Modern Lessons in Financial Inclusion

It's probably one of the greatest myths of economic history that women have spent most of history as housewives. The average woman had no choice but to work, but you were locked out of the banking system. so you really had nowhere to put your hard earned savings and with it no ability of course to earn interest on those savings, which you know was a great shame. So Priscilla took people's deposits, she invested them in bonds and then she was able to return to her customers a five percent interest Today on the story of money, we are going to go back to the year seventeen ninety eight in London the early decades of the British Industrial Revolution Power looms and canals of factories powered by steam engines The city's population is exploding And it's a time of energy and opportunity Absolutely. And in fact, in many ways, it's a lot like the emerging markets today. and the story we're going to tell is very salitary in that respect The key point to note to start with is that although there were extraordinary opportunities for men at the time women had far fewer opportunities, particularly married women. Yeah. I this was a time when thousands of people were migrating from the countryside to the new industrial towns And they were being paid relatively decent wages in cash for the first time pretty much in history They had nowhere really to put the money that they didn't spend right away. Again, there's a lot of parallels with what's happening in the emerging markets now. So just for a moment though, imagine you were a hard working woman in the late seventeen hundreds You've got a bit of money that you've really struggled to collect Not a fortune, but you want to keep it So the question is where do you put it if the banking system is closed to women Well, yeah, do you just slash down the bed and hope for the best? Well, that's certainly one option and many people have done that over the years. But there wasn't any safety with that. If you put it in a sock, someone might steal that sock. And yes, I'm guessing that sock didn't pay an interest, right? Absolutely not. However There was a woman who decided to start changing it And her name has often been written out of the history books But she was called Priscilla Wakefield She was an educational author and a Quaker, who in seventeen ninety eight set up the first ever womomen and Children's bank. And that would go on to change not just how banking worked for women in many ways create a precedent for everyone which, as I said before, has got parallels to the emerging markets today Okay, so while the industrial Revolution was transforming machines and society and industry, she was transforming access to money. and I hate the phrase democratizing anything really because it's usually a bit of a gimmick to sell something. But she was democratizing access to money, right Absolutely. orr the buzz phrase today is she was one of the first people to promote the concept of financial inclusion So to talk about how she did that and the role that people like Priscilla Wakefield played, we're going to be devoting our episode today to precisely that extraordinary history Welcome to the Story of Money, with me, Jillian Tet and me Robin Weeelsworth Here to tell us all about Priscilla Wakefield and why she was so remarkable, we have Victoria Bateman Hi Victoria. Hello, great to be with you Lovely to have you as well. and Victoria, you describe yourself as a feminist economic historian And you're the author of Economica. a global history of women, wealth and power. Now that's quite a mouthful that's not usually put together, is it No, that's right. Well, economic histories have long been written by men for men, about men, haven't they? I've noticed, yeah. I mean, basically Robin fays that you're outnumbered today. I know. Victoria, why do you think that is? Why aren't women normally in the history books around money Well, I think you know even today when we think about bankers, financiers, investors, we think about men, don't we? And so I would say what's happened is that historians have projected back into history. and perhaps because they're not looking for women They don't find them. But the funny thing is once you do start to look for women, you find them Everywhere, history is filled with wonderful, remarkable women, bankers, merchants, entrepreneurs. Well this is what we're going to be talking about today. Okay, so we'll get to Priscilla Wakefield and exactly who she was in a moment. First of all, Victoria, can you take us back Time traveling to London in seventeen ninety eight What did industrial Britain look like at the end of the eighteenth century? What kind of environment was Pricilily growing up in? she was born in the middle of the eighteenth century Britain was at that time still relatively peripheral to the global economy. but in the course of her lifetime, Britain's economic fortunes were transformed. Britain became the richest country in the world, and that was in large part because of the industrial revolutions. So you this brings to mind those dark satanic mills iron and steel foundries, coal mines. And with all of that, you know the booming industrial economy also came booming trade. So you know the docks in London were filled with ships going back and forth, taking British manufacturers out to all four corners of the world so this was a real period of economic transformation, probably my favourite period in British history. Wow, because it's not often tau in schools that much, but I'm