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It doesn’t look like much,
does it – an outhouse perhaps, or someone’s coal shed
– so raggedly practical it really needs no frills at all to provide a service
to the many and varied breeders and buyers of cattle that make their way to
York Cattle Market. Maybe the wind
whistles through cracks in the walls and window frames – dare we assume the
presence of electric light? Whatever
it looks like, Martins Bank’s York Cattle Market Branch is still held in warm
affection by those Staff who were
lucky enough to work there.
Be warned though, set out
below is a very LONG tale indeed, but the reward comes in staying with it to
the end. The story – and history – of
York Cattle Market Branch is epic, and is one of the longest articles written
about a Branch by Martins Bank Magazine.
We have been asked on numerous occasions to reproduce it, so at last,
here goes.
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In Service:
Pre 1922 until February 1970
Image © Barclays Ref
0033-0932
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From “luck money” to a complete
abandonment of banking rules (even the holy grail of checking the identity
of a customer with something as basic as his signature) come with us now to
York Cattle Market. Enjoy…
 “Sixteen
at sixty-two and double luck to Mr.-” That is a sample of the conversation one hears at the counter of our Cattle Market branch in
the City of York. Spoken in a Southern Irish accent which gets harder to
follow as the day wears on, such conversations are a sharp reminder to
those of us who spend our lives in the gentler atmosphere of Cocks Biddulph
branch, London; Church Street, Liverpool; at one of the Southport branches,
Harrogate and a hundred equally refined branches that here is something
different. This is banking in the raw, banking with the gloves off, banking
without recourse to anyone “round the back”. There is no question of
retiring to consult the manager, no question of ringing up District Office.
The men who run the Cattle Market business have got to know their stuff;
they have to know the local farmers and the hard-bitten Irish dealers who,
though they may (and do) commence their day with a visit to the nearby
church to invoke success on their labours, will also visit The Spotted Cow at frequent
intervals in the course of the thirsty job of selling their cattle and are,
at settling time, not infrequently in need of skilled assistance and
persistence in arriving at the final settlement. This is no place for the man whose bible is the Bank's
Book of Instructions.
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To the wrong man it is a nightmare branch in which large cash payments
are habitually made against uncleared cheques, where money is handed out
without a receipt or signature of any kind being obtained, where suspended
items await indefinitely the next call of the gentleman concerned, or a
remittance through the post; where the counter cash books are full of items
in respect of which no tangible voucher can ever be produced, and the
remaining records are in the form of bundles of dog-eared slips of paper. Yet this must be the only branch which has never made a
bad debt, where the half-yearly profit is made without any balance work,
where the fixed and acknowledged charge for services rendered is the same
for every customer, who knows it, agrees to it, and pays it every Thursday.
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1959
- An Irish Drover receives his “luck money” from Mr F M Walker
at the counter of York Cattle Market
Branch
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If you want to know the truth of the statement, often quoted
in the textbooks, that mutual trust is the basis of all business, go to
Cattle Market branch and see it in operation. It may be most deplorable and
upsetting from the point of view of the Chief Inspector or the Chief
Accountant, but the system works and always has worked and unless and until
something goes wrong it suits everybody and nowhere does the name of the
Bank stand higher than in this dingy little office beside the cattle pens
amid the sound and smell of animals and the hoarse shouts of the drovers.
Well, the cattle with which our branch are mainly concerned are Irish
cattle, all bullocks, which are sold to the farmers of Yorkshire and the
surrounding counties, for stock purposes. Ultimately they will be fattened
and killed for beef.
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WANTED
Someone who is highly skilled in
the unorthodox:
“After all that has been
written it will, therefore, be obvious why the Bank considered it a good
stroke of business to employ Mr. Frederick Bryan on his retirement from the
railway service, to help with the running of this highly skilled and
unusual form of banking”.
