WEBVTT - What Looking Inside a Bank Archive Can Tell Us About Modern Finance 0:00:09.080 --> 0:00:12.680 Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Odd Thoughts podcast. 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:16.440 I'm Tracy Allaway and I'm Joe wisnal Joe, Do you 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:19.880 know the one thing that I love more than finance 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:28.920 and markets? Um? Uh, I'm curious what you'll say I 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:32.080 got to say about yourself, but I'm just gonna say no, Okay, 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:35.240 that's the safe answer. All right. So I really like history. 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:40.640 One of the things that I like about this particular podcast, 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:42.920 other than the fact that I get the chance to 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:46.320 talk with you for twenty minutes every week, is the 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:49.200 fact that we can go back in time and every 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:51.520 once in a while kind of delve into the history 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:55.120 of finance and markets. I love the history of financial markets. 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:57.680 I find, you know, it's kind of like with language, 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:02.880 how etymology helped us understand certain aspects of the present 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:05.960 better by seeing how these words evolved. I think there's 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:10.240 a very clear analogy with the history of finance and economics. 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:14.240 Seeing how some various institutions evolved can help us, uh 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:19.120 understand their structures better today. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. 0:01:19.280 --> 0:01:22.360 So what if I told you that on today's podcast 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:25.840 we are going to have an almost perfect synthesis of 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:29.760 history and finance and markets. I would tell you I 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:33.720 am very excited for this conversation. Okay, alright, so am I. 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:37.000 So today we are actually going to talk with a 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:41.680 woman who is an archivist for the Royal Bank of Scotland. 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:43.759 And I don't know about you, but I was kind 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:46.720 of surprised to hear that RBS um as the bank 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:51.280 is known, actually has an archive at all. I would 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:53.000 not have guessed that at all. I mean, it sort 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:55.840 of doesn't surprise to me. Maybe the banks have libraries 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:58.360 and that there's some history stored at them, but the 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:02.040 idea of a his Dorian or an archivist at the 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:05.800 bank sort of whose job it is to um, you know, 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:09.799 collect the bank's history, is uh, not something I would 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:12.720 have guessed existed. Yeah, And I have to say, if 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:15.480 you go on RBS's website and take a look at 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:17.800 some of the items that they have in their archive. 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:20.320 And we're going to talk about this later in the show, 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:24.200 but they have some really fascinating, fascinating things, you know, 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:27.360 things like customer ledgers that were kept during the Great 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:31.240 Plague or to create Fire of London. Um old sort 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:34.799 of filing systems that the bank used hundreds of years ago, 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:36.680 and I have to say, this is one of Britain's 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:39.720 oldest banks. Uh, so it's going to be really really 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:42.280 interesting to hear from her. Well, I can't wait, So 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:53.760 let's get started, all right. So our guest for today 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:56.720 is Ruth Read. She's the head of Archives and Art 0:02:56.800 --> 0:02:59.720 for the Royal Bank of Scotland. Ruth, thank you so 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:02.919 much are joining us, and these two thank you. So 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:06.800 maybe just to begin, could you describe for us exactly 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:12.280 what RBS's archive is, what it looks like, where it's kept, 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:15.919 and what your role in terms of being an archivist 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:19.360 actually is, because I can't imagine there are many people 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:23.680 out there who have that job. Yes, So to start 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:26.000 with physically what it looks like and where it is. 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:30.560 We're in a pretty anonymous looking warehouse on the western 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:33.560 edges of Edinburgh. From outside, you'd never really guessed that 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:36.400 it was a historical archive. Um, and what we're keeping 0:03:36.440 --> 0:03:40.200 inside is the historical records of the Royal Bank of 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:42.960 Scotland groups. So that includes quite a lot of present 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:45.560 day banks. That's the Royal Bank of Scotland itself, but 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:47.800 also NAT West, which is a major name. We've got 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:51.400 some private banks all sorts of different businesses and actually 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.560 more than two hundred historic banks that have come together 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:57.440 over the centuries to make up those present day names. 