almost forgotten. I will
mention the defunct ones first. The "Bank of Birmingham" was promoted
by a Quaker gentleman, named Pearson. He had been, I believe, a
merchant in the town, but was afterwards a partner in the firm of
Moilliet Smith, and Pearson, from which he seems to have retired at,
the same time as his partner, the well-known Mr. Timothy Smith. The
Bank of Birmingham started with high aims and lofty expectations. The
directors built for their offices the substantial edifice on Bennetts
Hill, now occupied as the Branch Bank of England, and they prepared
for a very large business. They, however, much as they may have been
respected, and successful as most of them undoubtedly were in their
private affairs, were not men of large capacity, and they had not the
quick and sound judgment of character and circumstances necessary in
banking. Nor were they very fortunate in their manager. Mr. Pearson,
although he might have been taken as a model of honesty, truthfulness,
and straightforwardness, was a phlegmatic, heavy man, and his manners
were, to say the least, unprepossessing. The bank was not a success.
Negotiations were, a few years after, entered into, and arrangements
resulted, by which the Birmingham Banking Company took over the
business, on the basis of giving every shareholder in the Bank of
Birmingham a certain reduced amount of stock in their own bank, in
exchange.

Some time before the transfer took place, a member of one of the most
respected and influential mercantile families in the neighbourhood
suspended payment, owing a large sum to the Bank of Birmingham,
upon which he paid a composition. He afterwards prospered, and some
twenty-five years afterwards, all those shareholders in the defunct
bank who still held, in the Birmingham Banking Company, the shares
they had been allotted in exchange at the time of the transfer,
received cheques for the deficiency, with interest thereon for the
whole period it had been unpaid. A relative of my own received,
in this way, several hundred pounds. I am not aware that this
circumstance has ever been made public, but it is due to the memory of
the late Mr. Robert Lucas Chance that so praise-worthy an act should
be on record.

Mr. Pearson, after the closing of the bank, commenced business as a
sharebroker, which he continued until his death. He was one of the
last to retain, in all its rigour, the peculiar dress of the Society
of Friends. His stout, broad-set figu