curious because it wasn't just an industrial revolution though, was it? It was also quite an extraordinary moment of financial transformation as well Tell us about that Yeah, that's right. I mean, the industrial Revolution was very much preceded by a financial revolution that really helped to lay the groundwork. So really starting in the late seventeenth century and then continuing right through the eighteenth century, we saw the development of the London stock market. We saw the development of bond markets. We saw the development of the insurance industries And of course Banks really exploded onto the scenes. so more and more of those kinds of merchant banks and private banks really setting up and building their customer base at this time. So it's an astonishing moment in history, great birsts of energy and creativity, a lot like people have seen, say, in parts of Southeast Asia in recent years It wasn't that great for women, was it? Tell us about Priscilla and how she actually you know fitted into this picture That's right. I mean, Priscilla Wakefield, she was born in seventeen fifty one into a preeminent Quaker family. Her father was a coal merchant, so he would have been very familiar with and indeed a part of the economic transformation that was taking place As a Quaker family, she would have been brought up with the idea that you know business and doing good were not mutually exclusive She was, I think, aware that she had grown up in a relatively privileged family, a relatively comfortable family and she would have also been aware that There were a lot of other women in the economy who had things so much worse than she did. and she wanted to do something to help those women I it was a sense. I mean, could women work in those days and what kind of job did they have So I would say it's probably one of the greatest myths of economic history that women have spent most of history as housewives. You The average woman had no choice but to work and to earn a living. So actually, know ordinary women were out there in the economy, but the kinds of jobs that they were doing Things like factory work, and of course that was becoming increasingly important during the Industrial Revolution, also things like domestic service, of course. And interestingly, retail. So we know that women were really quite big on the entrepreneurial side of retail. so there is a collection of business cards at the British Museum contains the business cards of numerous female shop owners who lived and worked in London in the eighteenth century. So women did run their own shops and they also sold you know hot buns from baskets outside the Bank of England. So that was really the kind of full range of opportunities open to working class women. And then in terms of you know more middle class women at the time There were really three key occupations available to middle class women. So being a governess, being a lady's companion H Being a writer, which Priscilla Wakefield indeed was Before we get into too much in terms of her work people do with her money because these working women did make some money, right? U what could they do with it? Were they just completely locked out of the banking system? That was kind of springing up at the time This is where we encounter the problem So women could work. they could earn money But you know, particularly if you're an ordinary woman in the economy, you were locked out of the banking system. So you really had nowhere to put your hard earned savings and with it, no ability, of course, to earn interest on those savings, which you was a great shame. I mean also period of economic transformation. I mean, inevitably brings, you know potential Economic challenges know poverty is never that far away. know you think about labour markets and new jobs all the time being created, but people as a result losing old jobs. and these booming cities that are exploding populations, but with it they're hives of disease and in sanitary conditions high death rates and factories that are really quite dirty, you know grubby and dangerous places. So actually there was a lot of reason for people to want to save and particularly so at this time. there was just really a lack of financial infrastructure to allow ordinary women to save so that they could, you know, keep the wolf from the door if the bad times were to come So Priscilla is lucky enough to be fairly middle class and she goes down the writing route What books does she write and how successful were they Yes, so she wrote seventeen books, can you believe? seventeen her lifetime? I feel embarrassed now. That's's pathetic on my own behalf. So I've written four and I think Robin, you've written two, haven't? Yeah,'s we need to wp our game, Jillian.. Exactly. Over to you, Robin. Yeah. Well, do you know, one of the key ways to make money is by writing children's books I have heard that, you know You know, Julia Donalelson now has sold more books than even J KK Rowling Wow, is that true? goodood? I have a lot of them because of my young children. so Yeah. Well, know, I think the reason why she went in the direction of children's books is that you know, she grew up being homes schooled. So you know, in the eighteenth century, this was a time when schools and universities were really just for boys. know so women were locked out of educational institutions as well as being locked out of the banking system And so she grew up being taught how to read and write by her mother So she actually had seven sisters. So she and her seven sisters were