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:01.600 These are not a national records that the bank needs 0:04:01.640 --> 0:04:05.240 to keep to do business now. Um, these are the 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:07.600 very few records that we've decided to keep for ever 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:10.680 because they tell us who we've been and therefore who 0:04:10.720 --> 0:04:13.920 we are. My job in the archives could probably be 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:18.719 summarized as capturing, protecting, and using the history of the 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:22.000 bank and the historical records that pumped in that. So 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:26.599 are these items in the archives things that the bank 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:28.960 had held for a long time and then at some 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:32.000 point that, oh, we should formalize this in an archive, 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:34.640 or did the banks say we should have like sort 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:38.160 of an archive of history or banking history and then 0:04:38.240 --> 0:04:41.960 go about finding the items that would make up that archive. 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:44.960 There's there's a big change that happened probably in sort 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:48.159 of mid late twentieth century. So the things that have 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:52.520 survived from the eighteenth nineteenth century, yes, you're absolutely right. 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:55.640 Those are things that pretty much either survived by accident 0:04:55.800 --> 0:04:58.480 or survived because it was so very obvious that they 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:01.479 were important to business. And it's really only in the 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:05.640 past forty to fifty years that companies have become more 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:09.159 self conscious about needing to choose the right things and 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:11.520 keep the right things. And that's become really important as 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:14.200 to get into the present age, because now that records 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:17.320 are digital, things don't survive by accident. You have to 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:21.400 be deliberate about it. So is it unusual for a 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.720 bank to kind of keep its own historic archive in 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:27.280 in this manner, Like if we went over to Goldman 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:30.719 Sachs or to Deutsche Bank or HSBC, would they have 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:34.520 a similar thing in place or is this unique to RBS. No, 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:37.160 I don't know about all of them. You would certainly 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:41.240 find a very good and impressive archives at HSBC, and 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:44.719 certainly all of the major British banks have got archives, 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:50.240 and actually a lot of companies in general, supermarkets, drinks, companies, 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:53.960 all sorts of businesses do have archives. In light of that, 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:57.000 let's talk about some of the things that exist in 0:05:57.120 --> 0:06:01.039 the RBS archives and why they've been and one of 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:05.039 what and what they tell us. So one of the 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:08.640 things that you have is a ledger that was kept 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:12.919 from the Great Fire of London in the sixteen hundreds. 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:15.480 What is that is from the sixteen sixties. What does 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:17.080 it tell us? What does it what does a bank 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:20.400 ledger from about four years ago even tell us? That's 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:23.280 a really nice document to have because that goes all 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:25.839 the way back to the very early history of a 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:29.560 company called Child and Company, which is still exists as 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:32.039 one of our banks today and is said to be 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:35.720 the oldest name in British banking that's still trading. So 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:38.400 it's really lovely to have some of those early customer records. 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:40.600 And if we're looking at the Great Fire of London period, 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:46.760 it's wonderful to see quite how business was managing in 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:51.919 unbelievably difficult circumstances. You know, London had in sixty sixty 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:54.080 five it had suffered from this plague, and then you 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:56.080 get to sixty and sixty six and there's this terrible 0:06:56.160 --> 0:07:00.320 fire which literally stopped just before get team to the 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:03.840 business premises of this bank, and you see that business 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:07.039 surviving and coping through all those difficulties, and of course 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:09.279 what it's telling us is what was going on for 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:11.600 all of the customers of that bank at that time. 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:15.600 So I've spent an inordinate amount of time browsing the 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:18.600 items that you have in your collection, so rather than 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:21.200 ask you about some of the ones that strike my 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:24.520 interest the most. I wonder do you have some favorites 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:27.480 that you could maybe point as to I have hundreds 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:30.680 of favorites, and of my favorites, i'll tell you something 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:34.480 different every week. Um. But I guess one that I 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:38.360 love very much is we have some field service postcards 0:07:38.360 --> 0:07:40.800 that were written by one of our members of staff 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:45.040 who was away on military service during the First World War. UM. 