Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy (52 page)

Insolvent debtors were held in local prisons, but The National Archives holds the records of some major debtors' prisons in London, including Marshalsea, Fleet, King's Bench and Queen's Bench prisons in series PRIS. From 1861 insolvent debtors were allowed to apply for bankruptcy, and as of 1869 debtors were no longer routinely sent to jail.

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Most case files for bankruptcy hearings do not survive, though The National Archives has some records in series B 3 and B 4, and more records pertaining to bankruptcies can be found in B 1 to B 10.

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Notices of bankruptcies and insolvent debtors' cases can be found in local and national newspapers, and Commissioners of Bankrupts published notices in the
London Gazette
.

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The Court of Bankruptcy was established in 1832, but before this a creditor had to petition the Lord Chancellor to commission a bankruptcy case. Proceedings in the Court of Bankruptcy under the Joint Stock Companies Acts of 1856 and 1857 are in series B 10 for the period 1857 to 1863. After 1869 records of the Board of Trade contain bankruptcy proceedings.

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The records of district bankruptcy courts set up after 1842 are held at local record offices.

You can learn more about the precarious life of a debtor by reading Lester Markham's book
Victorian Insolvency: Bankruptcy, Imprisonment for Debt, and Company Winding-Up in Nineteenth Century England.

The National Archives research guides, Legal Records Information 5: ‘Bankrupts and Insolvent Debtors 1710–1869' and Legal Records Information 6: ‘Bankruptcy Records after 1869' take a detailed look at all the records for English and Welsh debtors. The Society of Genealogists has two Bankrupts Directories for 1774–86 and 1820–43, microfiche copies of which are at The National Archives.

Similar records for Scotland can be found at the National Archives of Scotland, and information about tracing the records can be found via an online research guide under Court of Session – Sequestrations, as this court handled the sequestration of bankrupts' possessions under various laws passed in the nineteenth century.

Merchants were entrepreneurial businessmen whose prosperity grew from the seventeenth century as they sought trade with far-off places and brought riches to British ports. Renowned enterprises like the East India Company grew from humble origins, with a small group of London merchants forming the company in 1600, to being one of the most powerful companies in the world. Prior to the nineteenth century those people who traded in goods abroad also traded in people, with the booming slave trade supporting the wealth of many British merchants. The National Archives has produced research guides for people wanting to trace their ancestors' involvement in the British slave trade, in Overseas Records Information 22: ‘British Transatlantic Slave Trade: Introduction', Overseas Records Information 23: ‘British Transatlantic Slave Trade: Britain and the Trade' and Overseas Records Information 26: ‘British Transatlantic Slave Trade: Abolition'.

Nigella Lawson already knew a fair amount about her family's background; her mother, Vanessa Salmon, was an heiress born into the Lyons Coffee House dynasty and, given the high profile of Lyons cornerhouse tearooms as a quintessentially British institution, Nigella was acquainted with the history of the company – for example, the little-known fact that instead of trading in tea they originally sold tobacco under the name Salmon & Gluckstein. Yet this information enabled her to uncover business archives surrounding the family, and learn more about some of the founders of the company to whom she was related.

The starting point for Nigella's investigation was her mother's family, the Salmons, and their links to Lyons. Nigella already knew that her grandfather, Felix Salmon, was instrumental in running the company and shaping its direction towards the famous Lyons cornerhouse tearooms. Travelling around London, many of today's famous landmarks such as the Trocadero and Hard Rock Café were formerly in the possession of Lyons. Yet despite his success, Felix Salmon came across in family stories as a melancholy man, and one possible cause was his role during the Second World War. Although he was in the catering corps, Nigella discovered from research at the Imperial War Museum that he was likely to have been attached to one of the regiments that liberated the German concentration camp at Belsen. One cannot begin to imagine the trauma of the event, particularly since he was also Jewish, and worked in the catering corps responsible for famine relief for the liberated inmates.

Nigella continued to investigate the history of the company, and turned to Salmon & Gluckstein, the tobacco sellers, who claimed to be the largest in Europe at their launch in 1873. One of the founding fathers was her 2 x great-grandfather, Barnett Salmon. His surname was originally Solomon, and on the 1841 census it transpired that his father Aaron was a clothes dealer in the East End. Barnett started work as a travelling tobacco salesman. He married Helena Gluckstein in 1863, and went into business with his father-in-law Samuel Gluckstein. From consulting trade directories, where the business was advertised, and material in institutions such as the London Metropolitan Archives, Nigella was able to trace the success of the tobacco company, and the decision to branch out into other lines of business – and from these origins, Lyons was born in 1889. To ensure none of his family was ever threatened with poverty, Barnett set up a family fund, but equally insisted that none of the women were allowed to work. According to his will, Barnett was worth £3.5 million in today's money when he died, and – true to his word – he set up a trust fund for his wife worth
£
3/4 million.

Most major banks have an archive that they administer privately, such as the Lloyds TSB Group Archives. The records retained by banking archives vary greatly in content from complete staff and customer records to very little early material at all, and gaining access to information about customers' accounts is not always easy, even if the client has died and the information is very old. The Bank of England has an archive in Threadneedle Street, which holds staff records and details of some of its early customers' accounts dating back to 1694. There is more information about the Bank of England Archive on their website at www.bankofengland.co.uk/about/pages/history/archive/default.aspx. The Royal Bank of Scotland has a fantastic archive containing material dating back to the seventeenth century about its employees and customers. More information can be found at www.rbs.com under ‘About Us' and ‘Our Heritage'. Similarly, the banking firm established by the Rothschild family two centuries ago has extensive archives relating to the family's businesses in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna and Naples. The Rothschild Archive has a website at www.rothschildarchive.org where you can learn more about their collections.