essentially homeschooled by their mother. I mean her mother must have been a remarkably knowledgeable woman. And I think you know, Priscilla, that left her with a love of learning, a thirst for knowledge, but also a feeling that perhaps the way to improve women's opportunities in the economy was to Wite educational material aimed at the homes schoolchooling market. And boy, you know, was that a profitable thing to do? So she wrote all kindites of educational books aimed at children. I mean, one of her most famous was an introduction to botany ran into multiple editions. it's sold on both sides of the Atlantic, it was translated into French. So there was a real firstirst for this homeschooling material. And you know again, this is a way in which Priscilla as a quQuaker felt that she was both you know, taking advantage of a business opportunity, know, making money for herself, but at the same time doing something that was for the good of wider society. So here we have Priscilla writing all her books about botany and things like that and becoming essentially a best selling author earning lots of money And then she runs into the same problem as working class women and in fact women of all types, which is that she doesn't know where to put it What happens next? So she very much believed that education was really just the start. that know if you equip women with human capital so that they can then go on to get you better jobs and earn a good wage, then that's a good start. But in addition to that, women needed access to physical capital. So they needed this ability to save and earn interest on their savings. So her next step was T setet up the first bank for women and children. and she did that in her hometown of in seventeen ninety eight. So that's really quite extraordinary. And in practical terms, was it just one bank and was it just run by women, four women? O was it a sort of bank part of the wider system It was just one bank and she started it off really with very little. and it gainst lots of opposition because you know at the time people in her local community were saying, well, you know is there really a need for a bank such as this? You know Do ordinary women really have the money to save And do you does the average poor child have the money to save? So there was actually a lot of opposition from the local community to her setting up this bank So she did it without much support. She did it with relatively meager means. So she didn't have, you know, plush offices of a kind that could be found you know in the average merchant bank in the city of London. What she instead did was to just borrow a desk at a local school where she would, you know And with her big leather ledger open in front of her, she would take up position there onn the first Monday of every month, she would announce in the local press that's where she could be found. And because she was a very trusted member of her community, then ordinary women children came to her handed over their hard earned savings. and so that was really where it all began. Okay so this just pause to recap a little bit because I mean, this is obviously happening against an incredibly fascinating backdrop There's this financial revolution going on, as you talked about, you know we know it now as the Gorious Revolution, which was actually in sixteen eighty eight, but obviously it's really starting to come in now in the seventeen hundreds but the second half of the seventeen hundreds Um, Finance had in Europe, obviously been dominated frankly by the Italian city states for a long time and some German banking families, the axis of financial power had shifted towards the Netherlands then. And that's really what the Gorist Revolution was about. It was importing what people called as Dutch finance at the time, pejoratively, but it was kind of capitalism to the UK and you had the birth of the great British bond market, the console market And these were seen obviousices far more reliable because they were issued by A country, a legitimate proper country rather than some fickle royal who might have your head chopped off who didn't feel like paying you back. I assume that just opens up so much more potential for people like Wakefield to to do things to set up business there's a sense of You know, anything goes, like the future is unwritten, right? That's absolutely true. I mean, boy was London really catching up as you say with what had been going on in the continent at this time? And I think the bond market was really quite crucial because you know, Wakefield, when she was taking those deposits She needed a place of safety. to put those deposits to invest those deposits in, essentially so that she could look after the people's money, you know the money that was being entrusted in her and return some kind of interest to her customers. So those bonds were really important. And so yes, so Priscilla took people's deposits, she invested them in bonds and then she was able to return to her customers a five percent interest. That's not bad. That's a pretty good rate by modern day standards. But I'm curious, mean first of all, were they literally carrying around bags of cash? Was that what was going on? And how does she keep the bank afloat if she was paying out five percent of interest? Yeah, really great questions. I mean, the first thing I should say is that you know her you know, this was a bank for ordinary people So people were not coming to her with great big wads of cash. This was, you know this bank was set up with a view that the