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:48.320 So these were written between nineteen sixteen and nineteen and 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:51.240 at that time, because soldier's letters were very heavily censored, 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:54.000 they couldn't write anything they liked. So they'd have these 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:56.000 post cards and they could just tick a box that 0:07:56.080 --> 0:07:58.400 said I'm fine, and it was a way of letting 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:00.480 people back home know that everything was all right and 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:04.560 they were you know face um. And we have several 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:05.960 of these and the archives that were sent by a 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:08.160 man called Samuel McKnight who had worked at the Royal 0:08:08.160 --> 0:08:11.360 Bank of Scotland's head office. And it's wonderful to have them. 0:08:11.360 --> 0:08:13.600 But what I love most about them is the story 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:15.880 about how they were found. They were found by one 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:18.840 of my predecessors in the nineties in the head office 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:21.800 building wrapped up in a little piece of paper that 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:25.920 said something like these cards were placed here by John 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:29.240 Smith's messenger in the hopes that perhaps long after this 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:32.160 dreadful war, the name of one may again be honored 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:35.400 who was loved by all. And he did that just 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:37.560 after the First World War. He obviously had these cards 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:41.880 and he wanted future generations to remember. And I took 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:44.559 for me that summarizes what's so great about archives, because 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:48.600 because of what he did, I remember Samuel mcnight's name, 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:51.600 and now because as an archive here you know his 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:54.720 name as well. That is really cool that you have 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:59.080 that stuff, you know. I mentioned in the intro that 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.599 I thought looking at the history of banking and the 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:06.439 sort of artifacts of historical banking might help us understand 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:09.439 the current the present tense And of course I think 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:12.160 probably a lot of people when they think about a bank, 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:15.680 they imagine maybe a vault or something like that where 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:18.559 their money is, and then they go to the bank 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:20.559 and then their share of the money has taken out. 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:23.920 But as many of us know, that's really not how 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:26.840 bank works or banks work at all, and that essentially 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:29.679 banks are mostly digital and they're most of our money 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:33.480 exists on a spreadsheet and so you know, just it's 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:36.240 just sells, you know, numbers in a cell. And so 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:39.880 looking back at some of the documents on your website 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:42.320 and people should check it out at Heritage Archives dot 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:45.960 RBS dot com a lot of that. It's basically the 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:49.240 same story that the fundamental aspect of the bank is 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:52.080 not the money that is kept there, but the written 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:55.520 down records of what people are entitled to. I think 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:58.720 that's right. Um it certainly look at the essence of 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:02.760 what banking is, that business of putting things that you 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:05.240 value somewhere safe and keeping them safe and being able 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:07.120 to trust. You know, there's an awful lot of crust 0:10:07.440 --> 0:10:10.080 which is necessary for banking to rum. So that's what 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:13.440 I love about archives and business archives is you see 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:17.120 these footprints of people all through time using different technologies. 0:10:17.160 --> 0:10:20.240 They used what they had available at the time, but 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:24.440 they're doing the same thing. So in terms of the 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:27.800 lessons that we can glean from those records, you know, 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:32.040 things that show who owes which person what, what are 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:35.760 some of the applications of the archive and has the 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:40.920 archive ever contributed to any interesting research or interesting historical 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:45.120 conclusions to your knowledge, Well, we're open to members of 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:48.479 the public. So academic research has come in very frequently 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:53.000 to work on projects, and they are often about financial history, 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:56.439 about the history of lending structures, for example, and how 0:10:56.480 --> 0:10:59.480 they have evolved over time. But also there might be 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:03.880 um garden historians or furniture historians can come in and 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:08.199 use the records to find that footprint is something they're researching. 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:12.720 It's quite nice about business records that those are quite solid, 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:16.920 factual based records compared to somebody's diary, which is always 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:20.960 you've got to think about what that person's agenda was 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:24.199 in a different way from when it's simple accounting records. 