The thread about the Leith Banking Company and its unusual banknotes
Today’s auction house artefact is this Leith Banking Company Twenty Pounds note from 1825, issued to the payee James Ker.
Leith Banking Company £20 note dated 1825
James Ker of Blackshiels esq. was the general manager of the Leith Banking Co. and lived at a fine Georgian townhouse at no. 24 Royal Circus in Edinburgh. His father, also James Ker of Blackshiels esq., had been one of the founding partners of the bank in 1792. The Kers were Jacobites and kept in the family’s possession an ornamental and incriminating drinking glass engraved with the royal cypher of the claimant James VIII of Scotland. Their predecessor, once again James Ker of Blackshiels esq., had acted as a banker to Charles Edward Stuart, the Bonny Prince and had been financially ruined as a result. But clearly along the lines the family fortune and status had been somewhat restored by the late 18th century (unlike the Stuarts!).
24 Royal Circus in Edinburgh’s New Town
So it’s rather unusual that a note made out to Ker is also signed on behalf of the bank by… Ker! As a director of the bank with which he held an account, he was fundamentally issuing his own pocket money (and that’s what it literally was, paper money that a gentleman could carry on his person)
At this time, banks issued notes to clients of sufficient standing on an individual basis, and the bank would number, sign and date every note by hand. This note has also been embossed with a 2 Shillings stamp, I’m not clear if this added or deducted that value to/from it .
Two Shillings and crown embossed stamp
And the engraving is a typical Leith scene, with a sailing ship entering the harbour. The “windmill” signal tower can be seen.
The Port of Leith
Bottom left is the mark of the engraver, John Beugo. Beugo is best known as the engraver of the portrait of Robert Burns by Alexander Naysmith. While mainly an artistic printmaker and engraver, he did turn his hands to banknotes, also doing work for the Commercial Bank of Scotland and British Linen Banks.
John Beugo’s mark
These notes were made on hard-wearing linen paper, which was produced in both Balerno and Penicuik (at mills both named Bank Mill for obvious reasons). Linen rags were a very important feedstock for the paper industry at this time (it’s where rag merchants made their money, see my thread about Asa Wass for more on the riches of this trade.) When you presented your note at the bank, it would be honoured. Deductions could be made from it, and interest or dividends paid on it, this was all noted down (by official stamp and by hand) on the back.
Various endorsements on the rear of an old banknote
These rather plain notes were promissory notes issued to the gentlemen of means that were customers of the bank. General notes of a fancier design were also issued. In 1822 the Leith Bank issued the world’s first commemorative note to mark the arrival of King George IV. The main image was based on Alexander Carse’s painting, which hangs in the Trinity House in Leith.
Leith Banking Company commemorative George IV One Guinea noteExcerpt from Carse’s painting
Two interesting features on this note. Firstly, at this time the Leith motto of “Persevere” was not in official use, instead the Latin “O Felicem Diem” just means “oh happy day!” in reference to George IV’s visit. And bottom left, “Fàilte don Rìgh“; “Welcome to the King!” I understand that this was the earliest use of Gaelic on a Scottish banknote; the Caledonian Banking Company did not open until 1836 and used “Tir Nam Beann, Nan Gleann, S’Nan Gaisgeach“, or “Land of Mountains, Glens and Heroes“. Walter Scott is known to have been a customer of the bank (from signed cheques that he drew on it), and one wonders if it was his influence on them that stimulated this romantic highland nostalgia in a lowland organisation.
£50 cheque signed by Walter Scott at Abbotsford in 1825 to pay his coachman and confidant, Peter Matheson, care of Scott’s agent, George Craig esq. of Galashiels.
Anyhoo, the Leith Banking Company was established in 1792 by 18 merchants of Edinburgh and Leith, who were its partners. It was based in Quality Street . Here we see James Ker (senior) was the original manager. Pattison and Pillans were two of the more prominent merchants in Leith.
Leith Banking Company. Foot of Quality Street.
In 1805 it moved from Quality Street to a purpose-built headquarters office in the style of the day, the architect was John Paterson (see also Seafield Baths).