pennies make pounds. So actually she would allow people as young as children to open an account with as little as a penny. And that's why her bank became known as Penny savings bank. So it's really just lots of people investing small amounts but doing so regularly in a way that over the years turns into a substantial nest egg, really where it sounds like a lesson in financial literacy that if you start stcking away small amounts of money early on And then gradually over time, it begins to grow big. But was this business able to actually give her a wage or a living? I mean did she end up becoming a full time banker instead of being an author as her main source of income I mean, she was very much focused on her writing and she saw this bank as more of a charitable endeavour She believed in helping other women to help themselves. So you know, not a form of charity that was about handouts but instead about providing the infrastructure, as banking services that allowed people to build themselves out of poverty and to insure themselves against the types of nasty things that could come in the future, you know from job loss to sickness. So it sounds an awful lot like the kind of programmes or mantra you see around things like Gramine or World Bank deevelopment programmes today where you're trying to give women financial inclusion And out of that, the hope that they will then be able to lift themselves out of poverty and grow. She was the mother of micro fininance, of micro lending and in fact, she did offer loans as well. So if you came to her with a really good business idea as a poor woman in the local community, then she would also consider investing But the first customer at the Penny Savings Bank of Tottenham was a fourteen year old orphan, right? Absolutely. A fourteen year old orphan girl who deposited about twenty shillings So if you were just for inflation, that would be roughly about one hundred and sixty pounds today. And that orphan girl had, she was already working. she was in the labor market and she had been saving this money. and she was desperate really for a place of safety so that she could deposit those savings and then continue to build on it from that point on. So that's precisely the kind of people that she was there to help pretty much the definition of financial inclusion J in But maybe the fact that she ran it as a charity, you know asmirable as why it's called Berclelays's Bank, not Wakefield's Bank today. I think she was related to the Barcleays's family? It was. She was related. so through her mother, that's right, herer mother came from the Berkelelay family. So there was that heritage and also her niece was Elizabeth Fry S the prison reformer. Yeah, so wow, a bit of sort of wanting to change the world must have been in her DNA as it were. Very much was, yes Okay, so we're going to take a quick break here. Victoria, when we come back, I really want to hear even more about Priscilla Wakefield's financial journey, the impact of this penny bank and maybe also how she ended up tragically in a bit of financial difficulty herself So We'll see you after the break And we are back. So we're hearing the story of Priscilla Wakefield Frankly underppreciated financial revolutionary who at the end of the eighteenth century founded this pioneering penny bank I gather was hugely popular, right? and not just with the women and the orphanss that it was originally set up for So she does write in her journal and goodness. didid Priscilla keep a detailed journal? Great for us though, right? That's right. So by the end of seventeen ninety eight, you know, the year that she first sets up this bank, she's writing that Its exceeded her expectations. And you know at the end of the year, she writes that it has it had been really hard work. she'd spent most of the year working on this bank. that it had become you know so successful and it had given her immense pleasure And she felt that it was very much a model that could be copied by other people throughout the country in order to broaden access to financial markets for ordinary people Amazing. So that's basically you know financial inclusion at work And in fact, it was so successful, as I understand it that although the bank was up for women Men started to ask if they could join it too, didn't they? Exactly. So you know, perhaps this is one of those rare examples where you know men have been discriminated against in financial history. Why don't people write more about that? You know, I men We've struggled for so long, unrecognized Because what we've got to remember is you know at this time, ordinary people, regardless of their gender were really excluded from the banking system. And that's because you know The average private bank didn't think that it could make much money from ordinary people's savings. And so they had quite high minimum deposit requirements that you know the average person just wouldn't have been able to meet. So there was a wider problem really when it came to the banking system. And so when men came knocking on door saying, Hey, hang on a moment, Mrs. Wakefield. We want bank accounts too. Will you take our savings? Then she july obliged and she extended her accounts to ordinary men. So you created essentially a coed bank whichich is fascinating. That's right. But what I think is so interesting, it clearly you, it was a fantastic success story then people as they quite often now want to do will copy success. like they started spreading people set up these s of penny banks, right There's one in eighteen