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:27.600 But also ways that we use the archives are a 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:31.280 lot more intangible, so they might be something about building 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:37.120 colleague engagement, helping our colleagues to feel proud of our business, 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:39.920 helping them to feel the importance of doing a good 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:42.840 job for our customers by having that weight of history 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:45.920 and understanding how many generations there are behind us who've 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:48.720 been doing this job all this time. I wanted to 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:52.959 pick up on that sort of heritage point because I 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:56.440 did notice that one of the items listed in the 0:11:56.559 --> 0:12:00.200 archive is a letter from someone who has employed wid 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:03.319 at the bank in the early nineteen hundreds or actually 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:08.319 for most of the century, who was an Olympic runner Um, 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:10.640 And he actually ran in the Olympics that were made 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:14.880 famous by the Chariots of Fire movie. And it's interesting 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:18.000 if you read the letter from him, he's responding to 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:21.680 congratulations from his employer at the bank, where they recognize 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:26.360 his running achievement. Um. But the Olympic aspect of it 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:33.120 is almost um, it's almost uh, what's the word subordinate 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:35.600 to the fact that he works at the bank. Um. 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:37.439 You know, the fact that he works at the bank 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:40.720 is something to be proud of. Do you think the 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:45.280 role of banks and bankers in society has changed over 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:47.800 the past hundred years or so, given the you know, 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:49.880 the events of two thousand and eight and things like that. 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:52.680 Of course it changes at the time, and of course 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:57.719 where at a point at the moment where banker's reputation 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:00.880 isn't particularly high, and there are very good reasons for that. 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:05.160 And that's actually something that again I think the archived 0:13:05.160 --> 0:13:08.880 brings value because it hasn't always been easy to work 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:10.720 for a bank in the last few years. You know, 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:14.000 we see the things that people say about us, and 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:16.719 we know that there's a lot of justification in it, 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:21.400 and having that three year long history or longer which 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:25.120 talks about good things bankers have done. It gives people 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:29.600 a context that I hope and think helps people get 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:31.040 out of bed in the morning and come to work 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:34.199 and do a good job as a banker. Yeah, I'm 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:38.560 looking at another thing that Tracy had discovered on the website, 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:43.680 This letter from our Florence Nightingale talking about a way 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:48.360 for soldiers to send money home more effectively. You know, 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:52.520 a classic example of a financial institutions the role that 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:55.240 they play in society. But what is you know that's 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:57.400 you know, we sort of take it for granted, this 0:13:57.480 --> 0:14:01.160 idea that if I want to send money to Tracy 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:03.839 right now, you would be a little bit of a pain, 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:07.000 but I could probably do it without too much issues. 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:09.920 But it's sort of mind boggling to think how people 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:13.520 would have sent money across borders two hundred years ago. 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:17.840 What are some of the interesting technologies that you we 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:20.560 discover when you look back at the archives about sort 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:24.280 of solving these really difficult problems. You see it changing 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:28.720 all the time, and you can see banks trying to 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:31.480 to use the new dodges that are emerging and bring 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:34.520 them in. One example I think of that's relatively recent 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:38.360 is from the eighties when our bank No West was 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:40.800 wanting to bring in a telephone banking service for the 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:44.960 first time. Um, so you could you know, you could 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:47.040 phone up and you could press buttons on your phone 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:50.200 to choose whether you wanted a balance or to make 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:54.320 a payment, all of those things. But this being certainly 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:56.320 a lot of people in Britain still have the type 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:58.720 of phone that you had to turn a dial on 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:04.160 to get the I remember that. So, Um, they didn't 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:07.120 work with this tone, with with this kind of button 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:11.760 pressing