1 00:00:05,800 --> 00:00:08,840 For over 200 years, London's financial districts 2 00:00:08,840 --> 00:00:11,680 have made Britain one of the wealthiest nations on Earth. 3 00:00:14,320 --> 00:00:18,560 Britain's bankers have juggled the country's fortunes, and, of course, 4 00:00:18,560 --> 00:00:22,360 in the process, made substantial sums for themselves. 5 00:00:22,360 --> 00:00:24,680 Bankers! 6 00:00:24,680 --> 00:00:27,400 Nowadays it's almost a term of abuse. 7 00:00:27,400 --> 00:00:29,960 Widely perceived as overpaid, greedy, 8 00:00:29,960 --> 00:00:33,040 self-serving, amoral, or actually dangerous, 9 00:00:33,040 --> 00:00:36,360 their reputation has fallen below that of estate agents, 10 00:00:36,360 --> 00:00:38,360 or even journalists. 11 00:00:39,920 --> 00:00:42,480 What would the current boss of Barclays give 12 00:00:42,480 --> 00:00:46,600 for the sort of coverage his predecessor was getting in 1809 13 00:00:46,600 --> 00:00:48,840 when The Morning Chronicle wrote, 14 00:00:48,840 --> 00:00:52,360 "We cannot form to ourselves, even in imagination, 15 00:00:52,360 --> 00:00:56,560 "the idea of a character more perfect than David Barclay, 16 00:00:56,560 --> 00:01:00,240 "distinguished by his talent, his integrity, his philanthropy, 17 00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:02,280 "his munificence. 18 00:01:02,280 --> 00:01:05,720 "No man was ever more active than David Barclay, 19 00:01:05,720 --> 00:01:09,960 "in promoting whatever might ameliorate the condition of man!" 20 00:01:12,240 --> 00:01:15,080 David Barclay was one of a new breed of financiers 21 00:01:15,080 --> 00:01:18,320 at the start of a century in which banking helped Britain 22 00:01:18,320 --> 00:01:21,040 build the richest empire in the world. 23 00:01:23,760 --> 00:01:28,200 But whilst the fat cats of Victorian finance achieved wealth on a scale 24 00:01:28,200 --> 00:01:31,000 never envisaged by their predecessors, 25 00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:34,520 they were far from being, as Peter Mandelson said he was, 26 00:01:34,520 --> 00:01:38,040 "Intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich." 27 00:01:39,240 --> 00:01:43,560 Rather their embarrassment of riches led to intense personal soul-searching 28 00:01:43,560 --> 00:01:47,480 and furious national debate about the moral purpose of money 29 00:01:47,480 --> 00:01:49,400 and its ability to corrupt. 30 00:01:50,800 --> 00:01:53,440 For some extraordinary individuals, 31 00:01:53,440 --> 00:01:55,840 this led to an outburst of generosity, 32 00:01:55,840 --> 00:01:59,160 an explosion of philanthropy. 33 00:01:59,160 --> 00:02:04,200 Difficult as it is to imagine it now, this was the age when bankers were good. 34 00:02:22,520 --> 00:02:24,720 At the start of the 19th century, 35 00:02:24,720 --> 00:02:29,120 the Industrial Revolution was transforming Britain's economy. 36 00:02:29,120 --> 00:02:32,840 Manufacturing and commerce needed credit and investment, 37 00:02:32,840 --> 00:02:36,160 so banks were springing up across the country. 38 00:02:36,160 --> 00:02:39,280 From barely a dozen outside London previously, 39 00:02:39,280 --> 00:02:42,240 by 1800 there were 370. 40 00:02:43,600 --> 00:02:45,440 There was the Barclay family, 41 00:02:45,440 --> 00:02:47,720 successful brewers, who became bankers. 42 00:02:47,720 --> 00:02:52,120 The Lloyds family, who moved from manufacturing iron to banking. 43 00:02:52,120 --> 00:02:54,400 And here in wealthy Norwich, 44 00:02:54,400 --> 00:02:58,200 the financial sector was dominated by the Gurneys. 45 00:03:00,080 --> 00:03:02,840 Samuel Gurney was a banker with three brothers, 46 00:03:02,840 --> 00:03:05,160 all bankers, too. 47 00:03:05,160 --> 00:03:09,640 And two of his sisters also chose imaginatively to marry bankers. 48 00:03:10,920 --> 00:03:13,840 The family was phenomenally successful - 49 00:03:13,840 --> 00:03:15,760 "as rich as the Gurneys" 50 00:03:15,760 --> 00:03:19,560 was contemporary shorthand for seriously loaded. 51 00:03:24,360 --> 00:03:28,720 But all that money didn't help the Gurneys sleep at night. 52 00:03:28,720 --> 00:03:33,400 Christians are told that it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven 53 00:03:33,400 --> 00:03:35,880 than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. 54 00:03:35,880 --> 00:03:40,360 And the Gurneys were not just Christians - they were Quakers. 55 00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:48,320 As Quakers, the Gurneys met to worship in restrained quietness, 56 00:03:48,320 --> 00:03:51,080 without liturgy, priests or singing. 57 00:03:54,280 --> 00:03:58,160 Their puritan faith valued modesty and simplicity, 58 00:03:58,160 --> 00:04:02,200 and they were taught to "beware the deceitfulness of riches." 59 00:04:05,320 --> 00:04:07,760 Yet paradoxically, at the turn of the 19th century, 60 00:04:07,760 --> 00:04:11,040 perhaps a quarter of English banks had Quaker origins - 61 00:04:11,040 --> 00:04:13,960 not just the Gurneys, but Barclays and Lloyds, too. 62 00:04:15,240 --> 00:04:20,080 Quakers were outsiders, and like other non-Anglicans, were barred from the professions, 63 00:04:20,080 --> 00:04:22,480 driving the ambitious into business. 64 00:04:23,560 --> 00:04:27,000 They were honest folk, um, rather self-righteous, 65 00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:29,440 rather priggish many of them. 66 00:04:29,440 --> 00:04:31,520 They got up early, they went to bed early, 67 00:04:31,520 --> 00:04:33,560 they didn't drink too much, 68 00:04:33,560 --> 00:04:36,400 and do all the things which most normal people do, 69 00:04:36,400 --> 00:04:39,000 led very virtuous lives and worked very hard. 70 00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:43,680 If you do all that in the world where capitalism is coming into growth, 71 00:04:43,680 --> 00:04:46,720 you're bound to end up as quite well heeled, or indeed 72 00:04:46,720 --> 00:04:50,560 very rich indeed as most of the Quakers that we know about did. 73 00:04:51,960 --> 00:04:54,800 The Gurneys were deeply conscious of the irony 74 00:04:54,800 --> 00:04:58,480 that the qualities of diligence, prudence and sobriety 75 00:04:58,480 --> 00:05:00,200 that their faith encouraged, 76 00:05:00,200 --> 00:05:03,960 also made them very good at getting very rich, 77 00:05:03,960 --> 00:05:06,880 which their faith discouraged. 78 00:05:07,960 --> 00:05:10,880 One brother worried in his diary. 79 00:05:10,880 --> 00:05:14,600 "It is a very serious thing to be so largely engaged 80 00:05:14,600 --> 00:05:18,280 "in the cares and transactions of money matters. 81 00:05:18,280 --> 00:05:22,640 "It calls for a real watchfulness against avarice." 82 00:05:24,960 --> 00:05:29,920 But for Samuel Gurney, banking could also be a genuine force for good. 83 00:05:29,920 --> 00:05:34,040 When Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs told the Sunday Times, 84 00:05:34,040 --> 00:05:38,080 not so long ago, that he and his fellow investment bankers 85 00:05:38,080 --> 00:05:41,680 were "doing God's work", everyone fell about laughing. 86 00:05:41,680 --> 00:05:45,280 He must be taking the mickey, no-one could mean that seriously. 87 00:05:45,280 --> 00:05:47,880 But that's exactly what Samuel Gurney believed. 88 00:05:47,880 --> 00:05:51,880 He felt that banking was his religious duty. 89 00:05:51,880 --> 00:05:55,400 He wrote to his brother, "The income it affords, 90 00:05:55,400 --> 00:05:58,760 "with its consequent influence and power, 91 00:05:58,760 --> 00:06:00,880 "is by no means to be despised. 92 00:06:00,880 --> 00:06:04,680 "Is it not a talent to be turned to good account?" 93 00:06:04,680 --> 00:06:07,560 So, to continue the biblical parable, 94 00:06:07,560 --> 00:06:10,640 if you have a talent for banking, you don't bury it in the ground, 95 00:06:10,640 --> 00:06:13,560 you make the money and you spend the money well. 96 00:06:15,480 --> 00:06:18,720 To reconcile the conflict between God and mammon, 97 00:06:18,720 --> 00:06:22,960 money and morals, the Gurneys gave away substantial sums. 98 00:06:22,960 --> 00:06:25,960 Their do-gooding stretched from poverty relief 99 00:06:25,960 --> 00:06:28,880 to the anti-slavery campaign, but they became 100 00:06:28,880 --> 00:06:33,360 most closely associated with the issue taken up by their sister. 101 00:06:35,400 --> 00:06:39,440 OK, ladies and gentlemen, free money. I'm giving away money. 102 00:06:39,440 --> 00:06:42,080 Just chucking it away. One simple question - 103 00:06:42,080 --> 00:06:44,880 who's the lady on the back of the five-pound note? 104 00:06:44,880 --> 00:06:46,960 Erm, it's not Edith Cavell? 105 00:06:46,960 --> 00:06:48,000 Near. 106 00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:50,400 The Queen? No, that's the lady on the front. 107 00:06:50,400 --> 00:06:52,320 Heroines. Boudicca? 108 00:06:52,320 --> 00:06:55,080 No. Is it Florence Nightingale? 109 00:06:55,080 --> 00:06:57,720 No. No, it's not Princess Diana! 110 00:06:57,720 --> 00:06:59,960 You're in Norwich, she was from here... 111 00:06:59,960 --> 00:07:02,600 THEY GIGGLE 112 00:07:02,600 --> 00:07:05,800 It's not Julian of Norwich? No. I don't know, I'm afraid. 113 00:07:05,800 --> 00:07:09,520 Sounds like a chocolate? Sounds like a chocolate? 114 00:07:09,520 --> 00:07:11,840 I don't know. Cadbury. 115 00:07:11,840 --> 00:07:14,600 No, the other lot, Quakers. Give me her name. 116 00:07:14,600 --> 00:07:18,240 Turkish delight. Fry! Elizabeth Fry! 117 00:07:18,240 --> 00:07:21,480 Elizabeth Fry! You're brilliant! Thank you! Thank you very much. 118 00:07:22,520 --> 00:07:25,440 Fantastic, five pounds, thank you very much. 119 00:07:26,800 --> 00:07:30,640 Elizabeth Fry, nee Gurney, was Samuel's big sister, 120 00:07:30,640 --> 00:07:33,680 who'd married another Quaker banker, Joseph Fry. 121 00:07:34,880 --> 00:07:39,760 Elizabeth, like her brothers, had a keen sense of the value of money. 122 00:07:39,760 --> 00:07:42,720 When her husband bought her a caricature as a gift, 123 00:07:42,720 --> 00:07:45,240 she scolded him for being a spendthrift. 124 00:07:46,880 --> 00:07:50,400 Poor Joseph - who always was rather financially inept - 125 00:07:50,400 --> 00:07:53,680 responded by throwing the present into the fire! 126 00:07:58,040 --> 00:08:02,120 Unhappy with the frivolity of her well-to-do banking life, 127 00:08:02,120 --> 00:08:06,840 Elizabeth determined to use her wealth to set the world to rights. 