ten, I think it was and Reverend Henry Duncan created a Scottish one because he wanted encouraed thrift among the poor So you accepted deposits as low as what six pence or something That's right. And that was in a largely rural community in Scotland where you had a lot of agricultural labourers and cottagers. And again, he had a view that when it comes to saving, it's the pennies that make pounds. And so if you widen access to banking to ordinary people, you can actually achieve a great deal. Now interestingly, he has gone down in many accounts as the founder of Savings Banks, but really I think Priscilla Wakefield deserves that title. I think what the Reverend Scott Ride was that he was a great marketeer So boy did he talk about his bank and spread knowledge of his bank and spread, you know banking rules that he felt you other people could copy. and he set this kind of clear public goal that he wanted a bank similar to his own in every parish in Scotland. I mean, so often women get bright anded out of history even when they've had the brilliant ideas first are providing some of the key breakthroughs and support. But Priscilla didn't just stop at the bank though, she had a much wider vision later on about how she wanted to change the world of finance Didn't So I mean, she did so much behind the scenes. I mean she was a one woman wonder. She co founded a school of industry for girls so that relatively underprivileged girls could be taught technical skills through which they could get better jobs And she also set up What I think is probably one of the earliest pension schemes Women And she also did that in the seventeen nineties And she provided really a system through which ordinary women could make regular deposits into their pension. And then once they reached the age of sixty five, they were entitled to a shilling a week. and if they reached the age of seventy, they were entitled shillings a week and do you know If we adjust that to for what's happened to incomes since then that would be the equivalent of About two thirds of the state pension today And this was in the seventeen nineties. so well before there was the state pension, there was Priscilla Wakefield's pension scheme for women Was there anything like this for women at the time? or is this the very first of its kind? Certainly, it's the first documented example that I've seen. I mean, there are interestingly other examples throughout history in different parts of the world of women, including, for example, nuns on the Silk Rad setetting up similar type schemes for women in the F East. So there is a long history to this. Wow, Jillian, I think like the Buddhist women on the Long of the Silk Roads, that sounds like a future episode to me, to be honest. Definitely it's very much my territory because we do a lot of silk Road studies here at Cambridge, but I thought it was anthropology friendly Basically. Absolutely. yes about what's happening over in America at this time? because There's quite a lot of examples of similar ideas starting to bubble up on the other side of the pond, aren't there? Yeah, so I would say Maggie Lena Walker was really the equivalent of Priscilla Wakefield on the other side of the Atlantic So she was born in the eighteen sixties. She was the daughter of a former enslaved woman. and so she had actually a much less privileged background than Priscilla Wakefield did. But nevertheless, she also went on to do similar things. So setting up pension schemes and saving schemes for the underserved African American community in the US. And in fact, she went on to become the first woman in the US to charter a bank. She did that in nineteen oh three, and it was called the Staint Luke's Penny Savings Bank. And then we also have another of my favorite women from financial history Petty Green. Now she came from a relatively middle class background and was also a Quaker like Priscilla Wakefield. And you know, one of my favorite stories about Hetty Green is that when she was a teenage girl, she was sent to New York to be a debutant. And her parents gave her a pot of money to spend on clothes and parties. and instead she invested it in bonds And she came home I love that's amazing with a small fortune. and from that point she went on to invest. She invested in bonds in real estate in, you know in railways and she eventually became the richest woman. in the US, the first female tycoon in the US. I mean, she would be worth the equivalent of a billion dollars or more today She was known as the witch of Wall Street. I personally think she'd be better known as the quQeen of Wall Street. Des go of the show, you don't need to get a husband to get ahead. I mean, you know, And of course I think we have some episodes here that we can do in the future Absolutely, yes, absolutely. I'd like to know more about her. Hetty Green, what was her financial strategy? What made her such a great investor? How did she do it? basically? Oh, well, Well, didn't everyone want to know the secret of her success? So in fact, a reporter asked her exactly that question at the time. and she replied, and I'll quote I buy when things are low and nobody wants them. until they go up and people are crazy about them I believe is the secret of all successful. . That's proper like Brick Graham and Dodd stuff really. It's like value investing and it is, isn't a long time ago? It is. Yeah. Yeahah, in the nineteenth century Warren Buffett. She was a female Warren Buffett in some ways. She was absolutely. Okay, so let's dive into the rest of Priscilla