Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History and Guide Arranged Alphabetically by Thomas T. Harman;Walter Showell
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page 39 of 741 (05%)
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Gibbins and Lowell, opened in 1826, but was joined to Birmingham Banking
Co. in 1829. Smith, Gray, Cooper and Co., of 1815, afterwards Gibbins, Smith, and Goode, went in 1825. ~Banknotes.~--Notes for 5/3 were issued in 1773. 300 counterfeit £1 notes, dated 1814, were found near Heathfield House, January 16, 1858. A noted forger of these shams is said to have resided in the immediate neighbourhood about the period named on the discovered "flimsies." When Boulton and Watt were trying to get the Act passed patenting their copying-press the officials of the Bank of England opposed it for fear it should lead to forgery of their notes, and several Members of Parliament actually tried to copy banknotes as they did their letters. ~Bankrupts.~--In the year 1882 (according to the _Daily Post_) there were 297 bankruptcies, compositions, or liquidations in Birmingham, the total amount of debts being a little over £400,000. The dividends ranged from 2d. to 15s. in the £, one-half the whole number, however, realising under 1s. 6d. The estimated aggregate loss to creditors is put at £243,000. ~Baptists.~--As far back as 1655, we have record of meetings or conferences of the Baptist churches in the Midland district, their representatives assembling at Warwick on the second day of the third month, and at Moreton-in-the-Marsh, on the 26th of the fourth month in that year. Those were the Cromwellian days of religious freedom, and we are somewhat surprised that no Birmingham Baptists should be among those who gathered together at the King's Head, at Moreton, on the last named date, as we find mention made of brethren from Warwick, Tewkesbury, |
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