The 18th-century woman who made saving possible for the poor

0:00It's probably one of the greatest myths of economic history that women have spent most of history as housewives. The average woman had no choice but to work, but you were locked out of the banking system. So you really had nowhere to put your hard earned savings. And with it, no ability, of course, to earn interest on those savings, which, you know, was a great shame. So Priscilla took people's deposits, she invested them in bonds, and then she was able to return to her customers a 5 % interest.

0:45Today on the story of money, we are going to go back to the year 1798 in London. in the early decades of the British Industrial Revolution. There are power looms and canals and factories powered by steam engines. The city's population is exploding and it's a time of energy and opportunity. Absolutely. And in fact, in many ways, it's a lot like the emerging markets today. And the story we're going to tell is very salutary in that respect. But the key point to note or to start with is that although there were extraordinary opportunities for men at the time, women had far fewer opportunities, particularly married women.

1:29Yeah, and this was a time when thousands of people were migrating from the countryside to the new industrial towns and they were being paid relatively decent wages in cash for the first time pretty much in history. But they had nowhere really to put the money that they didn't spend right away. Again, there's a lot of parallels with what's happening in the emerging markets now. So just for a moment, though, imagine you're a hardworking woman in the late 1700s. You've got a bit of money that you've really struggled to collect. Not a fortune, but you want to keep it. So the question is, where do you put it if the banking system is closed to women?

2:08Well, yeah. Do you just stash it under the bed and hope for the best? Well, that's certainly one option, and many people have done that over the years. But there wasn't any safety with that. If you put it in a sock, someone might steal that sock. And yes, I'm guessing that sock didn't pay an interest, right? Absolutely not. However, there was a woman who decided to start changing it. And her name has often been written out of the history books, but she was called Priscilla Wakefield. She was an educational author and a Quaker who in 1798 set up the first ever Women and Children's Bank. And that would go on to change not just how banking worked for women, but in many ways create a precedent for everyone, which, as I said before, has got parallels to the emerging markets today.

2:54Okay, so while the Industrial Revolution was transforming machines and society and industry, she was transforming access to money. And I hate the phrase democratising anything really because it's usually a bit of a gimmick to sell something. But she was democratising access to money, right? Absolutely. Or the buzz phrase today is she was one of the first people to promote the concept of financial inclusion. So to talk about how she did that and the role that people like Priscilla Wakefield played, we're going to be devoting our episode today to precisely that extraordinary history. Welcome to the story of money with me, Gillian Tett.

3:36And me, Robin Wigglesworth.

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4:20And here to tell us all about Priscilla Wakefield and why she was so remarkable, we have Victoria Bateman. Hi, Victoria. Hello. Great to be with you. Lovely to have you as well. And Victoria, you describe yourself as a feminist economic historian and you're the author of Economica, a global history of women, wealth and power. Now, that's quite a mouthful that's not usually put together, is it? No, that's right. Well, economic histories have long been written by men, for men, about men, haven't they? I've noticed, yeah. I mean, basically, Robin, face it, you're outnumbered today. I know. Victoria, why do you think that is?

5:02Why aren't women normally in the history books around money? Well, I think even today when we think about bankers, financiers, investors, we think about men, don't we? And so I would say what's happened is that historians have projected back into history. And perhaps because they're not looking for women, they don't find them. But the funny thing is, once you do start to look for women, you find them everywhere. History is filled with wonderful, remarkable women bankers, merchants, entrepreneurs. Well, this is what we're going to be talking about today. OK, so we'll get to Priscilla Wakefield and exactly who she was in a moment.

5:45But first of all, Victoria, can you take us back time travelling to London in 1798? What did industrial Britain look like at the end of the 18th century? What kind of environment was Priscilla growing up in? Well, when she was born in the middle of the 18th century, Britain was at that time still relatively peripheral to the global economy. But in the course of her lifetime, Britain's economic fortunes were transformed. Britain became the richest country in the world. And that was in large part because of the Industrial Revolution. So, you know, this brings to mind those dark satanic mills, iron and steel foundries, coal mines.

6:37And with all of that, you know, the booming industrial economy also came booming trade. So, you know, the docks in London were filled with ships going back and forth, taking British manufacturers out to all four corners of the world. the world. So this was a real period of economic transformation, probably my favourite period in British history. Wow, because it's not often talking schools that much. But I'm curious, because it wasn't just an industrial revolution, though, was it? It was also quite a extraordinary moment of financial transformation as well. Tell us about that. Yeah, that's right.