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The Woodside branch, Birkenhead, is also concerned with Irish cattle,
but Woodside takes cows for immediate slaughter. We had other Cattle Market
branches at one time, and now that the meat market is free again these
might someday be revived. The cattle
for York are shipped from Ireland once a week and sold every Thursday. Many
of the Irish dealers come over from Dublin and return after the close of
the Market. Some live locally, some are dealers on their own account and
some are only agents, empowered to sell but not to settle—hence the outstanding debit items in the
branch Suspense Account. The Market
opens at 10 a.m. and the cattle of each dealer are driven into separate
pens as they arrive. The farmers who feel competent to judge a good beast
drift in during the morning and have a look round. A farmer who is not very
confident of his own judgment may get a fellow farmer to buy for him or he
may employ a “Guinea man” to do the buying, on commission.
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These guinea men are neither farmers nor dealers but simply
cattle experts who make a living on commission, collected alike from the
farmers for whom they are acting and the dealers to whom they have
introduced the business. The cattle
are driven out of their pens by the drovers and made to show their paces
and, after some bargaining, the price is signified as agreed by the smiting
of hands. As soon as the price is determined the “luck” is decided upon.
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Luck is the trade term for a discount which the buyer is
allowed to subtract from the agreed price. Ordinary luck is a shilling a
beast, double luck is two shillings. Frequently, however, luck is agreed at Ł1, or Ł5 according to
the keenness of the bargaining or for a variety of reasons which
suit the dealer.
Some of the discounts may be five or even twenty times as much
as the "ordinary" luck and on a big deal discount might be more
generous still. The best
beasts are sold in the morning but many farmers will hold off until the
afternoon, knowing that a dealer may prefer to let animals go cheap rather
than pay for their keep for another week. The meaning, then, of our opening
sentence is that a dealer has sold sixteen bullocks at Ł62 per head and agreed to allow the buyer
to deduct Ł1 12s.—from Ł992 by way of double the ordinary discount.
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Mr Bryan passes the
time of day with Mr Gould, a well-known dealer.
On the left, a farmer,
Mr C E Hopwood, Looks on…
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In this example the
dealer has brought his customer into the bank and introduced him, being a
stranger to us.Normally we would not see the dealer until later in the day
but the farmer himself would come in and tell us he had bought the cattle,
that double luck had been agreed and we would pay him the Ł1 12s.—which the
dealer pays, the farmer making his cheque out for the full amount. The
first thing we have to do on opening the branch is to go and see the
railway people in their office next door and pay the freight charges on all
the cattle arriving from Ireland. We then see by the various Delivery Notes
how many beasts are coming and on whose account. We make out an account for
each dealer concerned, sometimes as many as fifteen, and the first entry—freight for each consignment—is entered
thereon. Then the Corporation of York has to be paid for the hire of the
pens, and maybe for lairage and keep if cattle have been held over from one
week to the next. Someone will also have to be paid for the straw in the
pens, for the fodder, and there will be wages for the drovers and others
concerned with the handling of the cattle.
A whole street
of Banks from which to choose!
Midland Barclays and District Bank all competing for business with
Martins…
Image ©
Barclays Ref 0033-0932
Odd individuals pop
in and ask for various sums of money and all are paid without question,
without a signature and without recourse. Sometimes genuine mistakes are
made owing to misunderstandings: then the amount overpaid is suspended
until it can be recovered, as it always is. As the day wears on the dealers' accounts contain
half-a-dozen entries in respect of various sums disbursed by the Bank, and
on the credit side a note of the cheques received from the farmers as they
come in and settle. It is a custom that the farmer hands over his cheque
book for the cashier to fill in the amount of the cheque, placing the Bank
stamp on the "payee" line—another practice frowned upon in ordinary branch
banking.
When it is obvious from the visits paid by
the various farmers to draw their luck that all the beasts belonging to a
particular dealer have been sold, the job then is to find the dealer and
get him to agree to all the items in respect of which the Bank has paid
out, the various " luck " payments, drovers' wages, straw,
lairage, keep, rent of pens, rail charges and lastly, the Bank's commission
on the total turnover. On securing his agreement, a Bank draft is issued on
the Bank of Ireland for the balance, though the uncleared cheques do not
leave the main branch until the next day. Usually
the settlement is easy, but sometimes the dealer, for reasons already
mentioned, may find fault and, his temper upset, may emphasise his point by
banging a big stick on the counter. It's no good ringing up Head Office,
the cashier has to deal with the matter himself.
