Thirty-six Penny Banks were established in and around Glasgow. The
committee, in their Report, stated they were calculated "to check that
reckless expenditure of little sums which so often leads to a confirmed
habit of wastefulness and improvidence;" and they urged the support of
the Penny Banks as the best means of extending the usefulness of the
savings banks. The Penny Bank established at the small country town of
Farnham is estimated to have contributed within a few years a hundred
and fifty regular depositors to the savings bank of the same place. The
fact that as large a proportion as two-thirds of the whole amount
deposited is drawn out within the year, shows that Penny Banks are
principally used as places of safe deposit for very small sums of money,
until they are wanted for some special object, such as rent, clothes,
furniture, the doctor's bill, and such-like purposes.
Thus the Penny Bank is emphatically the poor man's purse. The great mass
of the deposits are paid in sums not exceeding sixpence, and the average
of the whole does not exceed a shilling. The depositors consist of the
very humblest members of the working class, and by far the greatest
number of them have never before been accustomed to lay by any portion
of their earnings. The Rev. Mr. Clarke, of Derby, who took an active
interest in the extension of these useful institutions, has stated that
one-tenth of the whole amount received by the Derby Penny Bank was
deposited in copper money, and a large portion of the remainder in
threepenny and fourpenny pieces.
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