The City of London grew, flourished and changed throughout the Victorian and Edwardian periods. It lost its residential population to other parts of London and the suburbs, and ceased to be a manufacturing centre as those activities relocated to areas where land and labour was cheaper. This did not mean that the City became an exclusively financial district by the First World War, for commercial and shipping business not only remained but experienced absolute growth, as did the vast range of ancillary services such as accountancy and law along with new ones like consulting engineers, loss adjusters and advertising agents. Though contemporaries were aware of the continuing presence of so many diverse groups and activities within the City of London, the nature of the work that most did, and the lack of contact, meant that they increasingly passed unnoticed. The result was to focus public attention on those aspects of the City that did make an impact on the public. Even here, change was taking place. Whereas in the mid-nineteenth century banking crises and insurance company collapses continued to occur, these had both become something of a rarity by the end. In each case both banking and insurance had become dominated by large and well-capitalized joint stock companies that delivered regular returns to their shareholders while safeguarding deposits and paying out on their policies. This had the effect of reducing their activities to ones that the public took for granted and so did not require comment. As a consequence, the public's awareness of the City became increasingly confined to a very narrow range of its overall activities. This awareness was continuously enhanced by growing literacy and ease of communication. It became possible to know, at a glance, the current state of the stock market or the latest speculative fad, rather than such information being confined to a small elite located in London. Anything associated with speculation on the Stock Exchange and the promotion of joint stock companies generated public interest because of the constant fluctuations in prices and the making and losing of fortunes. Inevitably, it was the most spectacular of these that attracted the greatest interest.