Leith Banking Company HQ, Bernard Street. CC-by-SA 4.0 StephenCDicksonThe Leith Banking Company HQ, an engraving by H. S. Storer in 1820. © Edinburgh City Libraries
At this time, this was one of only 3 banks in Leith; the other two being the British Linen Company and the Commercial Banking Company of Scotland. All were established very close to each other in the commercial centre of the town, set amongst its finest buildings. The Leith Bank as it was known, prospered for a while, and extended branches to the bright lights of Callander, Dalkeith, Galashiels, Langholm and Carlisle.
Leith Banking Company £5 George IV note. This lacks the crest of Leith, and has a caricature of a sailor welcoming the King on the right, surrounded by “Huzza! O Felicem Diem”. © Edinburgh City Libraries
It had an agent in Glasgow and a travelling tent that visited provincial cattle and agricultural marts. The Lloyds Bank archives note that the Carlisle branch was registered as an English bank but was illegal according to an Act which forbade English provincial banks from having more than 6 partners! Trouble was brewing though, and the recession brought on by the “Panic of 1837” hit the bank’s business hard. The Glasgow Union Bank offered to buy it out but this was declined.
An American Whig cartoon showing the ill effects of the 1837 financial crisis
The bank soldiered on for a few more years until in 1842 it failed after a run caused debts of £123,582, including £10,000 of Leith notes in circulation. It was one of three Scottish provincial banks to fail that year, alongside the Renfrewshire and Shetland companies. According to newspaper reports of the time:
It was a very old established concern, but the business seems to have been dwindling away for some years, so that it has lately been considered of very little importance. The explanation which it is said has been given is, that one of the shareholders having retired from the concern, took the precaution of advertising his retirement in the newspapers, and that the depositors having taken alarm at this, a run on the bank commenced, and continued till it was deemed advisable to wind up its affairs
Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette, April 28th 1842
A further report stated that the partners possessed sufficient funds to pay all creditors and that “the public [were] not likely to lose any thing“. The dividends were 13s 4d per £1 on winding up, the partners were left “a reversion, a handsome one, we trust to themselves.” The Bank of Scotland took over the valuable agricultural and country clientèle at the Callendar branch and its remains were divided up by the Clydesdale Bank, its former headquarters on Bernard Street sold off to the National Bank of Scotland. The creditors of the the partners in the bank (JAmes Ker, Henry Johnston, George Craig and John Bisset) did not receive their dividend until 1848.
Footnote – in the archives of the Royal Bank of Scotland, there is something called the “spike file”. This is the sequential record (file) of the payment of promissory notes by the Drummonds Bank from 1781. When a client presented their bank note, the clerk would check their account balance, debit the relevant amount and cancel the bank note (the promissory notes were single use only) by defacing it, with a punch or cutting off a corner. It was then “filed” on a giant iron spike
The Spike File © Natwest Group Archives
The spike was retained as a record in case there was any quibble over payment, you could always go back to it and retrieve the note, on which the date and details of its payment would have been written by the clerk. The Drummonds’ spike got “filed” in a basement cupboard and forgotten about, which was then later walled up and forgotten about a bit more until recovered during renovations centuries later by which time the owner was the Royal Bank of Scotland.
And to bring us back round in a circle, Andrew Drummond of Drummond’s Bank was an Edinburgh goldsmith and financier who later established a bank under his name in London. Like the Kers, the Drummonds were Jacobites; his father was outlawed in 1690 for supporting James II, his brother died at Culloden.
Andrew Drummond, by Johan Zoffany, c. 1769
The (Andrew) Drummonds were not the same as the (George) Drummonds who were – appropriately – Hanoverians, supporters of King George. It is George Drummond for whom Drummond Place and Drummond Street in Edinburgh are named. George Drummond was a government loyalist who helped negotiate the Act of Union, was a 6-term Lord Provost of Edinburgh, a driving force behind the New Town and other public works of the “Modern Athens” such as the North Bridge and Royal Exchange – and ironically one of the founders of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Lord Provost George Drummond
If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.
These threads © 2017-2025, Andy Arthur.
NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
#AuctionHouseArtefact #Banking #Banks #Drummond #Edinburgh #Ker #Leith