128 00:08:08,240 --> 00:08:12,480 She found her cause at Newgate, London's most notorious prison, 129 00:08:12,480 --> 00:08:17,080 recreated here with scrupulous realism by the BBC. 130 00:08:19,840 --> 00:08:23,920 You know what they call you, don't you? Savages! 131 00:08:23,920 --> 00:08:26,800 They lock you in a cage, they make you sleep on straw, 132 00:08:26,800 --> 00:08:29,160 they allow you to drink and gamble. 133 00:08:29,160 --> 00:08:32,280 Well, this is not the Lord's way, and we must change it. 134 00:08:33,640 --> 00:08:37,360 Introducing education and paid work for the prisoners, 135 00:08:37,360 --> 00:08:41,640 Fry determined to give them the habits of order, sobriety and industry 136 00:08:41,640 --> 00:08:44,160 which the Quakers believed were the key to life, 137 00:08:44,160 --> 00:08:46,560 whether you were a banker or a convict. 138 00:08:48,600 --> 00:08:51,280 Much to management's surprise, 139 00:08:51,280 --> 00:08:54,120 the reforms at Newgate proved a success. 140 00:08:56,160 --> 00:09:00,440 Fry went on to become the most famous prison reformer of her age. 141 00:09:00,440 --> 00:09:03,840 Her staunchest supporters were her banking brothers, 142 00:09:03,840 --> 00:09:05,920 who not only backed her financially, 143 00:09:05,920 --> 00:09:10,560 but joined her on research trips to prisons around Britain. 144 00:09:12,400 --> 00:09:16,280 But the Gurneys could never leave their day jobs for long. 145 00:09:16,280 --> 00:09:19,360 These were heady times to be in banking. 146 00:09:20,960 --> 00:09:23,920 The Gurneys' Quaker faith not only taught them 147 00:09:23,920 --> 00:09:26,040 to be wary of worldly avarice, 148 00:09:26,040 --> 00:09:28,840 of storing up their treasures on Earth, 149 00:09:28,840 --> 00:09:32,200 but also of the uncertainty of riches themselves. 150 00:09:32,200 --> 00:09:35,960 Finding the dividing line between speculative financial investment - 151 00:09:35,960 --> 00:09:37,840 which could be good for business - 152 00:09:37,840 --> 00:09:42,560 and gambling, the Devil's work, was not always straightforward. 153 00:09:45,200 --> 00:09:50,680 In 1825, a boom in speculation was followed by a stock market crash 154 00:09:50,680 --> 00:09:54,640 that caused one of the most severe financial crises Britain has ever known. 155 00:09:56,520 --> 00:10:00,640 Weeks of panic saw tumbling prices, a run on the banks, 156 00:10:00,640 --> 00:10:04,360 and even the Bank of England on the verge of collapse. 157 00:10:06,360 --> 00:10:09,120 Samuel Gurney shone in the crisis. 158 00:10:09,120 --> 00:10:13,040 With sound judgement and prudent lending, he rescued many, 159 00:10:13,040 --> 00:10:16,560 earning himself the nickname, the bankers' banker. 160 00:10:18,520 --> 00:10:21,560 But being prudent didn't mean being sentimental. 161 00:10:21,560 --> 00:10:26,360 In the credit crunch that followed, some 80 banks went bust, 162 00:10:26,360 --> 00:10:30,560 and Gurney did not save the bank run by his brother-in-law, Joseph Fry. 163 00:10:32,840 --> 00:10:35,480 Elizabeth's husband was declared bankrupt, 164 00:10:35,480 --> 00:10:37,880 a humiliating experience for a Quaker. 165 00:10:40,520 --> 00:10:43,560 The Quakers judged failure to pay back debt 166 00:10:43,560 --> 00:10:46,240 an unforgivable betrayal of trust. 167 00:10:46,240 --> 00:10:49,920 The bankrupt Joseph was thrown out of the Society of Friends 168 00:10:49,920 --> 00:10:52,960 and Elizabeth's reputation suffered too. 169 00:10:52,960 --> 00:10:56,680 This may seem harsh, but perhaps there's something to be said 170 00:10:56,680 --> 00:10:59,560 for a morality that valued personal integrity 171 00:10:59,560 --> 00:11:02,160 and prudence with other people's money, 172 00:11:02,160 --> 00:11:04,960 and considered financial recklessness, well, 173 00:11:04,960 --> 00:11:07,600 at the least, something to be embarrassed about. 174 00:11:07,600 --> 00:11:10,800 These days, when bankers mess up the economy, 175 00:11:10,800 --> 00:11:12,720 they seem to get off scot-free. 176 00:11:12,720 --> 00:11:16,680 Perhaps a bit of stern Quaker shame wouldn't go amiss. 177 00:11:20,080 --> 00:11:23,160 Despite her own financial ruin Elizabeth continued, 178 00:11:23,160 --> 00:11:25,240 aided by her philanthropic brothers, 179 00:11:25,240 --> 00:11:29,680 to speak up for prisoners and the poor for the rest of her life. 180 00:11:35,960 --> 00:11:39,640 Today, Newgate prison is long gone. 181 00:11:39,640 --> 00:11:41,920 On its site is the Old Bailey, 182 00:11:41,920 --> 00:11:44,480 the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales. 183 00:11:56,720 --> 00:12:00,480 And Elizabeth Fry is still, however, keeping an unflinching moral eye 184 00:12:00,480 --> 00:12:04,600 on all proceedings at the heart of British justice. 185 00:12:06,640 --> 00:12:09,320 Elizabeth Fry and her brothers, 186 00:12:09,320 --> 00:12:13,600 both in their philanthropy and their banking business, demonstrated to others 187 00:12:13,600 --> 00:12:19,200 that it was possible to keep your principles and your profitability, 188 00:12:19,200 --> 00:12:23,760 to create wealth and to use it to create a better society. 189 00:12:23,760 --> 00:12:27,600 And that there was a duty by those who had made good, 190 00:12:27,600 --> 00:12:28,800 to do good. 191 00:12:32,480 --> 00:12:35,800 Not all bankers were good, of course. 192 00:12:35,800 --> 00:12:37,880 Indeed, many of them had reputations 193 00:12:37,880 --> 00:12:41,640 somewhat less glowing than the Gurneys. 194 00:12:43,240 --> 00:12:46,320 Ebenezer Scrooge is only the most famous 195 00:12:46,320 --> 00:12:50,960 of a host of morally-dubious financiers in 19th century fiction. 196 00:12:50,960 --> 00:12:55,320 Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray and Eliot all wrote of greedy bankers, 197 00:12:55,320 --> 00:12:59,880 clinging to their ill-gotten gains, and lacking basic human charity. 198 00:13:02,760 --> 00:13:06,520 Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit is a credit crunch story, 199 00:13:06,520 --> 00:13:11,360 which depicts the terrible trail of misery caused by bad debt. 200 00:13:11,360 --> 00:13:14,400 The crooked financier Merdle ends up killing himself 201 00:13:14,400 --> 00:13:16,360 when his speculations fail. 202 00:13:18,600 --> 00:13:22,040 Dickens' banker, Merdle, is thought to be modelled 203 00:13:22,040 --> 00:13:24,880 on real-life banker and MP John Sadleir, 204 00:13:24,880 --> 00:13:28,120 founder of the Tipperary Joint Stock Bank. 205 00:13:28,120 --> 00:13:32,000 At first he was eminently successful as a businessman, 206 00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:36,440 but he over-stretched himself with reckless speculation on the stock exchange. 207 00:13:36,440 --> 00:13:38,840 He then tried to solve his problems 208 00:13:38,840 --> 00:13:42,760 by raising money with forged deeds and embezzled assets. 209 00:13:42,760 --> 00:13:45,080 When his swindles were about to be exposed, 210 00:13:45,080 --> 00:13:47,040 and his bank was about to go bust, 211 00:13:47,040 --> 00:13:51,080 Sadleir went to Hampstead Heath and committed suicide 212 00:13:51,080 --> 00:13:54,840 by drinking prussic acid out of a silver cream jug. 213 00:13:54,840 --> 00:13:57,720 "I cannot live", he wrote in a suicide note, 214 00:13:57,720 --> 00:13:59,440 "I have ruined too many. 215 00:13:59,440 --> 00:14:02,480 "I could not live and see their agony." 216 00:14:02,480 --> 00:14:05,320 You see, it's that Victorian shame again. 217 00:14:05,320 --> 00:14:10,000 No-one's suggesting that those responsible for the current financial crisis 218 00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:15,640 should do the equivalent and all go and throw themselves off tall buildings in Canary wharf. 219 00:14:15,640 --> 00:14:17,800 Well, not all of them obviously. 220 00:14:17,800 --> 00:14:21,760 But as a sign of repentance it is fairly impressive. 221 00:14:21,760 --> 00:14:25,800 Certainly a lot more convincing than giving yourself a bonus 222 00:14:25,800 --> 00:14:28,120 and saying, "It's time to move on." 223 00:14:36,680 --> 00:14:40,040 Today we rely less on disgrace and prussic acid 224 00:14:40,040 --> 00:14:42,240 to keep the banking community in check, 225 00:14:42,240 --> 00:14:45,120 and more on the Financial Services Authority, 226 00:14:45,120 --> 00:14:48,840 located in a tall building in Canary Wharf. 227 00:14:48,840 --> 00:14:52,240 Does it worry you that banking at the moment 228 00:14:52,240 --> 00:14:55,080 has a very poor reputation? 229 00:14:55,080 --> 00:14:57,400 Well, I think it's completely understandable, 230 00:14:57,400 --> 00:15:01,480 that the banking profession is not held in high esteem at the moment, 231 00:15:01,480 --> 00:15:04,280 after what happened in the financial crisis, 232 00:15:04,280 --> 00:15:08,080 and I think the banking industry, the intelligent people in it, 233 00:15:08,080 --> 00:15:11,320 realise that they are going to have to re-earn public trust. 234 00:15:11,320 --> 00:15:15,440 What we've got to have is a financial system 235 00:15:15,440 --> 00:15:18,400 which performs its necessary and important functions, 236 00:15:18,400 --> 00:15:19,640 and where people in it 237 00:15:19,640 --> 00:15:23,960 can feel proud of doing useful activities. 238 00:15:23,960 --> 00:15:27,000 To earnest Quakers like the Gurneys, 239 00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:29,800 there were problems with the very idea of banking, 240 00:15:29,800 --> 00:15:32,680 can it be a good activity? 241 00:15:32,680 --> 00:15:35,240 Well, I think it can, it undoubtedly can. 242 00:15:35,240 --> 00:15:37,920 I mean, first, I think it's important to realise 243 00:15:37,920 --> 00:15:39,840 it is very difficult to imagine 244 00:15:39,840 --> 00:15:44,040 the transformation in the standard of living of everybody in society, 245 00:15:44,040 --> 00:15:48,040 which has occurred over the last 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, 246 00:15:48,040 --> 00:15:50,800 without there being a banking and financial system. 247 00:15:50,800 --> 00:15:53,760 It's a fundamental part of how you take savings, 248 00:15:53,760 --> 00:15:56,800 surplus money from people who have savings, and work out 249 00:15:56,800 --> 00:16:00,440 how to put it productively in a way that produces investment and growth. 250 00:16:00,440 --> 00:16:03,600 So as long as they were doing the right sort of banking 251 00:16:03,600 --> 00:16:06,280 they should have been OK with their conscience. 252 00:16:06,280 --> 00:16:09,840 Do you think it dulls the moral sensibility? 