7:16I mean, And the Industrial Revolution was very much preceded by a financial revolution that really helped to lay the groundwork. So really starting in the late 17th century and then continuing right through the 18th century, we saw the development of the London stock market. We saw the development of bond markets. We saw the development of the insurance industries. And, of course, banks really exploded onto the scene. So more and more of those kinds of merchant banks and private banks really setting up and building their customer base at this time. So it's an astonishing moment in history, great burst of energy and creativity, a lot like people have seen, say, in parts of Southeast Asia in recent years.

8:03But it wasn't that great for women, was it? Tell us about Priscilla and how she actually, you know, fitted into this picture. That's right. I mean, Priscilla Wakefield, she was born in 1751 into a preeminent Quaker family. Her father was a coal merchant, so he would have been very familiar with and indeed a part of the economic transformation that was taking place. But as a Quaker family, she would have been brought up with the idea that, you know, business and doing good were not mutually exclusive. She was, I think, aware that she had had grown up in a relatively privileged family, a relatively comfortable family.

8:56and she would have also been aware that there were a lot of other women in the economy who had things so much worse than she did and she wanted to do something to help those women. So give us a sense, I mean, could women work in those days and what kind of job did they have? So I would say it's probably one of the greatest myths of economic history that women have spent most of history as housewives. You know, the average woman had no choice but to work and to earn a living. So actually, you know, ordinary women were out there in the economy, but the kinds of jobs that they were doing, things like factory work.

9:39And of course, that was becoming increasingly important during the Industrial Revolution. also things like domestic service of course and interestingly retail so we know that women were really quite big on the entrepreneurial side of retail so there is a collection of business cards at the British Museum that contains the business cards of numerous female shop owners who lived and worked in London in the 18th century. So women did run their own shops. And they also sold, you know, hot buns from baskets outside the Bank of England. So that was really the kind of full range of opportunities open to working class women.

10:26And then in terms of, you know, more middle class women at the time, I mean, there were really three key occupations available to middle class women. So being a governess, being a lady's companion, or being a writer, which Priscilla Wakefield indeed was. Okay, but before we get into too much in terms of her work, what could people do with her money? Because these working women did make some money, right? What could they do with it? Were they just completely locked out of the banking system that was kind of springing up at the time? Yeah, so this is where we encounter the problem. So women could work, they could earn money.

11:07But, you know, particularly if you're an ordinary woman in the economy, you were locked out of the banking system. So you really had nowhere to put your hard earned savings. And with it, no ability, of course, to earn interest on those savings, which, you know, was a great shame. I mean, also, you know, this, you know, this period of economic transformation, I mean, inevitably, that brings, you know, potential economic challenges, you know, poverty is never that far away. You know, you think about labour markets, and, you know, new jobs all the time being created, but people as a result losing old jobs, and these booming cities that are, you know, exploding populations, but with it, They're hives of disease and in sanitary conditions, so high death rates and factories that are really quite dirty, grubby and dangerous places.

12:05So actually, there was a lot of reason for people to want to save. And particularly so at this time, there was just really a lack of financial infrastructure to allow ordinary women to save so that they could keep the wolf from the door if the bad times were to come. So Priscilla is lucky enough to be fairly middle class and she goes down the writing route. What books does she write and how successful were they? Yeah, yeah. So she wrote 17 books. Can you believe it? Across her lifetime. I feel embarrassed now. That's pathetic on my own behalf. So I've written four and I think, Robin, you've written two, haven't you?

12:48Yeah, that's, yeah, we need to wrap our game, Gillian. Exactly. Over to you, Robin. Yeah. Well, do you know one of the key ways to make money is by writing children's books? I have heard that, you know. You know, Julia Donaldson now has sold more books than even J.K. Rowling. Wow, is that true? Goodness. I have a lot of them because of my young children. Well, I think the reason why she went in the direction of children's books is that she grew up being homeschooled. So, you know, in the 18th century, this was a time when schools and universities were really just for boys. So women were locked out of educational institutions as well as being locked out of the banking system.

