Review:A Study in Banking/Christopher Roden
This review of the booklet "A Study in Banking", by James Cuthbertson was written by Christopher Roden and published in the The Parish Magazine (No. 1, june 1989).
This review presents James Cuthbertson's A Study in Banking as an enjoyable Holmesian blend of fact, fiction, and imagination built around Sherlock Holmes's supposed banking history. It appreciates the booklet's ingenuity but notes missed opportunities, especially the lack of deeper archival research into Arthur Conan Doyle's own real banking records.
Review
- A Study in Banking
- James Cuthbertson, privately published 1989,
- 27 pp., £4.00
Reviewed by Christopher Roden
Banking is, perhaps, not a subject which one would associate particularly with either Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or his detective creation Sherlock Holmes, but it is appropriate that a review of Mr. Cuthbertson's booklet should appear in the pages of the Newsletter, since Lloyds Bank plc helped the Arthur Conan Doyle Society on its way by means of a generous donation.
A STUDY IN BANKING is one of those curious mixes of fact, fiction and imagination which strangely, when dealing with those 'matters Holmesian' works surprisingly well.
History shows that Lloyds Bank absorbed Capital and Counties Bank at the time of the banking amalgamations in 1918 and, as readers will discover, Capital and Couties provided banking services to Holmes from the time when he would have opened his first bank account whilst at University.
Mr. Cuthbertson chooses to settle the argument as to which University Holmes attended, by drawing on the conclusive evidence that The Hampshire Banking Company (which was later to become Capital and Counties) had no close connections in Oxford. In Cambridge, however, their link was the private bank of Foster and Company, which was to become fully integrated with Capital and Counties in 1904.
A STUDY IN BANKING identifies the year in which Holmes first opened his account with the Oxford Street branch of Capital and Counties as 1876, and proceeds to tell with the aid of a previously unknown Holmesian character, Mr. Clerihew the bank manager, the history of the major transactions which occurred on Holmes' account up to the time of his retirement.
Surprisingly little is made of Watson's connection with what is now the Lloyds Bank group: Cox & Co were also taken under the Lloyds umberella; and although in the researcher's note at the end of the booklet, the relationship between Lloyds Bank and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is identified, dates are only given in very general teras. A little deeper investigation into the archives held by Lloyds, would have enabled Mr. Cuthbertson to identify that Sir Arthur opened his bank account with Capital and Counties in Oxford Street on 28th March 1891. The branch signature book also identifies that the account was opened by transfer from the Bank's Landport branch. Conan Doyle's address is quoted in the records as 2 Upper Wimpole Street, London W.
Mr. Cuthbertson's enjoyable little booklet leaves one unanswered problem: The 'house' colours of Lloyds Bank, the bank with which this study effectively concerns itself, are green yet the cover of this booklet, which is a charming facsimilie of 'The Strand', is printed in the colours of one of Lloyds chief rivals in the banking business: Barclays.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
