Book Description

Excerpt from The Bankers' Clearing House: What It Is and What It Does IT is with great pleasure that I accede to Mr. Matthews request that I should write a preface to his book on the London Bankers' Clearing House, for I have had the good fortune to have had his assistance as Chief Inspector of the Clearing House during the whole of my fifteen years' tenure of the Honorary Secretary ship. Nor did his services to the Clearing House begin then. It was in 1891, nearly thirty years ago, that Mr. Matthews first took office at the Clearing House, and for some time before that date he had been head clearer for Messrs. Barclay Co. No one, therefore, can have better qualifications for writing a history and an explanation of the work done by the Bankers' Clearing House than he has, and having read what he has written I think that he could not have put the first few months of his leisure on his retirement to better use than to have compiled this long needed book. The work done by the Bankers' Clearing House is essential to the financial welfare of this country. Without its institution the growth of the cheque as the main currency of this country could not have taken place. Yet its origin was of the simplest, arising as it did from the constant desire of man to save himself trouble. A few clerks, tired with tramping the streets from bank office to bank ofiice, bored with. The waiting at each office which ensued, determined to meet punctually for lunch and a glass of beer at a well-known chop house, and there to exchange the cheques that they should have left at the various offices. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.