13:34And so she grew up being taught how to read and write by her mother. So she actually had seven sisters. So she and her seven sisters were essentially homeschooled by their mother. I mean, her mother must have been a remarkably knowledgeable woman. And I think, you know, Priscilla, that left her with a love of learning, a thirst for knowledge, but also a feeling that perhaps the way to improve women's opportunities in the economy was to write educational material aimed at the homeschooling market. and boy was that a profitable thing to do so she wrote all kinds of educational books aimed at children I mean one of her most famous which was an introduction to botany ran into multiple editions there it sold on both sides of the Atlantic it was translated into French so there was a real thirst for this homeschooling material.

14:47And, you know, again, this is a way in which Priscilla, as a Quaker, felt that she was both, you know, taking advantage of a business opportunity, you know, making money for herself, but at the same time doing something that was for the good of wider society. So here we have Priscilla writing all her books about botany and things like that and becoming essentially a best-selling author, earning lots of money. And then she runs into the same problem as working class women, and in fact, women of all types, which is that she doesn't know where to put it. So what happens next? So she very much believed that education was really just the start, that if you equip women with human capital so that they can then go on to get better jobs and earn a good wage, then that's a good start.

15:41But in addition to that, women needed access to physical capital. So they needed this ability to save and earn interest on their savings. So her next step was to set up the first bank for women and children. And she did that in her hometown of Tottenham in 1798. So that's really quite extraordinary. And in practical terms, was it just one bank and was it just run by women for women? Or was it a sort of bank that was part of a wider system? So it was just one bank and she started it off really with very little and against lots of opposition because, you know, at the time, people in her local community were saying, well, you know, is there really a need for a bank such as this?

16:36You know, do ordinary women really have the money to save? And do, you know, does the average, you know, poor child have the money to save? So there was actually a lot of opposition from the local community to her setting up this bank. So she did it without much support. She did it with relatively meagre means. So she didn't have, you know, plush offices of a kind that could be found, you know, in the average merchant bank in the city of London. What she instead did was to just borrow a desk at a local school where she would, you know, sit with her big leather ledger open in front of her. She would take up position there on the first Monday of every month.

17:19She would announce in the local press. That's where she could be found. And because she was a very trusted member of her community, then ordinary women, children came to her, handed over their hard-earned savings. And so that was really where it all began. Okay, so this just pulls the recap a little bit, because I mean, this is obviously happening against an incredibly fascinating backdrop. There's this financial revolution going on, as you talked about. We know it now as the Glorious Revolution, which was actually in 1688. But obviously, it's really starting to come into effect now in the 1700s, but second half of the 1700s.

18:02Finance had in Europe obviously been dominated, frankly, by the Italian city-states for a long time and some German banking families. The axis of financial power shifted towards the Netherlands then. And that's really what the Glorious Revolution was about. It was importing what people called as Dutch finance at the time, pejoratively, but it was kind of capitalism, to the UK. And you had the birth of the great British bond market, the console market. And these were seen, obviously, as far more reliable because they were issued by a country, a legitimate, proper country, rather than some fickle royal who might have your head chopped up.

18:40He didn't feel like paying you back. So I assume that just opens up so much more potential for people like Wakefield to do things, to set up businesses. There's a sense of, you know, anything goes, like the future is unwritten, right? That's absolutely true. I mean, boy, was London really catching up, as you say, with what had been going on in the continent at this time. And I think the bond market was really quite crucial because, you know, Wakefield, when she was taking those deposits, she needed a place of safety, you know, to put those deposits, to invest those deposits in, essentially, so that she could look after the people's money, you know, the money that was being entrusted in her and return some kind of interest to her customers.

19:31So those bonds were really important. And so, yes, so Priscilla took people's deposits, she invested them in bonds, and then she was able to return to her customers a 5 % interest. That's not bad. That's a pretty good rate by modern day standards. But I'm curious, I mean, first of all, were they literally carrying around bags of cash? Was that what was going on? And how does she keep the bank afloat if she was paying out 5 % of interest? Yeah, really great questions. I mean, the first thing I should say is that, you know, this was a bank for ordinary people. So people were not coming to her with great big wads of cash.

20:14This was, you know, this bank was set up with a view that the pennies make pounds. So actually, she would allow people, you know, as young as children to open an account with as little as a penny. And that's why her bank became known as the Penny Savings Bank. So it's really just lots of people investing small amounts, but doing so regularly in a way that, you know, over the years turns into a substantial nest egg, really. Well, it sounds like a lesson in financial literacy that if you start stocking away small amounts of money early on, then gradually over time, it begins to grow big. But was this business able to actually give her a wage or a living?