You can establish whether the bank that your ancestor worked for, or had an account with, has an archive or has deposited its records at a public archive by consulting the National Register of Archives. Further guidance can be found in
British Banking: A Guide to Historical Records
by John Orbell and Alison Turton (Ashgate, 2001); for those researching early modern Scottish bankers try
The Scottish Provincial Banking Companies, 1747–1864
by Charles W. Munn.

Records of the East India Company are kept on open access at the British Library in the archives of the India Office, and are described in more detail online at www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indiaofficerecords/indiaofficehub.html and in the publication
India Office Library and Records: A Brief Guide to Biographical Sources
by C. J. Baxter.

An Australian historian, Dan Byrnes, has compiled information about international merchants and bankers from before 1400 to 2004. The site at www.danbyrnes.com.au/merchants provides genealogical and historical information about merchants and traders in a timeline format since the times of the Crusaders, and cites any sources used, providing a detailed bibliography. The Ulster Historical Foundation similarly has a database of the names of merchants and traders in Belfast, Londonderry, Lurgan and Armagh on its website at www.ancestryireland.com. Guildhall Library in London contains the records of City of London merchants and holds many directories of London merchants and bankers dating back to 1677.

The world's first professional body of accountants awarded a Royal Charter was the Edinburgh Society of Accountants, established in 1854. Since then there have been many accountancy institutions, societies and associations set up to give their members added status and legitimacy in the profession, many of which were eventually granted a Royal Charter enabling their members to use the title Chartered Accountant.

The principal institutions for accountants in Great Britain are the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (formed in 1880 as an amalgamation of the Institute of Accountants, the Society of Accountants in England, the Incorporated Society of Liverpool Accountants, the Manchester Institute of Accountants and the Sheffield Institute of Accountants), the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (formed in 1951 as an amalgamation of the Edinburgh Society of Accountants, the Glasgow Institute of Accountants and Actuaries and the Aberdeen Society of Accountants), and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (formed in 1888 covering both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland). To gain membership an entry exam needs to be passed and a certain amount of work experience is required, with various other restrictions applying as well. Accountants who could not gain access to one of the chartered institutes often joined another body whose membership requirements were not so rigid, such as the Scottish Institute of Accountants, formed in 1880, or the Society of Accountants and Auditors, formed in 1885. The first woman was not admitted into the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales until the 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act made it illegal to refuse women membership, although applications from female accountants had been received since the 1880s.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, which is represented by 22 district societies and 27 branch societies around the country, has retained the main set of membership records and indexes from 1870, and any enquiries should be sent in writing to:

The Registrar

Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales

Level 1, Metropolitan House

321 Avebury Boulevard

Milton Keynes

Buckinghamshire MK9 2FZ

‘
You may find a record of your ancestor among fire insurance policies
.'

The Institute's membership records include when an accountant was articled, when they passed their exams, and the firms that they worked for. Once you know the names of the firms your ancestor worked for you may then go about locating the company records. Details of other records of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales kept by the Institute may be found in Wendy Habgood's guide to the company records of around 180 chartered accountants in
Chartered Accountants in England and Wales: A Guide to Historical Records
(Manchester University Press, 1994). The book contains photographs of partners, records of salary books, accounts and partnership agreements. Some of the institute's records have been deposited at the Guildhall Library, comprising limited membership records for 1880–1942, some examination records for 1882–1949, staff registers for 1889–1933 and other material that is detailed in the Guildhall's online leaflet at www.history.ac.uk/gh/ghinfo9.htm. Unfortunately no records for the Society of Accountants in England, which formed in 1872 before it merged with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales in 1880, have survived, though records of the Incorporated Society of Liverpool Accountants, the Manchester Institute of Accountants, and the Sheffield Institute of Accountants, set up between 1870 and 1877, are held by the district societies.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has a section on its website to help genealogists who are trying to find out about their accountancy ancestors. The Accountancy Ancestors page can be found at www.icaew.co.uk/library. There is an obituaries index, a photograph index, a selection of life stories, and reports about accountants who fought in the First World War.

The historical records of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) and the Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen Societies that amalgamated to form the Institute, have been deposited at the National Archives of Scotland. Dr. Stephen P. Walker wrote
The Society of Accountants in Edinburgh 1854–1914
, containing genealogical information about some members. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland has offices and a library in both Dublin and Belfast. You can contact the office that covers the area where your accounting ancestor worked to find out where records of their membership and accountancy firm are held. The Belfast office in The Linenhall can be telephoned on 028 9032 1600 and the Dublin office at CA House can be contacted on +353 (0)1637 7227. The National Library of Ireland has some directories to members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, including one for 1917, among its collection of books and periodicals.

Peter Boys, an accountancy historian, has produced family trees showing the development of some of the big firms of the 1980s, located on www.icaew.co.uk/ library under ‘What's in a name: Firms' simplified family trees on the web'. The searchable database of corporate names includes the history of many Scottish firms as well. This source is useful if you are looking for information about an accountancy firm that is no longer in business or merged with another so that the company name changed
.