Wakefield's life. I mean She's fit already, I think quite a few lifetimes in her achievements already What happened to her? So after he opened the penny bank, inspired all this change, did all these good works What did the rest of her life look like? So in addition to her you know enormously successful educational books, she also, did you know, wrote a feminist masterpiece and she very much saw feminist work as as a bit like a response to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. And I think you know, we're all talking about Smith's Wealth of Nations, aren't we this year? because it's the two hundred fiftieth anniversary, isn't it? off the publication of that book? Yeah. And so she really wrote this book responding to that. and what she was doing was to really make the case for women's economic independence. for women's work, women's paid work to be respected and valued by society So she put out this book I believe in seventeen ninety eight called Reflections on the Conditions of the Female Sex which isn't wildly snappy as a title but it's actually very profound. And it includes a very thought provoking quote here, which is also quite long, but it's worth reading out Can it be accounted for on any other ground than that of prejudice? In a country like England Commerce forms one of the principal sinews of the national strength. Degradation should attend the female who engages in the concerns of commerce And she whose sense and resolution enable her ght herself banished from that line of company of which she perhaps previously had forged a distinguished ornament I mean essentially what she's saying is that this country's going all in for commerce and financial revolution But it looks down on women who actually go out and work for a living Exactly right. And I think she was particularly concerned that amongst the really growing middle classes at the time, that there was this feeling that you know making money should just be for men making money was unfeminine and that she worried left female entrepreneurs and stigmatized and as a result perhaps discouraged from getting involved in the business world And of course, you know, many, many women were involved in businesses throughout history, but they tended to be in family businesses, so behind the scenes with the you know Williams or Collins and sons, you know above the door. So she really wanted women who were getting involved in business in making money to have the same respect, equal respect the same respect that men had Pice areange, a lot of that's still a problem today, isn't it It is. I mean we think about the Tradwife movement, for example, we think about women's economic rights and freedoms still being on a knife edge in some parts of the world. And I think there's a lot that we can learn from the writing of people like Priscilla Wakefield So what happened with Priscilla Wakefield? How did her life end? I mean Did it end in sort glorious triumph and recognition for her pioneering good works and commercial works or did it end else some other way I think I've probably already hinted at this that it didn't end as as well as maybe we would have liked Well, you'd like to think that it ended well, but sadly it didn't. I mean, she had a lot of troubles within her family and in particular her two sons caused her no end of stress and strain. You know Her two sons went into the business world but were not particularly good at it and ended up losing money and in all kinds of trouble. But also her husband too, so her husband who was a merchant and ended up on the edge of bankruptcy. I mean, this was ultimately why Priscilla was having to write more and more books because she became the chief income earner for the family. Oh wow. So the bank was set up as a charity that didn't make her money. All this other stuff from cost money. And so she was churning out books to try and keep her husband afloat essentially all this time. Exactly right, exactly right. and she had an expanded family. I mean, she had three children, but seventeen Grand ch. Oh wow. That sounds like a nightmare. I mean today that sounds like a nightmare if'm being honest seeventeen books and seventeen grandchildren so perhaps she had to write one book for every grandchild Now in the middle of all that, what I found interesting is there's some evidence in the historical records that after this extraordinary career and then a long period where she essentially had to bail everyone out or at least support them all She herself then became quite sick and ended up in what was then called a mad house She was apparently a patient for paroxymss, as they called it there, which might have been any form of types of you know medical condition. it could have been post menopausal, depression or just a general sort of sense of malise. They called it them female hysteria. And apparently she went to a very notorious madhouse called Barnes in Hoxton Do we know much about what happened there and why she went there Yes, that's right. I mean, she is recorded as a patient at what was known as Barm's Madhouse. We don't know for sure. how she ended up in there, you know, whether a family member put her in there or whether she chose to go in there herself. I mean, I have questions about whether it really would be the latter because these places were not nice places. If you were, you know feeling unwell, they were definitely not the places to recover Now sadly, this was the fate of so many women in this period, wasn't it? know finding themselves in an asylum. And I think the