253 00:16:09,840 --> 00:16:13,440 If you simply deal with something which is completely immaterial, 254 00:16:13,440 --> 00:16:18,160 right, money, things up and down on a screen, 255 00:16:18,160 --> 00:16:23,880 you can be in danger of not thinking about the value what you're doing. 256 00:16:23,880 --> 00:16:25,600 I think people need to realise 257 00:16:25,600 --> 00:16:29,320 that the process of dealing with things which are only, you know, 258 00:16:29,320 --> 00:16:32,760 digits on the paper or digits on the screen, 259 00:16:32,760 --> 00:16:35,400 you know, unless you're careful, 260 00:16:35,400 --> 00:16:39,680 can end up with a belief that money is the measure of all things 261 00:16:39,680 --> 00:16:45,160 rather than something, which it is perfectly legitimate to want to have 262 00:16:45,160 --> 00:16:50,800 as part of a wider life, which is hopefully socially useful as well. 263 00:17:00,200 --> 00:17:04,040 Plenty of people wanted to make money back in the Victorian City, 264 00:17:04,040 --> 00:17:07,840 which was increasingly seen as a place of opportunity, 265 00:17:07,840 --> 00:17:11,320 where even the humblest person had a chance to succeed. 266 00:17:17,080 --> 00:17:20,880 Meet George Peabody, the quintessential self-made man. 267 00:17:20,880 --> 00:17:24,160 Born in relative poverty in America, 268 00:17:24,160 --> 00:17:26,120 with very little formal education, 269 00:17:26,120 --> 00:17:28,840 his drive for success propelled him 270 00:17:28,840 --> 00:17:31,240 from lowly apprentice in a grocery store, 271 00:17:31,240 --> 00:17:33,400 to king of the dry goods business. 272 00:17:33,400 --> 00:17:35,760 When he moved to London in 1837 273 00:17:35,760 --> 00:17:39,200 he was already a man of serious substance. 274 00:17:39,200 --> 00:17:44,080 He seemed to embody that Victorian ideal of self help, 275 00:17:44,080 --> 00:17:46,280 that anybody could make good, 276 00:17:46,280 --> 00:17:51,160 provided they were sufficiently hardworking, thrifty, and determined. 277 00:17:51,160 --> 00:17:54,640 It's rather a double-edged sword though because it implies that 278 00:17:54,640 --> 00:17:57,440 if you ARE still stuck in poverty, it's your own fault, 279 00:17:57,440 --> 00:18:00,000 so bah humbug to you. 280 00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:04,200 Meanwhile Peabody worked so hard and saved so much money 281 00:18:04,200 --> 00:18:08,240 that some less generous people thought he was nothing more than a miser, 282 00:18:08,240 --> 00:18:10,840 a sort of real-life Scrooge. 283 00:18:13,720 --> 00:18:18,200 Despite his sizeable fortune George took a packed lunch to work every day, 284 00:18:18,200 --> 00:18:21,440 and if he sent the office boy out to buy him a bag of apples, 285 00:18:21,440 --> 00:18:23,600 which cost one pence ha'penny, 286 00:18:23,600 --> 00:18:26,440 he expected the change back from tuppence. 287 00:18:27,560 --> 00:18:31,160 He was living proof that if you look after the pennies 288 00:18:31,160 --> 00:18:34,640 the millions of pounds take care of themselves. 289 00:18:38,280 --> 00:18:42,280 In 1838 Peabody opened up a counting house. 290 00:18:42,280 --> 00:18:46,320 No longer just trading in dry goods but financing that trade too, 291 00:18:46,320 --> 00:18:49,440 he became what was known as a merchant banker. 292 00:18:51,920 --> 00:18:55,560 With no family, and no interests other than making money, 293 00:18:55,560 --> 00:19:00,240 parsimonious Peabody spent only 1% of his income. 294 00:19:00,240 --> 00:19:03,400 Everyone assumed he would take his millions to the grave, 295 00:19:03,400 --> 00:19:07,480 but in 1862 he proved them all wrong. 296 00:19:09,480 --> 00:19:12,240 These magnificent documents 297 00:19:12,240 --> 00:19:17,080 are the Deeds of Trust by which Peabody gave away his money. 298 00:19:17,080 --> 00:19:19,360 This one is for £100,000, 299 00:19:19,360 --> 00:19:22,760 this is £150,000, 300 00:19:22,760 --> 00:19:26,000 that's £200,000. 301 00:19:26,000 --> 00:19:27,840 They total half a million pounds, 302 00:19:27,840 --> 00:19:30,120 which is a staggering amount of money, then, 303 00:19:30,120 --> 00:19:33,720 and now would be worth something like 50 times that. 304 00:19:33,720 --> 00:19:36,280 Why did he do it? 305 00:19:36,280 --> 00:19:37,600 We don't really know. 306 00:19:37,600 --> 00:19:40,960 There's no evidence that he was particularly religious. 307 00:19:40,960 --> 00:19:44,320 It could be that he couldn't forget the poverty of his past. 308 00:19:44,320 --> 00:19:47,760 Or he could be trying to improve British American relations, 309 00:19:47,760 --> 00:19:50,400 the two countries were on the edge of war at the time. 310 00:19:50,400 --> 00:19:55,080 Perhaps he just wanted the glory of being a great philanthropist. 311 00:19:55,080 --> 00:19:59,560 I like to think he was visited by ghosts in the middle of the night like Scrooge, 312 00:19:59,560 --> 00:20:03,280 and decided he had to stop hoarding his money and start giving it away. 313 00:20:05,640 --> 00:20:07,720 Peabody declared his aim was to, 314 00:20:07,720 --> 00:20:11,320 "Ameliorate the condition of the poor and needy of London". 315 00:20:11,320 --> 00:20:14,560 The population explosion in the capital 316 00:20:14,560 --> 00:20:17,200 had created shockingly bad living conditions 317 00:20:17,200 --> 00:20:20,480 for the impoverished masses. 318 00:20:20,480 --> 00:20:23,960 There was no sense in those days that the government was obliged 319 00:20:23,960 --> 00:20:26,400 to make sure that the poor were properly housed. 320 00:20:26,400 --> 00:20:30,640 The only thing you were obliged to do was pick them out of the river if they'd actually died, 321 00:20:30,640 --> 00:20:34,080 pick them out of the gutter if there had been a cholera epidemic. 322 00:20:34,080 --> 00:20:37,600 And if they didn't work, thrash them and put them in the poor house, 323 00:20:37,600 --> 00:20:40,600 but the idea that you might give them somewhere decent to live 324 00:20:40,600 --> 00:20:42,560 didn't cross the minds of government. 325 00:20:46,440 --> 00:20:49,720 When the first Peabody Dwellings opened in 1864 326 00:20:49,720 --> 00:20:53,160 they must have seemed like Paradise on earth. 327 00:20:53,160 --> 00:20:55,960 They were designed around open courtyards, 328 00:20:55,960 --> 00:20:57,640 with their backs to the roads 329 00:20:57,640 --> 00:21:00,360 in a deliberate attempt to make tenants feel separate 330 00:21:00,360 --> 00:21:02,280 from the slums outside. 331 00:21:06,320 --> 00:21:09,000 They had unheard of luxuries 332 00:21:09,000 --> 00:21:10,520 like laundry rooms, 333 00:21:10,520 --> 00:21:11,920 free baths 334 00:21:11,920 --> 00:21:13,480 and rubbish collection... 335 00:21:13,480 --> 00:21:16,320 and best of all, space for children to play. 336 00:21:18,400 --> 00:21:22,560 No wonder Peabody properties became so much in demand, 337 00:21:22,560 --> 00:21:24,920 but only the right sort could apply. 338 00:21:26,880 --> 00:21:31,960 Even in his charity, Peabody pursued the ideals of self-help. 339 00:21:31,960 --> 00:21:36,840 Differentiating between the so-called "idle poor", and the "industrious poor", 340 00:21:36,840 --> 00:21:39,880 he wanted to help those who would help themselves, 341 00:21:39,880 --> 00:21:42,320 people who were hard working and thrifty, 342 00:21:42,320 --> 00:21:46,800 who were already trying to get out of poverty, as he himself had done. 343 00:21:46,800 --> 00:21:51,240 His homes were for those of "good moral character" 344 00:21:51,240 --> 00:21:55,600 who displayed this through "good conduct as a member of society". 345 00:21:58,800 --> 00:22:00,600 Oh, Hello. 346 00:22:00,600 --> 00:22:03,360 Hello, Joan. I'm Ian. Pleased to meet you. 347 00:22:03,360 --> 00:22:07,680 'Joan Gregory is a Peabody resident of excellent moral character.' 348 00:22:09,040 --> 00:22:13,400 Joan how long have you lived on the Peabody estate? 349 00:22:13,400 --> 00:22:18,680 Well, I would say 84 years because that's my age... Never! Yes. 350 00:22:18,680 --> 00:22:24,760 My grandfather come to the estate around 1899 or 1900. 351 00:22:24,760 --> 00:22:27,560 My mother was 1900 352 00:22:27,560 --> 00:22:32,240 and she started off the children born on the estate. 353 00:22:32,240 --> 00:22:38,400 Cor...they haven't moved much. R block, R block, R block... 354 00:22:38,400 --> 00:22:41,280 F Block! See that's round the other street! 355 00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:46,080 I get the feeling everyone was respectable. 356 00:22:46,080 --> 00:22:48,080 Well, I think so because 357 00:22:48,080 --> 00:22:50,800 the father had to have a job. 358 00:22:50,800 --> 00:22:52,640 Otherwise he couldn't pay the rent, 359 00:22:52,640 --> 00:22:57,280 and if you couldn't pay the rent you couldn't live on the estate. 360 00:22:57,280 --> 00:22:59,760 Do you think it was a good thing, what Peabody did? 361 00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:01,800 Setting up this special sort of housing? 362 00:23:01,800 --> 00:23:04,440 I think so. He done good with his money. 363 00:23:04,440 --> 00:23:08,480 Exactly! Do you think they do good with their money now? 364 00:23:08,480 --> 00:23:12,640 I don't know what would happen now if he was in the same position 365 00:23:12,640 --> 00:23:14,160 and still alive now. 366 00:23:14,160 --> 00:23:18,120 He would probably be with all the other bankers making profits 367 00:23:18,120 --> 00:23:21,240 and getting big bonuses. 368 00:23:26,360 --> 00:23:27,920 Impressive as it was, 369 00:23:27,920 --> 00:23:31,600 Peabody's charity was criticised from all sides. 370 00:23:31,600 --> 00:23:37,320 Some said he should target the really destitute who couldn't afford 2/6d a week. 371 00:23:37,320 --> 00:23:41,040 Meanwhile, the private landlords were furious 372 00:23:41,040 --> 00:23:45,040 because the Peabody estates offered such extraordinary value, 373 00:23:45,040 --> 00:23:49,200 undercutting their overpriced and hideous slums. 374 00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:51,920 But Peabody was a shrewd businessman 375 00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:54,760 and by targeting the labouring poor 376 00:23:54,760 --> 00:23:57,080 who could afford to pay some rent, 377 00:23:57,080 --> 00:24:03,320 the trust ensured that it made enough money to perpetuate itself indefinitely. 378 00:24:03,320 --> 00:24:07,000 It was, quite literally, the gift that kept on giving. 379 00:24:11,240 --> 00:24:14,840 Peabody estates sprung up rapidly across London, 380 00:24:14,840 --> 00:24:18,200 housing 2,000 people by 1869. 