21:01Did she end up becoming a full-time banker instead of being an author as her main source of income? I mean, she was very much focused on her writing and she saw this bank as more of a charitable endeavour. She believed in helping other women to help themselves. So, you know, not a form of charity that was about handouts, but instead about providing the infrastructure, such as banking services that allowed people to build themselves out of poverty and to ensure themselves against the types of nasty things that could come in the future, you know, from job loss to sickness. So it sounds an awful lot like the kind of programs or mantra you see around things like Grameen or World Bank Development programs today where you're trying to give women financial inclusion and out of that the hope that they will then be able to lift themselves out of poverty and grow.

21:59Exactly. She was the mother of microfinance, of microlending. And in fact, she did offer loans as well. So if you came to her with a really good business idea as a poor woman in the local community, then she would also consider investing. But the first customer at the Penny Savings Bank of Tottenham was a 14-year-old orphan, right? Absolutely. A 14-year-old orphan girl who deposited about 20 shillings. So if you were just for inflation, that would be roughly about£160 today. And that orphan girl had, you know, she was already working. She was in the labour market and she had been saving this money.

22:48And she was desperate, really, for a place of safety so that she could deposit those savings and then continue to build on it from that point on. So that's precisely the kind of people that she was there to help. Well, pretty much the definition of financial inclusion, Gillian. But maybe the fact that she ran it as a charity, you know, as marrable as why it's called Barclays Bank, not Wakefields Bank today. I think she was related to the Barclays family, right? She was. She was related. So through her mother, that's right. Her mother came from the Berkeley family. So there was that heritage. And also her niece was Elizabeth Fry, so the prison reformer.

23:28Yeah. So, wow. A bit of sort of wanting to change the world must have been in her DNA, as it were. It very much was. Yes. OK, so we're going to take a quick break here. Victoria, when we come back, I really want to hear even more about Priscilla Wakefield's financial journey, the impact of this penny bank and maybe also how she ended up tragically in a bit of financial difficulty herself. So we'll see you after the break.

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24:38And we are back. So we're hearing the story of Priscilla Wakefield, a frankly underappreciated financial revolutionary who, at the end of the 18th century, founded this pioneering penny bank that I gather was hugely popular, right? And not just with the women and the orphans that it was originally set up for. So she does write in her journal. And goodness, did Priscilla keep a detailed journal. Great for us, though, right? That's right. So by the end of 1798, you know, the year that she first sets up this bank, she's writing that it's exceeded her expectations. And at the end of the year, she writes that it had been really hard work.

25:27She'd spent most of the year working on this bank. but that it had become so successful and it had given her immense pleasure. And she felt that it was very much a model that could be copied by other people throughout the country in order to broaden access to financial markets for ordinary people. Amazing. So that's basically financial collusion at work. And in fact, it was so successful, as I understand it, that although the bank was set up for women, men started to ask if they could join it too, didn't they? Exactly. So, you know, perhaps this is one of those rare examples where men have been discriminated against in financial history.

26:13Why don't people write more about that? You know, us poor men, we've struggled for so long unrecognised. Because what we've got to remember is, you know, at this time, ordinary people, regardless of their gender were really excluded from the banking system and that's because you know the average private bank didn't think that it could make much money from ordinary people's savings and so they had quite high minimum deposit requirements that you know the average person just wouldn't have been able to to meet so there was a wider problem really when it came to the banking system. And so when men came knocking on her door saying, hey, hang on a moment, Mrs Wakefield, we want bank accounts too.

27:02Will you take our savings? Then she truly obliged and she extended her accounts to ordinary men. So you created essentially a co-ed bank, which is fascinating. That's right. But what I think is so interesting, it clearly, you know, it was a fantastic success story. Then people, as they quite often are wont to do, will copy a success. Like they started spreading. Other people set up these penny banks, right? There's one in 1810, I think it was, and Reverend Henry Duncan created a Scottish one because he wanted to encourage thrift among the poor. So he accepted deposits as low as, what, six pence or something?

