these safes were issued countrywide
as witnessed by the number of different locations and societies advertised on
them. A great deal of Social History has disappeared since the demutualization of
the Building Societies, the mergers meaning that many regional branches and the
associated paranumismatic items have disappeared into
history. Starting with the oldest boxes first and proceeding chronologically
the first to be shown (a steel moneybox) was from the ‘Reading Industrial Co-op’,
whose offices are now somewhere under the IDR. Others from the ‘Leek United and
Midlands’, ‘Leeds Permanent’, ‘Wakefield and West Riding Permanent’ and the ‘Bradford
Second Equitable Benefit’ followed, together with the ensuing history of each
society. An advertisement of the times (1920-30) mentioned some 7000 institutions
that were issuing the boxes.
Inevitably the many
mergers that have taken place among the different societies and that have been
extensively researched by Alastair came into the picture. The first chrome
boxes to be illustrated were from the ‘Abbey Road’ and the ‘National’ societies,
of course later to merge as ‘Abbey National’ in 1944. Book safes were
manufactured in Birmingham by Pearson Page Jewsbury
Co Ltd. Of Soho Works.
Many other chrome boxes/books
were illustrated, together with the background to the society/bank involved. To
mention but a few, we saw the ‘Co-op Permanent’ which later became Nationwide, ‘Anglia
Building Society’ formed by merger from ‘Northampton Town and Country’ and ‘Leicestershire’,
‘Alliance’ merged with ‘Leicester’ in 1985, an older version of the ‘Yorkshire’,
‘Huddersfield’ merged with Bradford Permanent’ to
become the present day ‘Yorkshire’, ‘the Bristol and West’ was demutualised in 1997, only to be remutualised
when taken over by the Britannia Building Society in 2005, ‘The Cosmopolitan
Permanent’ which only had 69 depositors, ‘Cheltenham and Gloucester’ acquired
by Lloyds TSB, the ‘Coventry Permanent Economic’ tended to open branches wherever
a major car industry was situated, ‘Halifax’ was the largest Building Society
in its time, as a result of deliberately opening branches in a wide geographic
area and others. Some would distinguish themselves by using moderately spurious
claims on the boxes, thus, for example, ‘Hastings’ billed itself as ‘largest on
the South Coast’, ‘Bexhill on Sea’ claimed ‘Best in
Sussex’, ‘Rock Permanent’ merged with ‘Northern Counties’ to form ‘Northern
Rock’.
Alastair went on to
discuss how rare these Home Safes are, dependent on a number
of factors, for example how heavily they were marketed or how long they
were marketed for.
Many thanks to
Alastair for an interesting paranumismatic talk which
had clearly been well researched and extensively illustrated.
Subscriptions
Be reminded that
subscriptions are now due. It would be most appreciated if members yet to renew
their subscription would please do so at the next meeting. Please see our treasurer
Peter Hall. For anyone who does not pay their subs, this issue of the newsletter
will be the last they receive.
Future Events.
Past Events
10 Year ago – was a
talk given by John Roberts-Lewis on British Colonial Money
20 Years ago –
Bryce presented a talk on ‘Funny Money’
40 Years ago – A talk by George Berry entitled "London Tavern
Tokens"
Club Secretary.