381 00:24:18,200 --> 00:24:21,880 30 years later it was ten times that. 382 00:24:21,880 --> 00:24:25,360 Now more than a century on, there are 50,000 people 383 00:24:25,360 --> 00:24:29,680 living in over 20,000 Peabody properties in the capital. 384 00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:33,960 Tell me what his legacy is now. 385 00:24:33,960 --> 00:24:38,640 I mean this was 150 years ago. How much is left? 386 00:24:38,640 --> 00:24:42,600 Well, we've got a surprising amount of the Victorian property left 387 00:24:42,600 --> 00:24:45,120 and it's really stood the test of time. 388 00:24:45,120 --> 00:24:47,600 But it's much more than that. 389 00:24:47,600 --> 00:24:51,840 So many people's lives have been touched by Peabody homes, 390 00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:56,280 and really made good and have used them as a stepping stone, 391 00:24:56,280 --> 00:24:59,120 a springboard, into a better way of life. 392 00:24:59,120 --> 00:25:02,440 I note you use the word "made good", 393 00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:07,440 Peabody would've liked that cos he wanted people of good moral character to live in his houses. 394 00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:10,520 Yes, that's, that's absolutely right, and it's something 395 00:25:10,520 --> 00:25:14,800 we've tried to keep going in the way that we operate now. 396 00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:18,840 Is there philanthropy on a Peabody scale, in Britain any more? 397 00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:22,200 I think that isn't the case 398 00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:25,520 and the Government has actually suggested that, 399 00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:29,320 there's a time for a cultural change in the banking sector 400 00:25:29,320 --> 00:25:36,760 to, er, encourage them, bankers, to make donations to charitable organisations, 401 00:25:36,760 --> 00:25:40,160 but, frankly, we haven't seen it yet. As yet... As yet! 402 00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:42,200 You're still waiting! 403 00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:51,680 Peabody had flourished at a time 404 00:25:51,680 --> 00:25:54,840 when banking was helping to transform Britain. 405 00:25:54,840 --> 00:25:58,920 The nation's savings funded railways, shipbuilding, 406 00:25:58,920 --> 00:26:03,120 and the new telegraph cables which kept the City in touch with faraway markets. 407 00:26:06,280 --> 00:26:09,600 Through the 19th century the Bank of England gradually assumed 408 00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:12,720 the responsibilities of a central bank. 409 00:26:15,760 --> 00:26:18,960 Several times a year throngs of people would arrive there 410 00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:23,400 for an occasion celebrated in one of the grandest rooms at the heart of the building. 411 00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:31,160 This is George Elgar Hicks' painting Dividend Day at the Bank of England. 412 00:26:31,160 --> 00:26:34,840 The Victorians loved these genre pictures of great national events 413 00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:38,080 where they, the public, were centre stage. 414 00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:42,160 And it shows how widespread banking and investment had become 415 00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:44,640 that this picture was such a huge hit 416 00:26:44,640 --> 00:26:47,440 when it was shown at the Royal Academy. 417 00:26:47,440 --> 00:26:51,480 What we have here is the public, the investors 418 00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:55,520 going to get their twice yearly interest on their investment. 419 00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:59,400 You see the sign says Consols which is consolidated debt. 420 00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:02,880 The people of England were financing the country 421 00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:07,720 and being rewarded with a small, 3% sometimes a bit more, 422 00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:09,760 but solid return on their money. 423 00:27:09,760 --> 00:27:16,480 The amazing thing about the picture is the cross section of people there who are now investing. 424 00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:20,720 Yes, there's a rich young lady giving the eye to a banker in a top hat, 425 00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:23,200 but it's not just the rich. 426 00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:26,200 In the corner there's someone quite clearly up from the country 427 00:27:26,200 --> 00:27:28,400 with his basket, scratching his head 428 00:27:28,400 --> 00:27:31,520 not quite sure if he's got the right return for his coupon, 429 00:27:31,520 --> 00:27:37,400 old people invalids, children, town, country, a widow, they're all there. 430 00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:40,440 It's an amazing cross section of middle Britain, 431 00:27:40,440 --> 00:27:44,680 to demonstrate that we had become a nation of shareholders. 432 00:27:49,760 --> 00:27:56,680 By 1850 nearly 40% of all assets held by British citizens were financial. 433 00:27:56,680 --> 00:28:00,160 But not all investments were as reliable as Bank of England stock. 434 00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:03,960 Speculating in the increasingly complicated and volatile money markets 435 00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:06,800 was a dangerous business. 436 00:28:09,280 --> 00:28:13,760 It was a jungle because it was absolutely unregulated 437 00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:16,800 and you only have to read the novels of the period 438 00:28:16,800 --> 00:28:20,680 to realise that whole human lives, and in indeed whole human communities, 439 00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:25,120 can be wrecked overnight by a rash investment in the City 440 00:28:25,120 --> 00:28:27,960 or by somebody speculating in a way they shouldn't do. 441 00:28:27,960 --> 00:28:33,280 Or by somebody gambling. It was basically a gambling casino. 442 00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:36,480 The intoxicating lure of easy riches could lead to recklessness 443 00:28:36,480 --> 00:28:39,960 from even the most level-headed. 444 00:28:39,960 --> 00:28:45,240 In 1866, just a decade after the risk-averse Samuel Gurney died, 445 00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:47,600 the firm which he'd built up so successfully. 446 00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:53,560 Overend & Gurney collapsed thanks to a Victorian version of subprime debt. 447 00:28:53,560 --> 00:28:55,760 It caused the last run on a British bank 448 00:28:55,760 --> 00:28:57,800 before 2007. 449 00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:03,120 As Walter Bagehot, then editor of the Economist, put it, 450 00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:07,040 "The partners at Overend & Gurney seem to have run their business 451 00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:09,840 "in a manner so reckless and foolish 452 00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:13,000 "that a child who had lent money in the City of London 453 00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:15,320 "would have lent it better." 454 00:29:15,320 --> 00:29:20,360 Poor, trustworthy Samuel Gurney must have been turning in his grave! 455 00:29:27,920 --> 00:29:31,480 One bank that did stay rock solid and reliable was Coutts. 456 00:29:44,320 --> 00:29:45,960 Thomas Coutts had built his bank up 457 00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:49,160 to be perhaps the most successful private bank in the country, 458 00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:51,240 able to count the royal family 459 00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:55,160 and much of the landed aristocracy among his customers. 460 00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:05,640 Today, all visitors to the boardroom pass through a room where 461 00:30:05,640 --> 00:30:09,320 the most important members of the family still hang on the walls. 462 00:30:15,600 --> 00:30:17,880 This is the venerable Thomas Coutts 463 00:30:17,880 --> 00:30:22,520 who had daughters but no male heir, and scandalised his family, 464 00:30:22,520 --> 00:30:24,960 not to mention the rest of society, 465 00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:29,720 when he decided at the age of 80 to marry the young, beautiful, 466 00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:32,880 dark-haired actress Harriet Mellon, 467 00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:35,560 who was less than half his age. 468 00:30:35,560 --> 00:30:39,360 On his death he bequeathed to her his entire fortune 469 00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:42,240 and his half share of the bank. 470 00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:45,680 You can imagine how popular she was with the Coutts daughters! 471 00:30:45,680 --> 00:30:49,200 Anyway on her death the entire family gathered to hear 472 00:30:49,200 --> 00:30:50,960 the will read out. 473 00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:54,680 You can imagine the scene. It was like something from a Victorian melodrama. 474 00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:58,080 There were the daughters, there were ten surviving grandchildren, 475 00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:01,840 and none of them knew how the family fortune would be distributed. 476 00:31:01,840 --> 00:31:05,160 The lawyers read out the will and dropped the bombshell. 477 00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:08,600 Harriet had left the lot, everything, 478 00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:12,280 the vast pile to the youngest grandchild 479 00:31:12,280 --> 00:31:15,280 Angela Burdett, age 23. 480 00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:21,680 All young Angela had to do was take the name Coutts, 481 00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:24,480 and promise not to marry a foreigner. 482 00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:28,560 Her romantic story made her an overnight celebrity. 