It is not a rose glow view of history that holds as fact that during the 19th century the world’s financier was, without doubt, Britain; that is to say London; that is to say The City; that is to say The Stock Exchange.
This is a contemporary take on that topic. When it was written it was about seven years after one worldwide crash and though the author did not know it, presaged the very beginning of another. This extract is from a much, much longer article on The Stock Exchange by John Pebody, published in The Gentleman’s Magazine (now that’s a title, n’est-ce pas?) in 1873. The magazine has been digitised almost in its entirety and it’s a mix of fiction (often novels such as Clytie published in parts), travelogues, current affairs and gossip. So that when you have tired of reading ersatz historically inaccurate novels such as Spufford and the like, you can get a real passport to that foreign country called the past, rather than a trip to an historical Disneyland, or perhaps more accurately a misplaced 21st century Westworld transmutation of the way it was.