27:44Yeah, that's right. And that was in a largely rural community in Scotland, where you had a lot of, you know, agricultural labourers and cottagers. And again, he had a view that when it comes to saving, it's the pennies that make pounds. And so if you widen access to banking to ordinary people, you can actually achieve a great deal. Now, interestingly, he has gone down in many accounts as the founder of Savings Banks. But really, I think Priscilla Wakefield deserves that title. I think what the reverend got right was that he was a great marketeer. So boy, did he talk about his bank and spread knowledge of his bank and spread, you know, banking rules that he felt, you know, other people could copy.

28:36And he set this kind of clear public goal that he wanted a bank similar to his own in every parish in Scotland. I mean, so often women get written out of history, even when they've had the brilliant ideas first or are providing some of the key breakthroughs and support. But Priscilla didn't just stop at the bank, though. She had a much wider vision later on about how she wanted to change the world of finance, didn't she? So she I mean, she did so much behind the scenes. I mean, she she was a one woman wonder. She co-founded a school of industry for girls so that, you know, relatively underprivileged girls could be taught, you know, technical skills through which they could get better jobs.

29:24And she also set up what I think is probably one of the earliest pension schemes for women. And she also did that in the 1790s. And she provided really a system through which ordinary women could make regular deposits into their pension. And then once they reached the age of 65, they were entitled to a shilling a week. And if they reached the age of 70, they were entitled to two shillings a week. And do you know, if we adjust that for what's happened to incomes since, then that would be the equivalent of about two thirds of the state pension today. And this was in the 1790s, so well before there was the state pension, there was Priscilla Wakefield's pension scheme for women.

30:27Was there anything like this for women at the time? Or is this the very first of its kind? Certainly, it's the first documented example that I've seen. I mean, there are, interestingly, other examples throughout history in different parts of the world of women, including, for example, nuns on the Silk Road, setting up similar type schemes for women in the Far East. So there is a long history to this. Wow, Gillian, I think like the Buddhist women along the Silk Roads, that sounds like a future episode to me, to be honest. Definitely. It's very much my territory because we do a lot of Silk Road studies here at Cambridge.

31:06I thought it was anthropology friendly, basically. Absolutely, yes. But what about what's happening over in America at this time? Because there's quite a lot of examples of similar ideas starting to bubble up on the other side of the pond, aren't there? Yeah. So I would say Maggie Lena Walker was really the equivalent of Priscilla Wakefield on the other side of the Atlantic. So she was born in the 1860s. She was the daughter of a former enslaved woman. And so she had actually a much less privileged background than Priscilla Wakefield did. But nevertheless, she also went on to do similar things.

31:46So setting up, you know, pension schemes and saving schemes for the underserved African American community in the US. And in fact, she went on to become the first woman in the US to charter a bank. She did that in 1903. and it was called the St. Luke's Penny Savings Bank. And then we also have another of my favourite women from financial history, Hetty Green. Now, she came from a relatively middle class background and was also a Quaker like Priscilla Wakefield. And, you know, one of my favourite stories about Hetty Green is that when she was a teenage girl, She was sent to New York to be a debutante and her parents gave her a pot of money to spend on clothes and parties.

32:39And instead, she invested it in bonds and she came home. I love it. That's amazing. But with a small fortune. And from that point, she went on to invest. She invested in bonds, in real estate, in railways. and she eventually became the richest woman in the US, the first female tycoon in the US. I mean, she would be worth the equivalent of a billion dollars or more today. She was known as the witch of Wall Street. I personally think she'd be better known as the queen of Wall Street. Just go to the show, you don't need to get a husband to get ahead. I think we have some episodes here that we can do in the future.

33:28Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. I'd like to know more about her. Hetty Green, what was her financial strategy? What made her such a great investor? How did she do it, basically? Oh, well, didn't everyone want to know the secret of her success? So, in fact, a reporter asked her exactly that question at the time. and she replied, and I'll quote, I buy when things are low and nobody wants them. I keep them until they go up and people are crazy about them. This, I believe, is the secret of all successful businesses. That's proper like Graham and Dodd stuff, really. It's like value investing. It is, isn't it?

