A Private Bank as Lender of Last Resort Under the Classical Gold Standard.: The Business of the Bank of England, 1844‒1913

The author argues that the idea, that the Bank of England accepted Walter Bagehot's recommendations from around the 1870s onwards and adopted the role of lender of last resort for the British financial markets, is a misconception. The published balance sheets give this impression, but a closer analysis of the balance sheet shows that the Bank of England never lost sight of the profit motive and had tied its own hands through the composition of its asset portfolio in order to be able to intervene effectively in the case of crisis. Even the only serious threat to financial market stability in the period under review, the Baring crisis of 1890, could only be mastered thanks to a broad rescue operation, coordinated solely by the Bank of England. This experience obviously did not contribute to a lasting change in the orientation of the Bank’s business policy until the First World War.