technology. So the bank introduced this little thing that 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:14.680 was like a small calculator that had the buttons on 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:16.840 and you could hold it up to the mouthpiece of 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:19.880 your phone and then press those buttons and it would 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:22.200 make the right beats to go down the line to 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:24.640 make the phone banking work. And I really like that 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:28.200 insight into a moment where a good technology was nearly 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:30.800 there but not quite so the bank had to find 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:34.720 some intermediary method of making it work. I remember their 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:40.200 technology only because my grandfather was a criminal defense lawyer 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:43.440 and he only had rotary phones and when he would 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:46.880 need to place calls to his clients who were in jail. 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:50.480 He had to go through a tone operating system, and 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.280 so he had one of those handheld devices that mimicked 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:57.960 the tone of the one through zero keypad. So yeah, 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:00.160 quite a breakthrough. You might be one of the as 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:03.440 people have spoken to. I haven't thought about that in 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:07.240 a long time. Um, well, I think Joe brings up 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:10.479 a really good point. There has been so much technological 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:13.840 advancement in the fields of banking and finance. You know, 0:16:14.120 --> 0:16:17.640 a hundred years from now, assuming that RBS is still 0:16:17.720 --> 0:16:20.840 running an archive, what is it going to look like, 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:24.680 because you know it's easy to gather Well, it's not easy, 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:28.400 but the idea of gathering old historical documents into one 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:31.360 place is a common one. How do you start to 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:36.680 tell the story of digital finance. Well, for one thing, 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:39.800 you can take in digital documents. Most of what we 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:43.000 take in now is actually taken in electronically rather than 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:48.120 as physical documents, so that is certainly no impediment. And 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:52.120 actually the same things that we want to document are 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:55.200 still done. People still have to meet together and talk 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:57.640 to each other and say are we going to do this? 0:16:57.800 --> 0:16:59.360 How are we going to do it? And they have 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:03.440 to prepare for it. So in fact, we're not keeping 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:07.560 transactional records. We're not interested in the kind of it happening. 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:10.800 We're interested in why and how and how they make 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:12.960 it happen, and all of that stuff will happen the same. 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:16.280 It might be that it's an electronic file rather than 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:19.399 a paper file, but that's not intellectually different from our 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:22.320 point of view. You know something that I'm interested in 0:17:22.320 --> 0:17:27.920 in terms of history of finance technology is a tally sticks. 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:31.359 And you mentioned that there was the fire in London 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:33.560 or we talked about that in the sixteen hundred, But 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:35.560 is it is it true? Is it like in the 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:38.760 eight hundreds that a big fire was caused in Parliament 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:41.760 by the burning of a bunch of these sticks that 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:44.959 were used hundreds of years earlier to keep track of credit? 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:46.600 Am I making that up? I feel like I've heard 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:49.520 something about that one. No, you're absolutely right, um. But 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:52.560 the tally sticks were used for keeping track of debts. 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:55.080 When somebody borrowed money, there would be a tally stick 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:56.760 and they would split it down the middle and to 0:17:56.880 --> 0:17:59.199 borrow and the lender would get a half each so 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:00.760 that you could read in them. It was a way 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:04.200 that you could track debts, uh in a world where 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:07.280 lots of people weren't literate apart from anything else. So 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:10.359 there were thousands of thousands of these stored in the 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.359 House of Parliaments in London, and I think they stopped 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:16.840 using them in the early nineteenth century, and somebody, I 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:19.840 assume you could possibly say he was an archivist in 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:22.480 that he was responsible for looking after them, decided to 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.520 clear out some space by burning them, uh. And the 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:29.320 fired that out of control and did indeed burn down 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:31.399 the House of Parliament. That's why the House of the 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:35.200 Parliament we have now are a Victorian building, because that's 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:38.960 the replacement. A good lesson to all subsequent archivists not 0:18:39.040 --> 0:18:41.520 to just burn, not to just burn their stuff for 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:45.479 