34:12Yeah, a long time ago. It is, yeah. Yeah, in the 19th century. Or Warren Buffett. She was a female Warren Buffett in some ways. she was absolutely okay so let's dive into the rest of priscilla wakefield's life i mean she's fit already i think quite a few lifetimes in your achievements already what happened to her so after he opened the penny bank she inspired all this change did all these good works what did the rest of her life look like so in addition to her you know enormously successful educational books she also, did you know, wrote a feminist masterpiece. And she very much saw this feminist work as a bit like a response to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.

34:58And I think, you know, we're all talking about Smith's Wealth of Nations, aren't we, this year? Because it's the 250th anniversary, isn't it, of the publication of that book? Yeah. And so she really wrote this book responding to that. And what she was doing was to really make the case for women's economic independence, for women's work, women's paid work to be respected and valued by society. So she put out this book, I believe, in 1798 called Reflections on the Conditions of the Female Sex, which isn't wildly snappy as a title, but is actually very profound. and it includes a very thought-provoking quote here, which is also quite long, but it's worth reading out.

35:49Can it be accounted for on any other ground than that of prejudice in a country like England, where commerce forms one of the principal sinews of the national strength, that degradation should attend the female who engages in the concerns of commerce, and she whose sense and resolution enable her to support herself is banished from that line of company of which she perhaps previously had forged a distinguished ornament. I mean, essentially what she's saying is that this country's going all in for commerce and financial revolution, but it looks down on women who actually go out and work for a living.

36:32Exactly right. And I think she was particularly concerned that amongst the really growing middle classes at the time, that there was this feeling that, you know, making money should just be for men, that making money was unfeminine. And that, she worried, left female entrepreneurs stigmatized, and as a result, perhaps discouraged from getting involved in the business world. And of course, you know, many, many women were involved in businesses throughout history, but they tended to be in family businesses. So behind the scenes with the, you know, Williams or Collins and sons above the door. So she really wanted women who were getting involved in business and making money to have the same respect, equal respect, the same respect that men had.

37:30Well, plus ça change, a lot of that's still a problem today, isn't it? It is. I mean, we think about the Trad Wife movement, for example. We think about women's economic rights and freedoms still being on a knife edge in some parts of the world. And I think there's a lot that we can learn from the writing of people like Priscilla Wakefield. So what happened with Priscilla Wakefield? How did her life end? I mean, did it end in some glorious triumph and recognition for her pioneering good works and commercial works? Or did it end some other way? I think I've probably already hinted at this, that it didn't end as well as maybe we would have liked.

38:13Well, you'd like to think that it ended well, but sadly it didn't. I mean, she had a lot of troubles within her family. and in particular her two sons caused her no end of stress and strain you know her two sons went into the business world but were not particularly good at it and ended up losing money and in all kinds of trouble but also her husband too so her husband who was a merchant and ended up on the edge of bankruptcy. I mean, this was ultimately why Priscilla was having to write more and more books because she became the chief income earner for the family. Oh, wow. So the bank was set up as a charity.

39:05That didn't make her money, all this other stuff and cost money. And so she was churning out books to try and keep her husband afloat, essentially, all this time. Exactly right. Exactly right. And she had an expanding family. I mean, she had three children, but 17 grandchildren. Oh, wow. That sounds like a nightmare. I mean, today that sounds like a nightmare, if I'm being honest. I mean, yeah, 17 books and 17 grandchildren. So perhaps she had to write one book for every grandchild. Now, in the middle of all that, what I find interesting is there's some evidence in historical records that after this extraordinary career and then a long period where she essentially had to bail everyone out or at least support them all.

39:45She herself then became quite sick and ended up in what was then called a madhouse. She was apparently a patient for paroxysms, as they called it there, which might have been any form of types of medical condition. It could have been postmenopausal depression or just a general sort of sense of malaise. They called it then female hysteria. And apparently she went to a very notorious madhouse called Barnes in Hoxton. Do we know much about what happened there and why she went there? Yes, that's right. I mean, she is recorded as a patient at what was known as Balm's Madhouse. We don't know for sure how she ended up in there, you know, whether a family member put her in there or whether she, you know, chose to go in there herself.

40:33I mean, I have questions about whether it really would be the latter because these places were not nice places. If you were, you know, feeling unwell, they were definitely not the places to recover. Now, sadly, this was the fate of so many women in this period, wasn't it? You know, finding themselves in an asylum. And I think the fact that Priscilla Wakefield, a respected member of her community from a relatively privileged background, could end up in one of these places. I mean, it's quite shocking, but it shows just how difficult it must have been for other less privileged women too. I mean, the good news is that she didn't stay in the madhouse forever.