483 00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:31,800 The newspapers came up with wild statistics to describe 484 00:31:31,800 --> 00:31:34,040 the size of her fortune. 485 00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:37,800 It would take 107 men to carry it in gold, 486 00:31:37,800 --> 00:31:40,320 over ten weeks to count it in sovereigns, 487 00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:43,600 and if it was laid out in crown pieces, 488 00:31:43,600 --> 00:31:46,720 the line would be over 113 miles long. 489 00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:53,960 She became the new darling of high society, 490 00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:55,960 with her lavish parties, 491 00:31:55,960 --> 00:32:00,560 fine clothes, impressive jewellery, love of small dogs - 492 00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:03,080 she even had a stalker who was imprisoned - 493 00:32:03,080 --> 00:32:06,920 she could have been a sort of Paris Hilton of her day. 494 00:32:06,920 --> 00:32:11,200 But Miss Burdett Coutts was neither particularly attractive nor terribly 495 00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:16,080 vivacious, though she did have, obviously, other attractions... 496 00:32:16,080 --> 00:32:17,520 millions of them! 497 00:32:17,520 --> 00:32:20,600 Eligible suitors queued up to propose marriage 498 00:32:20,600 --> 00:32:24,360 and press rumours linked her with everyone from the future Napoleon III 499 00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:26,640 to the Bishop of Oxford. 500 00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:30,080 But Miss Burdett Coutts was fiercely independent, 501 00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:34,480 wary of gold diggers, and had other plans for her future. 502 00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:41,200 Angela's vast wealth gave her far more power than other women of her time. 503 00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:44,520 She was free to turn philanthropy into a career. 504 00:32:44,520 --> 00:32:49,800 She turned for advice to that great observer of Victorian society, 505 00:32:49,800 --> 00:32:52,440 Charles Dickens. 506 00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:55,680 Dickens divided the charitable into two types. 507 00:32:55,680 --> 00:32:59,760 One, people who did a little and made a great deal of noise. 508 00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:04,440 The other, people who did a great deal and made no noise at all. 509 00:33:04,440 --> 00:33:08,040 His novels frequently ridicule blind, misplaced, 510 00:33:08,040 --> 00:33:09,840 or patronising do-gooding, 511 00:33:09,840 --> 00:33:13,480 creating characters like Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House, 512 00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:18,640 who is so concerned about the plight of natives in faraway Borrioboola-Gha 513 00:33:18,640 --> 00:33:22,040 that she totally neglects her own children. 514 00:33:22,040 --> 00:33:25,760 But Dickens considered Miss Burdett Coutts to be 515 00:33:25,760 --> 00:33:29,280 "the noblest spirit one could ever know". 516 00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:32,840 He didn't put her in a novel, he dedicated one to her. 517 00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:40,800 Using the wealth made from banking, 518 00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:44,840 Burdett Coutts gave away four times as much as Peabody. 519 00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:47,920 Indeed she contributed more millions, to more causes, 520 00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:52,520 than anyone before her, until she became a kind of British institution. 521 00:34:00,320 --> 00:34:04,760 Burdett-Coutts poured money in every direction where she saw need 522 00:34:04,760 --> 00:34:08,600 new schools, night schools, technical schools, sewing schools, 523 00:34:08,600 --> 00:34:10,880 training for teachers in the schools, 524 00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:14,120 new hospitals, training for nurses in the hospitals, 525 00:34:14,120 --> 00:34:17,960 libraries, scientific foundations, training for policemen, 526 00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:20,200 temperance societies to stop people drinking, 527 00:34:20,200 --> 00:34:23,000 drinking fountains to get them drinking water, 528 00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:24,600 soup kitchens for the poor, 529 00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:27,680 famine relief for Ireland, help for Muslim refugees, churches, 530 00:34:27,680 --> 00:34:29,760 bible classes, 531 00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:31,560 bishoprics in the colonies, 532 00:34:31,560 --> 00:34:34,000 the fishing industry, bee keeping, 533 00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:37,720 better conditions for flower girls, better conditions for boot blacks, 534 00:34:37,720 --> 00:34:41,720 free milk for children, the campaign against cruelty to children, 535 00:34:41,720 --> 00:34:43,720 the campaign against cruelty to animals, 536 00:34:43,720 --> 00:34:47,000 scholarship, art, cancer relief. 537 00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:49,360 No cause was too small... 538 00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:54,120 Angela Burdett Coutts was the first patron of the British goat society 539 00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:56,680 and she donated funds to make it possible 540 00:34:56,680 --> 00:35:00,760 and she was a very key player in the formative years. 541 00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:03,640 So why did she think goats were such a good idea? 542 00:35:03,640 --> 00:35:07,080 Because in Victorian times, they didn't have refrigerators and so on, 543 00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:08,600 so people needed milk. 544 00:35:08,600 --> 00:35:12,920 You couldn't buy milk and keep it, you needed a fresh supply of milk, 545 00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:15,720 so obviously for the average household, there was no way 546 00:35:15,720 --> 00:35:19,080 that they could afford to keep a cow but they could keep a goat 547 00:35:19,080 --> 00:35:21,680 quite easily and the goat would go in the garden 548 00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:24,080 and eat all sorts of wide variety of food 549 00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:26,520 and would produce fresh milk for the children. 550 00:35:26,520 --> 00:35:28,600 So they're perfect for the poor? 551 00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:30,480 Absolutely perfect. 552 00:35:30,480 --> 00:35:34,040 Now, is the goat community in need of help nowadays? 553 00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:35,680 Could you use some bankers? 554 00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:38,080 Yes, we could definitely use some bankers. 555 00:35:38,080 --> 00:35:41,880 The British Goat Society still does what it can to develop the goat, 556 00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:46,280 improve the goat, publicise the goat and of course, all that costs money. 557 00:35:46,280 --> 00:35:48,440 The Burdett Coutts of our time! 558 00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:50,360 We need them! We need them. 559 00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:51,760 I hope they're listening. 560 00:35:51,760 --> 00:35:52,760 Yes! 561 00:35:52,760 --> 00:35:53,800 GOAT BLEATS 562 00:35:56,640 --> 00:35:58,480 Hello, goat. 563 00:35:58,480 --> 00:36:02,320 Got any views on the role of charity as against the nanny state? 564 00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:03,360 GOAT BLEATS 565 00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:09,080 In recognition of all that Burdett Coutts had contributed, 566 00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:13,120 in 1871 Queen Victoria made her a Baroness, 567 00:36:13,120 --> 00:36:17,760 an extraordinary honour then for a woman to be given in her own right. 568 00:36:17,760 --> 00:36:20,840 Punch even dedicated a poem to her. 569 00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:24,040 It's called In Angelae Honorem, which is a pun 570 00:36:24,040 --> 00:36:27,560 on the words "angel" and "Angela", 571 00:36:27,560 --> 00:36:30,080 which they obviously thought was very amusing. 572 00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:33,440 "The Queen has made her noble, but ere that rank was given, 573 00:36:33,440 --> 00:36:36,960 "She had donned robe and coronet of the peerage made in Heaven. 574 00:36:36,960 --> 00:36:40,960 "Baptised in purer honour than from earthly fountain flows, 575 00:36:40,960 --> 00:36:45,840 "Raised to a prouder Upper House than our proud island knows." 576 00:36:45,840 --> 00:36:48,680 And it gets worse, if you can believe that. 577 00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:52,520 "If we needs must find her symbol, then carve and set on high 578 00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:56,120 "A heavily-laden camel going through the needle's eye." 579 00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:01,680 So Angela is so marvellous that the parable of the rich man 580 00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:04,920 and the eye of the needle no longer applies. 581 00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:07,840 But it does show you the esteem in which she was held 582 00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:09,400 by the general public. 583 00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:14,040 And Punch, the satirical magazine, makes no criticism of her at all. 584 00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:19,560 But Angela once wrote 585 00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:23,040 that her wealth had brought her little real happiness. 586 00:37:23,040 --> 00:37:24,960 She knew there was more to life. 587 00:37:26,640 --> 00:37:31,880 In February 1881, the Baroness, now in her late 60s, 588 00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:34,120 gathered a few close friends and family here, 589 00:37:34,120 --> 00:37:35,760 at Christ Church in Mayfair. 590 00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:38,240 They'd come to witness her marriage 591 00:37:38,240 --> 00:37:43,320 to her secretary, who was nearly 40 years her junior. 