fact that Priscilla Wakefield, a respected member of her community from a relatively privileged background, could end up in one of these places, It's quite shocking, but it shows just how difficult it must have been for other less privileged women too. I mean the good news is that she didn't stay in the madhouse forever She did get out and in fact she spent the last few years of her life when she was, know by that point quite elderly living with her daughter, with whom she had a very happy relationship, unlike her two sons And so had, you know, in older life, I think a happier retirementong amongst her loved ones And how old was she when she died She was in her eighties. Wow.ot bad. given ye, given life expectancy at the time. Not bad at all. Well also, I mean, these madhouses I mean this is the era of Bedlam, right? The famous psychatric mad house and People got robbed blind there, right? was it was basically a big scheme to rob people who had fallen hard times. Yeah. I mean, certainly when she was admitted to the madhouse, she was wearing really quite, you luxurious expensive clothes. And what happened was that she was stripped, you know, left just in a little slip And the people, you know that stripped her basically told a lie, said that Priscilla had thrown her clothes down the toilet that they were soiled And you know this was something that the staff at such mad houses regularly did to then appeal to the family and say, we need a new set of clothes. And then you know before you know it, that would also supposedly end up down the toilet and there would be a demand for a new lot. So there was quite a racket going on. Well, I'm quite glad that after you know, frankly all those financial troubles and the Frank, herrifically grim episode with The Madhouse that she ended hopefully her life in at least some comfortable setting with her daughter and lived to a ripe old age. That's At least a semi happy note to end Priscilla Wakefield's life for, I think so But let's now swing to the modern day because obviously this is a history of finance podcast, but we do want to talk about lessons for the here and now I The UK was essentially a developing country, right? when Wakefield lived. I mean, the emerging market in today's parliaments. And we can see trends like this in many developing countries, right? In places like India, Sub Saran Africa I'd love to hear whether you think we are seeing sort of a new wakefield movement as it were, thanks to things like digital technology. I think we are. and you know there still is a need for Priscilla Wakefields. know accross the world, seven hundred forty million women still lack access to their own bank accounts. know in Africa in the Middle East, it's something like six out of ten Women don't have their own bank accounts. so boy do we need more Priscilla Wakefields. But you know, out there on the ground, women are doing precisely what she was doing. Fancial markets, the financial system continues to innovate, continues to identify gaps women as well as men continue to fill them. And there's a lot of research out there showing that when you invest in women in a developing country The impact is dramatically higher than just investing in men because they look after their children, they teach their children, and they build businesses with a great deal of determination and often integrity too And of course, you now have digital platforms today, which in some ways can make it easier than ever thingsings like MPSer and Kenya, which have really transformed access to finance and in financial inclusion. Have you ever wondered what would have happened if She had had access to digital finance because she could have moved things around much faster, couldn't she could And perhaps it would have been, you know more of a business endeavour as opposed to simply a charitable endeavour. I mean, perhaps she could have been enormously wealthy you by the end of her life. Well, I think she can be pretty happy about what she managed to achieve in her life anyway, whether she's ended wealthy or not, you know no prizes to be the wealthiest corpse in the graveyard after all So tr But yeah, Victoria, I mean, what is your main takeaway? I mean, what would if there's one thing you want people to learn from the life of Priscilla Wakefield What do you think that should be know in my book, Economic a Global History of Women, wealth and power, I show that Priscilla Wakefield is just one of many remarkable female entrepreneurs, merchants, bankers, inventors and industrialists throughout history. You know history is, I would say, in economic terms One long and repeated story of rise and decline. You know history is filled with surprises. You know The baton of prosperity is constantly moving from one civilization to another. And that is the story that is at the heart of Economica. and it is the story that shouldn't be told without women And so economica, it's the first economic history of the world to be told through the eyes of women as well as men So instead of history, it should be h story her story exactly in finance of M shelves. Well, we have lots of ideas for future episodes. I've been writing down furiously here as well. We're probably going to be sealing a few more characters from you for fut episodes L looking for to the Hetty Grewalf Me too. So thank you, Victoria, for teaching us to look at financial history afresh through new eyes and that's it For the episode of Story of Money, with me, Jillian Tet I me Robin Weeelswth We'll see you all back here next week