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In Service 1908 to 21 November 1969
 Martins Bank is justifiably proud of its regional
structure, local branches, local head office departments, and the quick
decisions that can be made to help customers, based on local knowledge. It comes as no surprise then, to find that
the Bank’s Trustee and Investment and Income Tax Departments can also be
found, arranged in a similar way, covering England and Wales, The Isle of Man
and the Channel islands. The first of the Trustee Departments is established
in 1908 by the Bank of Liverpool. Sixty years later Martins Bank combines
that business with regional Income Tax and Investment Offices to create MARTINS BANK TRUST COMPANY LIMITED. We were delighted to be provided with an insight
into what what life was like for the staff of the Liverpool Trustee
department in the late 1940s / early 1950s, from Friend of the Archive Derek
Lucas who wrote to us about his own time there. It seems that it wasn’t so much a behind
the scenes environment, as a quiet backwater from which you had to escape if
you wanted to get on….
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  “I was nine years at Water Street in the bank's Head Office Trustee
Department, along with, soon after rejoining the Bank after war service,
several clerks of my age. I was assigned to the Securities Desk and it soon
became apparent that the Bank dealt with numerous and very rich settlements
founded by very well-known Liverpool families. In addition, more and more
will appointments meant that the Bank had to have a comprehensive service
throughout the country and branches had been established to this end. All
went well, it was quite exciting to be working in Head Office, even if you
were on the fourth floor, but you were where things happened and not in
some remote Branch. However, time
passed and by the fifth year one came to realise this career path was in reality a “cul-de-sac”. The Department had three signing officers,
an Assistant Manager, a Sub-Manager
and the Manager, six in
all. I must say the
staff were very happy up to a point, but we hadn't joined the Bank to be
Executors and Trustees. All our contemporaries were gaining valuable
experience in Branch banking which would lead in many cases to promotion and
to the higher echelons of Management.
 Along with some others with similar views it took several years to be
extricated from this 'backwater' and on rejoining the mainstream of branch
banking several years of intensive activity to get and keep abreast of those
luckier enough to have had a head start, as it were. I don't intend to sound just an old sour grape, but a huge
number of staff must have had the same experience and indeed the Staff
Turnover must have gathered pace in the fifties and early sixties. These departments should have attracted
recruits from the professions, such as the law and accountancy, a worthwhile
experience for any young trainee solicitor or trainee accountant. The lack of
appointments, compared to the expansion of the Branch Network, meant that you
were placed in a backwater, in some cases for life, no pun intended. If that all sounds very pessimistic
I apologise, but being the biggest separate department, outside of the Branch
Network, there must surely be a case for it and its records to join Martins Bank Archive”…
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