592 00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:47,200 The Burdett Coutts' wedding was the biggest scandal of the time. 593 00:37:47,200 --> 00:37:50,240 The partners at the bank were aghast, 594 00:37:50,240 --> 00:37:52,880 and the gossip columnists had a field day. 595 00:37:52,880 --> 00:37:56,960 The former Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, wrote to Queen Victoria, 596 00:37:56,960 --> 00:37:59,920 saying Lady Burdett's marriage is the greatest scrape 597 00:37:59,920 --> 00:38:02,840 since the war in Afghanistan. 598 00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:07,360 The Queen herself declared it "the madness of a silly old woman". 599 00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:11,320 And the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested that rather than marrying him, 600 00:38:11,320 --> 00:38:13,800 Burdett Coutts should adopt him. 601 00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:17,960 It wasn't just that her chosen husband was young 602 00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:20,480 and possibly a fortune hunter. 603 00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:23,960 It was worse than that. He was an American. 604 00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:28,240 By marrying a foreigner, she had broken the terms of her inheritance, 605 00:38:28,240 --> 00:38:34,080 so at a stroke, Angela Burdett Coutts sacrificed the majority of her wealth for love. 606 00:38:36,120 --> 00:38:41,080 The Baroness' charitable giving continued, though now much limited, 607 00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:43,640 but apparently she was finally happy. 608 00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:47,280 The great thing about money is that you're the lord of your own life, 609 00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:50,160 or lady of your own life in this case. 610 00:38:50,160 --> 00:38:53,640 And I think that with all these philanthropists, 611 00:38:53,640 --> 00:38:56,000 very deep inside them actually 612 00:38:56,000 --> 00:38:59,680 is a desire not to just share their great wealth 613 00:38:59,680 --> 00:39:02,920 but to get rid of it all, cos it's a kind of a burden, 614 00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:04,760 and it's a kind of filth. 615 00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:16,760 Philanthropy was now becoming fashionable. 616 00:39:16,760 --> 00:39:21,240 Victorians discovered that charity balls, like this one, 617 00:39:21,240 --> 00:39:26,240 were a popular and effective way to encourage the rich to give. 618 00:39:26,240 --> 00:39:30,520 In the mid-1880s, The Times claimed that the income of London charities 619 00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:34,320 was greater than the governments of several European countries. 620 00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:39,920 Yet some social commentators worried 621 00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:42,960 that the rich giving money wasn't enough. 622 00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:46,200 There was something intrinsically wrong with the free market, 623 00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:50,600 which wasn't making society fairer, but more unjust and materialistic. 624 00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:58,200 One fierce objector was John Ruskin, the great Victorian critic, 625 00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:03,040 whose essays Unto This Last attacked greed and unbridled capitalism. 626 00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:09,960 Ruskin would have recognised and shared contemporary concerns 627 00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:13,040 about bankers' excessive pay and bonuses. 628 00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:16,520 His book was an attack on that desire for riches, 629 00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:19,160 which ignores the wealth of the wider community. 630 00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:21,560 In fact, he defined two types of wealth. 631 00:40:21,560 --> 00:40:24,200 Wealth, which makes the world a better place, 632 00:40:24,200 --> 00:40:26,800 and illth, which is created for no purpose, 633 00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:29,240 and makes the world a worse place. 634 00:40:29,240 --> 00:40:31,440 Well-th and Ill-th - you see? 635 00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:38,600 Ruskin argued that the purpose of commerce needed to be about 636 00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:40,840 more than just adding shareholder value. 637 00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:45,720 He wrote, "It is no more the merchant's function to get profit 638 00:40:45,720 --> 00:40:50,680 "for himself than it is a clergyman's function to get his stipend". 639 00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:55,960 For Ruskin, the purpose of business is to provide for the nation. 640 00:40:55,960 --> 00:40:58,840 Ruskin thought a society would be genuinely rich 641 00:40:58,840 --> 00:41:03,120 when its citizens were happy, healthy and good. 642 00:41:03,120 --> 00:41:06,480 As he famously put it - "There is no wealth but life." 643 00:41:11,040 --> 00:41:13,240 What was so original about Ruskin, 644 00:41:13,240 --> 00:41:18,640 was that he realised that all this money that the Victorians had, 645 00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:21,480 far from being a blessing, was a curse, 646 00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:28,120 and the belching smoke and fumes and poison coming out of Victorian factories, 647 00:41:28,120 --> 00:41:32,000 for Ruskin were the storm clouds of the 19th century 648 00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:35,280 and they weren't just physical clouds wrecking the atmosphere, 649 00:41:35,280 --> 00:41:38,520 they were moral clouds of poison. 650 00:41:38,520 --> 00:41:40,560 Ruskin's ideas weren't too popular with economists. 651 00:41:40,560 --> 00:41:46,840 One reviewer felt he'd been preached to death by a mad governess. 652 00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:52,520 But 150 years on, we're again wrestling with the same questions. 653 00:41:54,360 --> 00:41:57,560 Surrounded by temples to Mammon, St Paul's Cathedral, 654 00:41:57,560 --> 00:42:03,520 has become the recent unexpected epicentre of this debate. 655 00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:08,440 A clash of values has stirred the nation, challenged the Church, 656 00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:10,720 and would cost its canon, Dr Giles Fraser, his job, 657 00:42:10,720 --> 00:42:12,840 shortly after he spoke to me. 658 00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:18,840 I think the Church should not condemn making money per se. 659 00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:22,360 It gives people jobs, it creates energy for the economy 660 00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:24,040 and there's nothing wrong with that. 661 00:42:24,040 --> 00:42:28,120 I think the Church has been too snooty about money for centuries. 662 00:42:28,120 --> 00:42:31,960 So I think that that side of things is fine, but, 663 00:42:31,960 --> 00:42:34,640 the one thing the Church has always said is that, 664 00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:37,840 the love of money is the root of all evil. 665 00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:39,560 Not money per se, but the love of money. 666 00:42:39,560 --> 00:42:42,720 Ruskin said at the time that a lot of the creation of money was, 667 00:42:42,720 --> 00:42:45,920 he called it illth, rather than wealth, 668 00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:48,800 but it's the same thing, he said it was socially useless. 669 00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:52,080 Do you think there are ways of commerce here that are useless? 670 00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:54,920 There are those who say that all forms of activity, 671 00:42:54,920 --> 00:42:58,960 even if you're buying a Porsche and wasting it in champagne bars, 672 00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:03,040 is generating jobs for people who make Porsches and who sell champagne, 673 00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:06,080 so to that extent, there is an argument. 674 00:43:06,080 --> 00:43:09,040 But I would say for the person who's doing all of that, 675 00:43:09,040 --> 00:43:11,320 it's actually corrupting. 676 00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:13,080 It's bad for you. 677 00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:17,400 I think people don't get the extent to which it is sort of corrosive of the soul. 678 00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:20,120 There are many more important things in life 679 00:43:20,120 --> 00:43:24,080 and that that level of wealth can actually distance you from 680 00:43:24,080 --> 00:43:27,560 other people and distance you from the great things in life. 681 00:43:27,560 --> 00:43:31,120 You can't live in a bubble, which is just the bubble of the rich, 682 00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:33,160 and forgetting the world around you. 683 00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:37,160 The City has to have much greater sense of responsibility 684 00:43:37,160 --> 00:43:39,400 for the world around it. 685 00:43:39,400 --> 00:43:43,040 Do you think bankers are sitting there, feeling guilty? 686 00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:44,640 No. 687 00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:46,160 No. I had a feeling they weren't. 688 00:43:46,160 --> 00:43:49,920 I don't see them kneeling in penitence! 689 00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:53,400 Did they ever get the message about how annoyed people were 690 00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:54,960 about their behaviour? 