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During the
same visit, Martins Bank Magazine
calls at
York Branch to meet the staff,
some of whom
have worked at the
Cattle
Market sub branch:
Mr J
Barrett, Miss M Tomlinson, Mr Brian Sills,
Mr S Hodge
and Miss J W Allen.
IF YOU
WORKED AT YORK CATTLE MARKET SUB BRANCH,
AND WE
ALREADY HAVE YOUR PICTURE ELSEWHERE
WITHIN THE
MARTINS BANK ARCHIVE WEBSITE,
PLEASE LET
US KNOW AND WE WILL
ADD YOU TO THE
STAFF GALLERY BELOW.
e-mail: gutinfo@btinternet.com
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After all that has been written it will, therefore, be obvious
why the Bank considered it a good stroke of business to employ Mr.
Frederick Bryan on his retirement from the railway service, to help with
the running of this highly skilled and unusual form of banking. Mr. Bryan
entered the service of the Bank in 1943 after over twenty years' service at
the Cattle Market railway office, and over 40 years' service with the
London and North Eastern Railway altogether.
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He knows all the farmers
and all the dealers and his knowledge of market procedure is second to
none. Now, at the
age of 75, he is leaving us for well-earned retirement and the reason for
visiting the Cattle Market branch at York in August was because the
resulting article is intended to be a sort of acknowledgment of all he has
done for the Bank and a ' thank you ' for all he has been to us. It can be said
without any fear of contradiction that no one has been prouder of his connection
with Martins Bank than Mr. Bryan and when he leaves us at the end of
September he will take with him our warmest good wishes for a long and
happy retirement. Incidentally, Mr. Bryan has represented Stamford Bridge
on the Pocklington Rural District Council for many years and is still going
strong. Not the least of the
services he has rendered has been the very efficient training of the men
who are considered suitable to handle this rugged business. First among
them is Stanley Hodge, who signs the daily drafts and can handle any
situation as well as Mr. Bryan himself. We were impressed, Irish blarney
apart, with the obvious regard in which he is held on the Market and we
have no doubt that his gifts will find room for wider expression in due
course.
 He entered the Bank in
1935 at Leeds and apart from war service from 1940 to 1946 has previously
served at Brighouse, Leeds District Office and Westgate, Huddersfield. John Barrett, though a young man is an old friend of
ours. He came with us on the Bank tours to Switzerland in 1949 and Italy in
1951 and his father's managership will long be remembered in Yorkshire. John, too, is entering into the
spirit od Cattle Market business and his height and appearance are two most
valuable assets for a young businessman working in such conditions. It was not our first visit to York.
We visited the branch for
the Magazine in September 1949 when Mr. J. A. McGregor was manager, but no
one at present on the staff was there on the occasion of our previous visit
and so we felt less guilty than we might otherwise have done at paying a
second visit to a branch when there are so many branches which have not yet
received one. But, after all, one can hardly visit a sub branch without
calling in at the parent office!
We were most cordially
received by Mr. Brian Sills, m.b.e., manager
since 1953. We had previously met him at Leeds Office and at various social
functions and it was very pleasant to renew old acquaintance. Mr. Sills
entered the Bank in 1924 at Leeds and served at Pontefract, Bradford,
Shipley and Manningham (Bradford), Leeds City Office and District Office
before being made an Inspector in 1946, and Assistant Manager at Sheffield
in 1947 until his present appointment. During the war he served with H.M.
Forces throughout the Italian campaign. The two girls are Miss Maureen Tomlinson,
whom we had not previously met and Miss Jean W. Allan whom we met at one of
the Leeds District dinners. The
remaining member of the York staff is Mr. E. E. Tipple who, though a
Yorkshireman, has served the Bank principally in the London District, and
has been compelled for family reasons to return to the North, Our visit was made on August 4th and 5th and we count
it as quite one of the most interesting and rewarding experiences we have
had.
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