SAVING THE OLD LADY OF THREADNEEDLE STREET

James Gillray famously portrayed the Bank of England as a fragile elderly lady in need of protection from the unwelcome overtures of Pitt the Younger. But this was just one of the Bank’s feminine personas. Anne Murphy, historian of eighteenth-century finance and Professor of History and Dean of the School of Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire, will trace depictions of the Bank from the warlike Britannia to the fickle Lady Credit and the vulnerable Old Lady. She will explain how the Bank’s ‘feminine side’ allowed it to connect with the nation and helped it secure protection from the financial demands of successive eighteenth-century governments.

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