691 00:43:54,960 --> 00:43:57,440 Well, they feel beaten up by it. 692 00:43:57,440 --> 00:44:00,720 They feel a bit "woe is me" about it, 693 00:44:00,720 --> 00:44:03,640 but whether that's genuinely transformative, I'm not sure. 694 00:44:03,640 --> 00:44:07,080 And actually I don't think that the beating up of bankers 695 00:44:07,080 --> 00:44:09,520 always helps because I think what they need is, 696 00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:12,080 though I'm happy enough to beat up the bankers, 697 00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:14,880 but I think what they need is another model, 698 00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:18,760 a model of what banking could be, 699 00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:22,280 that is socially useful, that they can aspire to, they can grow into, 700 00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:24,960 and I think part of the problem with our society 701 00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:30,600 is we haven't given them a model of what socially-responsible banking could look like, 702 00:44:30,600 --> 00:44:33,360 which is what the Victorians precisely can do. 703 00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:42,360 By the start of the 20th century, Britain was in many ways 704 00:44:42,360 --> 00:44:47,280 unutterably different to the country inhabited by the Gurneys. 705 00:44:47,280 --> 00:44:52,160 London was now the capital of the biggest, richest empire in the world, 706 00:44:52,160 --> 00:44:56,000 and the bankers that had made it so, had become the wealthiest, 707 00:44:56,000 --> 00:44:59,840 most powerful, establishment figures of their age. 708 00:44:59,840 --> 00:45:04,040 No longer social outsiders, they were the new aristocracy 709 00:45:04,040 --> 00:45:07,720 and lived the life of the landed gentry on their country estates. 710 00:45:09,240 --> 00:45:13,200 Even - unthinkable a century earlier - if they were Jewish. 711 00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:19,920 Living here at Tring Park was the head of the richest 712 00:45:19,920 --> 00:45:23,160 and most famous banking family of all Europe - 713 00:45:23,160 --> 00:45:26,640 Nathaniel Rothschild, known as Natty to his friends. 714 00:45:31,480 --> 00:45:36,400 Despite his family pedigree, Natty wasn't a natural financier. 715 00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:39,920 He'd had to leave Cambridge without taking his degree exams 716 00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:42,720 for fear he'd fail maths. 717 00:45:42,720 --> 00:45:46,760 But that didn't stop him running the world's biggest bank, 718 00:45:46,760 --> 00:45:50,800 or being made Lord Rothschild, the first non-Christian ever 719 00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:54,160 to reach such giddy heights in British society. 720 00:45:57,840 --> 00:46:02,120 Natty loved playing lord of the manor, the grand country gent, 721 00:46:02,120 --> 00:46:04,000 hosting lavish hunting parties, 722 00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:07,880 in the manner of an old-fashioned, blue-blooded aristocrat. 723 00:46:07,880 --> 00:46:11,840 And why not? In many ways, that's exactly what he was. 724 00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:16,760 As part of the Rothschild banking dynasty, he had inherited wealth, 725 00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:19,400 status and power to match anyone in Britain. 726 00:46:25,520 --> 00:46:26,960 As a banking aristocrat, 727 00:46:26,960 --> 00:46:31,240 Lord Rothschild had a rather feudal sense of duty. 728 00:46:31,240 --> 00:46:34,920 An unusually generous landlord, he provided new cottages 729 00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:38,120 and free medical treatment for his estate employees in Tring. 730 00:46:39,560 --> 00:46:42,120 And at the bank, he created a department 731 00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:47,040 solely responsible for charity - an early example of corporate giving. 732 00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:51,080 Not that everyone was always grateful. 733 00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:55,800 The journalist Claud Cockburn, who grew up in Tring, 734 00:46:55,800 --> 00:46:59,280 tells the story of Lord Rothschild's birthday, when he announced 735 00:46:59,280 --> 00:47:02,920 that he would give a shilling to every child in the town of Tring. 736 00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:05,920 All they had to do was turn up at ten o'clock that morning 737 00:47:05,920 --> 00:47:07,240 outside the manor. 738 00:47:07,240 --> 00:47:08,800 Very generous, it seems. 739 00:47:08,800 --> 00:47:12,240 But Lord Rothschild had not reckoned with the enterprising people 740 00:47:12,240 --> 00:47:16,320 of Tring, who decided that perhaps they needed a few more children, 741 00:47:16,320 --> 00:47:19,400 so they imported them from neighbouring villages - 742 00:47:19,400 --> 00:47:21,800 cousins, friends, anyone. 743 00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:23,560 So the town was full the night before 744 00:47:23,560 --> 00:47:28,520 of children staying over in barns and outhouses ready for the big day. 745 00:47:28,520 --> 00:47:31,360 When the day dawned, there was Lord Rothschild, 746 00:47:31,360 --> 00:47:35,360 he'd set up trestle tables piled high with silver shillings, 747 00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:37,840 ready to give to the children. 748 00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:41,120 The gates opened and this flood of children came to get their shillings, 749 00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:43,360 and the ones who were first in the queue, 750 00:47:43,360 --> 00:47:46,600 took the shilling, ran round the back and then came forward again. 751 00:47:46,600 --> 00:47:49,520 So there was a constant queue of children being given 752 00:47:49,520 --> 00:47:52,080 these shillings, and of course they began to run out. 753 00:47:52,080 --> 00:47:55,760 And Lord Rothschild had to send out to Aylesbury, to Watford, 754 00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:58,000 even to London, to get more shillings. 755 00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:01,760 Even that wasn't good enough and eventually the pile disappeared. 756 00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:06,080 One father claimed that that day his children had made him the equivalent 757 00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:10,640 of two and a half weeks' wages, with two bottles of whisky thrown in. 758 00:48:10,640 --> 00:48:12,280 There's gratitude for you! 759 00:48:15,640 --> 00:48:19,920 Rothschild's wider charity was on a stupendous scale, 760 00:48:19,920 --> 00:48:22,560 particularly to the thousands of Jewish refugees 761 00:48:22,560 --> 00:48:25,480 who'd been coming to Britain since the 1880s 762 00:48:25,480 --> 00:48:27,840 to escape persecution in Russia. 763 00:48:27,840 --> 00:48:31,480 It wasn't just that he was sympathetic to their plight. 764 00:48:31,480 --> 00:48:33,480 To him, it was a religious obligation. 765 00:48:36,040 --> 00:48:38,360 This synagogue, Victorian London's finest, 766 00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:40,600 was founded by Natty's brother. 767 00:48:42,040 --> 00:48:45,520 Lord Rothschild was a very religious Jew, 768 00:48:45,520 --> 00:48:51,000 with a strong sense of noblesse or richesse oblige. 769 00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:53,200 And it's a fundamental principle of Judaism 770 00:48:53,200 --> 00:48:56,240 that all Jews are responsible for one another, 771 00:48:56,240 --> 00:49:00,920 and he realised here were people arriving, not knowing the language, 772 00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:04,800 many of them very poor indeed, and he felt an enormous patrician 773 00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:10,240 sense of responsibility, which is really a Jewish imperative. 774 00:49:10,240 --> 00:49:12,320 The amount of money he gave, 775 00:49:12,320 --> 00:49:17,520 there was something like £15,000 a year then for a Jewish school, 776 00:49:17,520 --> 00:49:19,800 there were youth clubs and housing projects. 777 00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:22,840 This is vast charity. 778 00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:26,920 Is that necessary? Is that compulsory? 779 00:49:26,920 --> 00:49:30,160 Absolute minimum 10%, 780 00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:33,880 but if you are wealthy, no limits. 781 00:49:33,880 --> 00:49:37,360 The key word in Judaism is "tzedakah", 782 00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:42,960 which you can't easily translate into English because it means both charity and justice. 783 00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:44,800 In English, something can't be both. 784 00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:48,440 If I give you £1,000 because I owe it to you, that's justice. 785 00:49:48,440 --> 00:49:51,920 If I don't owe it to you but I think you need it, that's charity, 786 00:49:51,920 --> 00:49:55,720 so it's either one or other. In Judaism, it's both. 787 00:49:55,720 --> 00:49:59,440 And therefore for us, tzedakah, which we'd see as charity, 788 00:49:59,440 --> 00:50:02,640 is not something we give out of the generosity of our heart 789 00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:05,080 it's something we give because we must. 790 00:50:06,880 --> 00:50:10,600 Rothschild used his money every way he could, 791 00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:12,720 even refusing to do business with Russia 792 00:50:12,720 --> 00:50:16,240 while persecution of the Jews continued there. 793 00:50:16,240 --> 00:50:20,600 But there were real limits to what he and others could do. 794 00:50:21,960 --> 00:50:24,000 So this was the conundrum. 795 00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:26,640 In Natty Rothschild, we have a very wealthy man 796 00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:30,120 who was genuinely trying to direct his wealth towards the public good. 797 00:50:30,120 --> 00:50:33,880 And not just his own wealth, that of the bank too. 798 00:50:33,880 --> 00:50:37,160 No-one could accuse him of not being philanthropic. 799 00:50:37,160 --> 00:50:40,880 And this do-gooding spread throughout the rest of society. 800 00:50:40,880 --> 00:50:45,120 A survey in the 1890s showed that the average British household 801 00:50:45,120 --> 00:50:49,000 was spending 10% of its income on charitable giving. 