Debts and Bankruptcy a Fresh Problem in Victorian London

            A cigar merchant’s failure, A musical composer’s failure, failure of Mr. Stewart Forbes: these all headlines found in the later half of the decade 1880-90s.  The Times began to feature an ever-growing amount stories focused on people or companies filing bankruptcy. These reports all sparsely and bluntly worded: mainly reporting cold-hard statistics of the failure. To a modern viewer these articles are, to an extent, insensitive and it seems outrageous to report the financial failures of these individuals so openly, but the frequency and mild popularity these reports enjoyed suggests that these types of things were common fair in Victorian London.

King's Bench Prison: a prison for debtors
Picture from Wikipedia

            Bankruptcy and debt collection was a fresh and rampant problem in Victorian London. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the trade of capital became the main driver of the economy and free enterprise more encouraged. With capital trading hands and with new business ventures sprouting and failing so quickly, a massive increase in creditors, debts, and bankruptcies makes senses. The increase of these cases was clearly a problem in the Britain as England’s parliament repeatedly passed new bankruptcy legislation. For example the debtor’s act, written in 1869, introduced new laws limiting courts from detaining debtors in special prisons. In the same year another act was passed that allowed any person to file for bankruptcy, rather than just merchants. Followed up this legislation with a Bankruptcy act in 1883.

            Let’s take a look at “the Failure of Mr. Stewart Forbes.” This report discusses the plight of Mr. Forbes, a man of some note. The report details Mr. Forbes bankruptcy order and also evaluates his property. Mr. Forbes owns a small moderately sized plot of land with a small castle. The report gives specific numbers for all these things: his land is 30 acres long, it sold for 5750 pounds, and his assets collected amounted to 2091 pounds. In addition, to the numbers the report also gives an attribution for the failure; Mr. Forbes attributes his failure to the paltry 5750 pounds the sale of his property garnered. The article is written with no opinion or bias: it is just a recitation of numbers. Directly below the article on Mr. Forbes is another that recounts some squabbles between an English financial official and the Republic of San Salvador. In addition to the many failure reports, there was a series of reports on the Queen’s Bench. The Queen’s Bench was a judicial court that dealt with certain cases, particularly bankruptcy.  The Queen’s bench ruled over the most important and/or controversial bankruptcy cases. From these two articles we can see that the problem of bankruptcy pervaded from the highest levels of society to the more middling ones; however, bankruptcy was also a problem with the more common people of London.

            These failure reports extend all the way down to the smallest merchants, builders etc: the lowest levels of the middle class. Failures of small merchants were all placed under the heading “Mercantile Failure.” For example on October 27^th, 1887, there was a report about an iron merchant. Again, the report gives the numbers and information about the failed debtor. In perhaps one of the most mundane articles of this type I have read, the Times reports on the failure of a cigar merchant. As usual the article details the numbers and an attribution of failure for the debtor but this article goes deeper than most of the “failure” news. The piece states which streets he has sold cigars on. The cigar merchant had worked on pall-mall street as well as cockspur street. The keen-eye of the article suggests reporting at a relatively localized level and also gives insight into the use of these type of articles.

            The bankruptcy reports were generally reports of not much uniqueness or news-worthiness with the exception of some of the Queen’s Bench articles. These reports were designed to better inform normal middle-class Londoners of economic happenings. These Londoners probably used it as a tool for making better economic decisions and also to simply figure out which companies were no longer in business. Though these reports may have been a tool for the reader, they also reveal a real and common thing in Victorian London: a large amount of bankruptcy.