space for storage reasons. Ruth, I want to ask you 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:47.399 one more question. You know, when you go over the 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:52.760 entirety of RBS's archive, is there one particular item that 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:56.280 to you is kind of most important when it comes 0:18:56.600 --> 0:18:58.600 to the history of the bank or the history of 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:02.520 banking overall, something that kind of hints that maybe an 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:05.760 important transformation that took place in either of the company 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:08.359 or the industry. I think it would be really hard 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:11.320 for me not to choose the Founding Charter of the 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:15.800 Royal Bank of Scotland from seven. So that's the company's 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:19.040 birth certificate. That's where it all starts as far as 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:22.160 the Royal Bank of Scotland goes. And I think why 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:24.760 I would really pick that out is not so much 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:28.000 for the document itself, but my experience is showing it 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:30.879 to colleagues when they come to visit the archive and 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:33.960 I showed them this document and by far the most 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:36.320 common question they asked me is can I touch it? 0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:41.119 Because they want to make that connection with the past. 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:45.199 Are they allowed to touch it? They are allowed to 0:19:45.200 --> 0:19:47.040 touch it at the edge, as long as they don't 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:51.800 touch the ink, because to go away with with a 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:55.160 feeling of having touched the past and having been inspired 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:57.119 by that. So I think if a document can do 0:19:57.200 --> 0:19:59.000 that job for them, then I'm really glad to see 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:01.840 it's still working three years after it was drawn up. 0:20:02.960 --> 0:20:05.920 That's very cool, uh. I like the idea of people 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:09.400 touching the document is a direct link to history. Ruth 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:13.760 read the archivist at the Royal Bank of Scotland. Really 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:17.560 cool discussion. Your website is awesome and hopefully one day 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:20.000 me and Tracy can come visit and we could do 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:23.560 a long thing and go through all of what you have. 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:25.840 But I really appreciate you joining us on the odd 0:20:25.920 --> 0:20:40.160 Loads podcast. Great, thank you, Joe. I love that conversation. 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:42.760 And I have to confess I'm still looking at the 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:46.399 Harveys Archive website and right now I'm looking at a 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:49.800 picture of a bank manager's hat from the nineteen fifties, 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:52.760 and all I can think is, this is what George 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:56.080 Banks would have worn in UH. Mary Poppins, you remember 0:20:56.119 --> 0:20:59.480 that I'm looking. I'm on the website too, I'm looking 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:01.440 at the UH and this is another one that you 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:06.920 found earlier, the spike file, like this gigantic iron spike 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:11.480 that they used to put papers over, just essentially glorified 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:14.919 or a sort of a primitive filing cabinet. But no, 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:17.159 I really like that conversation as well, and I do 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:20.480 think everyone should check out their website Heritage Archives dot 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:24.880 RBS dot com because it's uh, it's you know, it's 0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:27.800 a great example of how banking is widely different and 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:31.919 also exactly the exactly the same that essentially, you know, 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:34.480 as we were saying, a bank is a spreadsheet or 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:38.199 mostly something digital and a bank used to be pieces 0:21:38.200 --> 0:21:40.920 of paper on an old iron spike. But though what 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:43.520 really matters to the bank is not necessarily what they 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:45.600 have an a vault or anything, but what they the 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:49.959 history that they have recorded. Yeah, I agree with that. 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:52.600 I just wonder that, you know, as things become more 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:55.240 electronic and as they become more digital. Um. And we 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:58.320 did just discuss this with Ruth, but I wonder if 0:21:58.400 --> 0:22:01.639 some of that that tangentity kind of gets lost, and 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:05.880 if finance becomes more and more abstract and kind of 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:09.399 more unwieldy as a result. And I also wonder, like, 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:12.560 because I like history and I like antiques, um, I 0:22:12.600 --> 0:22:15.360 think there's something about human nature where we actually want 0:22:15.359 --> 0:22:18.159 to go out and as Ruth was saying about the 0:22:18.200 --> 0:22:20.440 original bank charter, you kind of want to go out 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:22.919 and connect with the past, and the easiest way of 0:22:22.920 --> 0:22:26.840 doing that is seeing or touching or interacting with something 0:22:26.880 --> 0:22:29.760 that's actually old. And I just wonder if you know, 0:22:30.080 --> 0:22:33.679 seeing a digital ledger is going to have that same effect. No, 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:36.159 that's a that's a really good point. So it's like, 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:39.480 even though we know that money is kind of this 0:22:39.560 --> 0:22:45.080