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The
Liverpool Department is based at Head Office, the Manchester Branch is at
Spring Gardens, (former HO of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Bank), and in
London, the Chief Foreign Branch of the Bank is at 68 Lombard Street. By
1951, despite the rebuilding of the Lombard Street premises, office space
is at an absolute premium, and plans are put in train to re-locate the
Foreign Branch to new premises leased from Lloyds Bank at 80 Gracechurch
Street. Later renamed Chief
OVERSEAS, London foreign will remain Martins’ principal foreign dealing
branch until the merger with Barclays in 1969… Many of the images on this
page are from the extensive personal collection of Martins Bank items of
Stephen Walker.
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Amongst
these, is this superb example of a letter of indication, which will have
been used by London Foreign branch to indicate to correspondent banks
abroad that a customer is good for the sums of money indicated within the
letter, and that they should be given access to these funds when they
present themselves and a suitable form of identification at the counter of
the relevant bank abroad. Remember, the days of debit cards providing
instant cash anywhere in the world are still a long way off, and whilst
these other processes seem archaic, there are cutting edge for the
travellers of the 1930s…
Here’s
another lovely example – this time a cheque that can be made out in foreign
currency, either to pay a company or individual abroad, or to be cashed by
special arrangement at a correspondent bank.
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Wartime
asset…
Mr C H Birse, Appointed Foreign
Manager of the Bank and based at London Foreign Branch from 1947 until his
retirement in 1951 is one of Martins Bank’s celebrities. The highlight of
his career was to be asked to interpret between Stalin and Churchill in 1943. In this article from Martins Bank
Magazine’s Autumn 1947 edition, we learn more about this extraordinary and
largely unsung hero…
  The appointment on 1 July of Mr. A. H. Birse
as Foreign Manager of the Bank in succession to Mr. E. B. Babcock, who has
retired on pension, is one of unusual interest, for no other member of the
present staff of Martins Bank can claim to have had a career so varied and
of such absorbing interest, as the photographs which follow
show. Mr. Birse was born in Russia in St. Petersburg, now
called Leningrad, and received his education at a Russian public
school. He commenced his business
career there in 1906 in the office of the representative of the well-known
firm of merchant bankers, Baring Bros. & Co. In 1917 he
returned to this country to join the Artists Rifles, and was later commissioned
to the Intelligence Corps with the rank of Captain.
Upon demobilisation he took a post with the British Overseas
Bank, London, in 1920. The following year he went to Poland as Sub-Manager
of their Warsaw subsidiary. In 1925 he left them to take up the post of
Assistant Manager of the Milan and Genoa branches of the Banca Italo
Britannica. In 1928 he joined the Chemical Bank & Trust Co., London, as
Assistant European Representative. Two years later he went to Antwerp to
join a company in which his old firm, Baring Bros. & Co. were
interested. In
1932 he joined the Amstelbank in Amsterdam, being appointed by a group of
British Bank creditors to attend to the liquidation of this concern. He
joined Martins Bank in 1936 as Assistant Manager in London Foreign branch. But the most spectacular part of
his career was still to come. As an accomplished linguist, and in
particular as a fluent speaker of the Russian language and expert on
Russian affairs, he became during the second world war, after service in
the Intelligence Corps in Egypt and the Military Mission in Moscow with the
rank of major, second Secretary to the British Embassy in Moscow and
personal interpreter to the Ambassador, Lord Inverchapel.
 Arising from this he acted
as interpreter to Mr Churchill and Mr Eden at the Moscow Conference in
October, 1943; at the Teheran
Conference in November, 1943; at the Moscow conference in October, 1944; and
at the Yalta Conference in January, 1945. Mr
Eden made a personal request to the bank for the services of Mr Birse at
the Moscow Conference of 1944. He also acted as interpreter at the prolonged
Armistice negotiations with the satellite
countries in Moscow during September and October, 1944. In April, 1945, he accompanied Mr. Eden
to San Francisco, and in July he was in Potsdam, acting as interpreter to
Mr Churchill, Mr Eden, Mr Attlee and Mr Bevin. All these duties were of a most
exacting and arduous nature, involving sixteen hours a day, and often more,
for days on end. For
his services he received the C.B.E. from our ambassador on behalf of H.M.
the King, and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour from the President of
the U.S.S.R. Last year
he travelled all over the United States and part of Canada visiting our
correspondents and accompanied the Chief General Manager Mr J M Furniss, on
a trip to North America.
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