802 00:50:49,000 --> 00:50:54,240 That's the single largest item of expenditure apart from food. 803 00:50:54,240 --> 00:50:56,960 But despite all this generosity, 804 00:50:56,960 --> 00:51:00,560 the sad fact remained that poverty and distress 805 00:51:00,560 --> 00:51:04,840 was still all around and in some cases seemed to be getting worse. 806 00:51:04,840 --> 00:51:09,760 However extensive, however strategic, however well-directed, 807 00:51:09,760 --> 00:51:13,920 philanthropy on its own was never going to be enough. 808 00:51:19,200 --> 00:51:21,800 It was increasingly clear 809 00:51:21,800 --> 00:51:24,280 that though banking had made Britain great 810 00:51:24,280 --> 00:51:26,760 and the rich extraordinarily wealthy, 811 00:51:26,760 --> 00:51:30,000 it was not a progressive engine of social change. 812 00:51:31,840 --> 00:51:35,960 In fact, the country was facing extremes of destitution 813 00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:40,560 that no amount of thrift, self-help or do-gooding could solve. 814 00:51:42,200 --> 00:51:45,200 Some people began to think the unthinkable - 815 00:51:45,200 --> 00:51:49,680 that for a just society, the State itself would have to provide. 816 00:51:56,560 --> 00:52:01,320 In 1906, the new Liberal Government was elected with the radical agenda 817 00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:05,280 to "lift the shadow of the workhouse from the homes of the poor". 818 00:52:05,280 --> 00:52:06,600 They introduced reforms 819 00:52:06,600 --> 00:52:09,240 that laid the foundations for the Welfare State - 820 00:52:09,240 --> 00:52:13,480 free school meals, National Insurance, old age pensions. 821 00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:23,640 To pay for reform, in 1909, the Chancellor, Lloyd George, 822 00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:28,120 announced what became known as the People's Budget. 823 00:52:28,120 --> 00:52:32,400 It was the first British budget ever with the express purpose 824 00:52:32,400 --> 00:52:36,400 of using tax to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. 825 00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:41,560 For bankers like Rothschild, however philanthropic, 826 00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:42,840 this was heresy. 827 00:52:46,560 --> 00:52:51,280 Lord Rothschild was absolutely opposed to any increase in taxation. 828 00:52:51,280 --> 00:52:54,080 He believed the rich should do their duty to the poor, 829 00:52:54,080 --> 00:52:56,000 but that this should be voluntary, 830 00:52:56,000 --> 00:52:57,880 a matter of private conscience, 831 00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:00,520 and not something to be taken over by the State. 832 00:53:00,520 --> 00:53:02,080 What's more, he argued, 833 00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:06,120 capital should be free from taxation in order to accumulate, 834 00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:10,080 thus stimulating economic growth and benefiting everyone. 835 00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:13,560 It is exactly the same argument used by bankers today 836 00:53:13,560 --> 00:53:15,680 to resist State intervention. 837 00:53:15,680 --> 00:53:19,120 Lord Rothschild was up in arms about the People's Budget. 838 00:53:19,120 --> 00:53:22,720 He called a big protest meeting, and personally delivered 839 00:53:22,720 --> 00:53:26,040 a petition of complaint from the City to Westminster. 840 00:53:30,200 --> 00:53:33,680 Lord Rothschild was a political heavyweight, a big beast... 841 00:53:33,680 --> 00:53:35,480 but so was Lloyd George. 842 00:53:35,480 --> 00:53:39,960 The Chancellor hit back with a typical oratorical tirade. 843 00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:42,920 "I think we are having too much of Lord Rothschild. 844 00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:45,920 "You are not have estate duties or a super-tax. Why? 845 00:53:45,920 --> 00:53:48,760 "Because Lord Rothschild has signed a petition 846 00:53:48,760 --> 00:53:52,000 "on behalf of the bankers saying he will not stand for it. 847 00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:54,360 "You are not to have a tax on reversions. 848 00:53:54,360 --> 00:53:57,800 "Why? Because Lord Rothschild says it will not do. 849 00:53:57,800 --> 00:54:00,120 "You ought not to have old age pensions. 850 00:54:00,120 --> 00:54:03,760 "Why? Because Lord Rothschild said it could not be done. 851 00:54:03,760 --> 00:54:05,840 "Now, really, I would like to know, 852 00:54:05,840 --> 00:54:09,160 "is Lord Rothschild the dictator of this country? 853 00:54:09,160 --> 00:54:11,480 "Are we to have all the ways of reforms, 854 00:54:11,480 --> 00:54:15,800 "both social and financial, blocked simply by a notice board - 855 00:54:15,800 --> 00:54:19,000 "'No thoroughfare. By order of Lord Rothschild'?" 856 00:54:23,480 --> 00:54:28,200 It was a huge political struggle, but Natty had met his match. 857 00:54:28,200 --> 00:54:31,480 Lloyd George eventually got his budget through Parliament. 858 00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:44,680 And what of Lord Rothschild? 859 00:54:44,680 --> 00:54:47,000 Even he the came round eventually, 860 00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:50,000 in the extreme national crisis of 1914. 861 00:54:52,320 --> 00:54:56,160 "How are we pay for the war effort?" asked Lloyd George. 862 00:54:56,160 --> 00:54:59,920 "Tax the rich!" came the unlikely reply from Lord Rothschild. 863 00:54:59,920 --> 00:55:01,400 "And tax them heavily!" 864 00:55:03,080 --> 00:55:06,320 And that's been more or less the policy ever since. 865 00:55:12,880 --> 00:55:15,480 The 20th century was, overall, a great leveller. 866 00:55:15,480 --> 00:55:17,120 With increased tax, 867 00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:20,840 the Welfare State largely took over from philanthropy. 868 00:55:20,840 --> 00:55:23,840 Do-gooding was nationalised! 869 00:55:23,840 --> 00:55:27,480 So what should a rich banker today do with all that spare money 870 00:55:27,480 --> 00:55:29,080 left after tax? 871 00:55:32,800 --> 00:55:35,960 Not far from Tring is Waddesdon Manor, 872 00:55:35,960 --> 00:55:38,840 built by Natty's cousin, Ferdinand de Rothschild. 873 00:55:42,120 --> 00:55:46,320 If not happiness, it's amazing what money can buy! 874 00:55:52,640 --> 00:55:54,400 Now owned by the National Trust, 875 00:55:54,400 --> 00:55:57,560 it still benefits from another philanthropic financier - 876 00:55:57,560 --> 00:56:02,800 Natty's great-grandson, Jacob, the current Lord Rothschild. 877 00:56:02,800 --> 00:56:05,120 You still appear to be tithing. 878 00:56:05,120 --> 00:56:08,080 You're still giving 10% away, 879 00:56:08,080 --> 00:56:11,320 which is quite a lot more than a lot of people. Why is that? 880 00:56:11,320 --> 00:56:13,920 I'm not a hugely extravagant liver. 881 00:56:13,920 --> 00:56:15,840 I can't eat more than three meals a day. 882 00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:18,400 I don't want to live in a particularly big house. 883 00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:23,720 I love looking after a particularly big house at Waddesdon Manor. 884 00:56:23,720 --> 00:56:25,280 But, um, so why not? 885 00:56:26,560 --> 00:56:32,840 Is it possible to make a huge amount of money 886 00:56:32,840 --> 00:56:34,520 and still be good? 887 00:56:34,520 --> 00:56:39,360 It's difficult for many people to liberate themselves of their money. 888 00:56:39,360 --> 00:56:41,200 I think that can be a problem 889 00:56:41,200 --> 00:56:44,640 because it can become an obsessive pursuit, an addiction. 890 00:56:44,640 --> 00:56:46,480 But, um, if you look at Bill Gates - 891 00:56:46,480 --> 00:56:48,920 I don't know if he's the richest man in the world 892 00:56:48,920 --> 00:56:51,600 or the second or third richest man in the world - 893 00:56:51,600 --> 00:56:53,800 or similarly, Warren Buffett... 894 00:56:53,800 --> 00:56:57,280 In a sense they're like fishermen who put the fish back, aren't they? 895 00:56:57,280 --> 00:56:59,520 I mean, almost everything they've made, 896 00:56:59,520 --> 00:57:05,320 probably over 90% of what they've made, they've returned to the world. 897 00:57:05,320 --> 00:57:08,480 Do you think there comes a point, 898 00:57:08,480 --> 00:57:10,360 and maybe we're at it now, 899 00:57:10,360 --> 00:57:15,120 where the State can't do any more, can't afford to do any more 900 00:57:15,120 --> 00:57:19,400 and the wealthy have to put their hands deeper in their pockets? 901 00:57:19,400 --> 00:57:23,640 Well, I think if you put yourself in the position of the State... 902 00:57:23,640 --> 00:57:27,480 I mean, the State has to withdraw money. 903 00:57:27,480 --> 00:57:29,000 It's got to spend less. 904 00:57:29,000 --> 00:57:32,200 And, therefore, who's going to make up the difference? 905 00:57:32,200 --> 00:57:35,440 You have to encourage the philanthropic sector. Why not? 906 00:57:35,440 --> 00:57:39,720 The current anger about the City... all that talk of, 907 00:57:39,720 --> 00:57:43,400 "Oh, these people are socially useless. What are we doing here?" 908 00:57:43,400 --> 00:57:44,600 What can the bankers, 909 00:57:44,600 --> 00:57:48,320 what can the City do to assuage that anger? 910 00:57:48,320 --> 00:57:49,880 What can they do? 911 00:57:49,880 --> 00:57:53,560 Well, they can behave well and give back more. 912 00:57:57,760 --> 00:58:00,200 I'm sure that there'd be a lot less banker bashing today, 913 00:58:00,200 --> 00:58:02,120 if they followed the example of 914 00:58:02,120 --> 00:58:05,480 the best of their 19th century predecessors. 915 00:58:05,480 --> 00:58:09,360 Of course, the Gurney family, Peabody, Burdett-Coutts, 916 00:58:09,360 --> 00:58:11,560 Lord Rothschild were rooted in their time. 917 00:58:11,560 --> 00:58:13,520 But they wrestled with their consciences 918 00:58:13,520 --> 00:58:15,760 and they got out their chequebooks. 919 00:58:15,760 --> 00:58:19,120 Maybe societies get the bankers they deserve. 920 00:58:19,120 --> 00:58:22,720 Somehow, we accepted that greed was good 921 00:58:22,720 --> 00:58:27,120 and that probity, conscience, philanthropy, do-gooding, 922 00:58:27,120 --> 00:58:30,880 were boring, old-fashioned, Victorian values. 923 00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:33,400 Perhaps we were wrong. 924 00:58:55,240 --> 00:58:57,680 Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd 925 00:58:57,680 --> 00:59:00,440 E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk