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A ‘social evil’: Liverpool moneylenders 1920s–1940s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2015

PETER FEARON
PETER FEARON*
Affiliation:
School of History, University of Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
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Abstract

During the 1920s and 1930s many working-class families needed emergency credit. Their use of pawnbrokers is well documented but the presence of a network of moneylenders, most of whom were women operating from their own homes, is not. This article examines the background to and the impact of the Moneylenders Act (1927) which was designed to reduce the number of working-class lenders, widely perceived as disreputable, in order to protect vulnerable borrowers, most of whom were women. Using Liverpool as a case-study, I also examine the possible reasons for the dramatic decline in the number of licensed moneylenders and analyse the implications of this for the provision of working-class credit.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , August 2015 , pp. 440 - 462
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

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4 Times, 10 Feb. 1925, 9.

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6 An Act for Consolidating, with Amendments, the Acts relating to Pawnbroking in Great Britain, 35 & 36 Vict., c. 93, Aug. 1872.

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26 How the Casual Labourer Lives, xv–ix, xxviii.

27 Keeling, Crowded Stairs, 59–69; LRO/LPSSA, Liverpool PSS Annual Report (AR), 1925, 11, M364 PSS 3/1/4.

28 LRO/LPSSA, AR, 1925, 11, M364PSS 3/1/4.

29 Keeling, Crowded Stairs, 111.

30 433% per annum was universally accepted as the annualized rate of interest for one penny in the shilling per week loans. It was presumably calculated by multiplying the weekly rate of 8.333% x 52 = 433%. The compound interest rate is higher: 542%. This might have been more difficult to explain than 433%, which would be a reason why it was not used.

31 Times, 10 Feb. 1925, 9.

32 LRO/LPSSA, AR, 1925, 10, M364 PSS 3/1/4.

33 Report by the Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and Commons on the Moneylenders Bill and the Moneylenders (Amendment) Bill (London: HMSO, 28 Jul. 1925). For Keeling's evidence, see 19 Jun., paras. 900–44.

34 Times, 20 Jun. 1925, 5.

35 Keeling, The Crowded Stairs, 112.

36 Joint Select Committee, Robert Gee, 24 Jun., para. 1434.

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38 Ibid., Mr Wells, 17 Jun., paras. 197–8; Fred Ohlsen, 17 Jun., paras. 346–53; Benjamin Astbury, 18 Jun., para. 708.

39 Ibid., Mr R.W. Warnes, 25 Jun., paras. 1483–98.

40 Ibid., Albert Partridge, 17 Jun., paras. 235–9.

41 Times, 10 Feb. 1925, 9; 18 Mar. 1925, 14.

42 Tebbut, Making Ends Meet, 54.

43 O’Connell, Credit and Community, 132–5, 142. A Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London forbade any moneylender to hold an official post in it. Times, 29 Jul. 1925, 5.

44 Times, 2 Dec. 1927, 7; 22 Dec. 1927, 6; 31 Dec. 1927, 7; 10 Jan. 1928, 11.

45 The responsibility for registration was transferred from the commissioners of Customs and Excise to the local authorities in 1949.

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47 Times, 26 Jun. 1925, 8.

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51 Orchard and May, Moneylending, 137–8.

52 An illiterate Liverpool moneylender was awarded a certificate, Times, 21 Dec. 1927, 4; another by the Lambeth Police Court, Times, 22 Dec. 1927, 4; an unemployed man awarded a certificate by West Ham Police Court, Times, 12 Aug. 1930, 15; a credit draper was refused a licence on the grounds that he was already in the credit trade, Times, 19 Oct. 1937, 9.

53 The names and addresses of applicants for moneylenders’ certificates in Liverpool from 1934–35 to 1948–49 can be found at LRO 447MAG/11/1.

54 De Vesselitsky and Bulkley, ‘Moneylending’, 132–3.

55 Of 17 people applying for a certificate at the Marylebone Police Court, 13 were female. Times, 17 Aug. 1928, 9; in Glasgow, of the 57 women who applied for certificates, most were married and intended to carry on the business from their own homes. Times, 2 Dec. 1927, 7. A Greenwich magistrate noted the large number of female applicants who ‘seemed respectable and honest, but he doubted their intellectual capacity’. He adjourned their applications for a week to enable the women to become acquainted with the act. Times, 20 Jan. 1928, 5.

56 Mr Stonely to Mr Wilcox, 8 Nov. 1929, The National Archives (TNA), ‘Registration of moneylenders’; McGowan to Pool, 28 Nov. 1929; file note, 26 Sep. 1931, IR40/3555.

57 House of Commons Debates, vol. 223 (1928–29), col. 1732; ibid., vol. 278 (1932–33), col. 1276. On the eve of World War I, there were approximately 6,000–8,000 licensed lenders in Great Britain. Orchard and May, Moneylending in Great Britain, 148.

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60 O’Connell, Credit and Community, 162–5.

61 Times, 12 Aug. 1930, 15.

62 Lenders could agree to debt rescheduling if repayment difficulties were explained by a social worker. LRO/LPSSA, ‘Memories of the Personal Service Society’ (typescript memoirs of Mrs Stapleton, Liverpool, 1930), M364 PSS/11/5.

63 O’Connell, Credit and Community, 162–5.

64 As a ‘Lusitania widow’, Mary Fearon received a weekly Mercantile Marine pension.

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67 In 2012, the city had just 466,400 residents.

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74 Ibid., vol. II, 132–4.

75 Times, 7 Jan. 1931, 9; 7 Nov. 1936, 9; 29 Apr. 1937, 9; 1 Sep. 1938, 9.

76 LRO/LPSSA 10th AR (1928), PSS 3/1/7, 10–11.

77 LRO/LPSSA 12th AR (1930), PSS 3/1/9, 10; LPPS 17th Annual Report (Oct. 1934 – Sep. 1935), 3/1/12, 16–17.

78 LRO/LPSSA 19th AR (1 Oct. 1936 – 30 Sep. 1937), LPSS 3/1/13, 28–9; 23rd AR (1 Oct. 1940 – 30 Sep. 1941), PSS 3/1/17, 12.

79 LRO/LPSSA 9th AR (1927), LPSS 3/1/6, 15.

80 TNA, letter from B.J. Hyde, ‘London and Provincial Legal Aid to Moneylenders Licensing Department’, 29 Jun. 1929, IR 40/3555. Didlum was a savings club where savers put aside a sum each week in anticipation of spending on a special event such as Christmas, a wedding or a holiday.

81 TNA, records of the Metropolitan Police Office (MEPO), Detective Sergeant Fairchild to divisional inspector, 3 Feb. 1939; Kate Skillett, statement under caution, 17 Feb. 1939; assistant commissioner to Customs and Excise, 5 Aug. 1939, MEPO 2/4180.

82 Minkes, ‘Decline of pawnbroking’, 19–20. Unfortunately, Minkes does not provide a source for the moneylenders’ licence figure.

83 See Hughes, J., Port in a Storm. The Air Attacks on Liverpool and its Shipping in the Second World War (Birkenhead, 1993)Google Scholar.

84 Statements of Eliza Gregory, Annie Pike, Annie Viney and Annie Allen, all taken on 1 Feb. 1939, MEPO 2/4180, TNA. All were married women who lived in the same block of flats. Mrs Skillett, the lender, lived three miles away.