41:19She did get out. And in fact, she spent the last few years of her life when she was, you know, by that point, quite elderly, living with her daughter, with whom she had a very happy relationship, unlike her two sons. and so had, you know, in older life, I think a happier retirement amongst her loved ones. And how old was she when she died? She was in her 80s. Wow. Not bad. Given life expectancy at the time, not bad at all. Well, also, I mean, these madhouses, I mean, this is the era of Bedlam, right? The famous psychiatric madhouse. And people got robbed blind there, right? I mean, it was basically a big scheme to rob people who had fallen hard times.

42:07Yeah. I mean, certainly when she was admitted to the madhouse, she was wearing really quite luxurious, expensive clothes. And what happened was that she was stripped, you know, left just in a little slip. and the people you know that stripped her basically told a lie said that Priscilla had thrown her clothes down the toilet that they were soiled and you know this was something that the staff at such mad houses regularly did to then appeal to the family and say we need a new set of clothes and then you know before you know it that would also supposedly end up down the toilet and there would be a demand for a new lot.

42:48So there was quite a racket going on. Well, I'm quite glad that after, frankly, all those financial troubles and the horrifically grim episode with the madhouse that she ended, hopefully, her life in at least some comfortable setting with her daughter and lived to a ripe old age. That's at least a semi-happy note to end Priscilla Wakefield's life on, I think. Deservedly so. But let's now swing to the modern day, because obviously this is a history of finance podcast, but we do want to talk about lessons for the here and now. The UK was essentially a developing country, right, when Wakefield lived.

43:28I mean, emerging market in today's parlance. And we can see trends like this in many developing countries, right, in places like India, sub-Saharan Africa. I'd love to hear whether you think we are seeing sort of a new Wakefield movement, as it were, thanks to things like digital technology. I think we are. And, you know, there still is a need for Priscilla Wakefield. You know, across the world, 740 million women still lack access to their own bank account. You know, in Africa, in the Middle East, it's something like six out of 10 women don't have their own bank account. So, boy, do we need more Priscilla Wakefields.

44:11But, you know, out there on the ground, women are doing precisely what she was doing. Financial markets, the financial system continues to innovate, continues to identify gaps and women, as well as men, continue to fill them. And there's a lot of research out there showing that when you invest in women in a developing country, the impact is dramatically higher than just investing in men because they look after their children, they teach their children and they build businesses with a great deal of determination and often integrity too. And of course, you now have digital platforms today, which in some ways can make it easier than ever.

44:55Things like M-Pacer in Kenya, which have really transformed access to finance and financial inclusion. Have you ever wondered what would have happened if she had had access to digital finance? Because she could have moved things around much faster, couldn't she? She could, and perhaps it would have been more of a business endeavour as opposed to simply a charitable endeavour. I mean, perhaps she could have been enormously wealthy by the end of her life. Well, I think she can be pretty happy about what she managed to achieve in her life anyway, whether she's ended wealthy or not. No prizes to be the wealthiest corpse in the graveyard after all.

45:33So true. But yeah, Victoria, I mean, what is your main takeaway? I mean, if there's one thing you want people to learn from the life of Priscilla Wakefield, what do you think that should be? Well, do you know, in my book, Economica, A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power, I show you that Priscilla Wakefield is just one of many remarkable female entrepreneurs, merchants, bankers, inventors and industrialists throughout history. You know, history is, I would say, in economic terms, one long and repeated story of rise and decline. You know, history is filled with surprises. You know, the baton of prosperity is constantly moving from one civilization to another.

46:22And that is the story that is at the heart of Economica. And it is the story that shouldn't be told without women. And so Economica, it's the first economic history of the world to be told through the eyes of women as well as men. So instead of history, it should be her story. Her story, exactly, in finance and much else. Well, we have lots of ideas for future episodes. I've been writing down furiously here as well. We're probably going to be sealing a few more characters from your book. Looking forward to the Hetty Green one. Me too. So thank you, Victoria, for teaching us to look at financial history afresh through new eyes.

47:05And that's it for the episode of Story of Money with me, Gillian Tett. And me, Robin Willsworth. We'll see you all back here next week.

47:53Thank you. Investing involves risk. Principal loss is possible.