Thomas Raikes

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This article is about the Governor of the Bank of England. For his son, the diarist and dandy, see Thomas Raikes (dandy).

Thomas Raikes ("the Elder") (1741–1813) was a British banker and newspaper proprietor. Notably, he was Governor of the Bank of England during the 1797 currency crisis, when the Bank was prohibited by the British Government from paying out in gold.

[edit] Biography

Raikes was born at Gloucester in 1741, third son of Mary Drew and the elder Robert Raikes.

In December 1774, Raikes married Charlotte, daughter of Henry Finch, Earl of Winchilsea[citation needed]. With Charlotte he had four sons and five daughters. Eldest son Thomas became a noted London diarist; another son, Henry, became a churchman, eventually Chancellor of the Diocese of Chester.

[edit] Governor of the Bank of England 1797–1799

Thomas Raikes was Governor of the Bank of England from from 1797 to 1799, and was therefore Governor during the crisis of 1797 when war had so diminished gold reserves that the Government prohibited the Bank from paying out in gold and ordered the Bank to replace the payment out of gold by banknotes.

On 26 February 1797, in spite of it being a Sunday, the Privy Council convened to discuss measures of preventing the country’s financial ruin. The reserves in the Bank of England were dangerously low, and the news that a French squadron had landed on the coast of Fishguard, Wales, had just reached the capital the previous day. On the following day, people who went to the Bank of England were given handbills, which communicated that by Order of the Privy Council the Bank had suspended the cash payment of their notes. The Bank on that day issued the first £1 and £2 sterling banknotes. The Bank of England was beginning to assume the status of a central bank, and the people used and became accustomed to inconvertible paper money.

Thomas Raikes was a personal friend of William Wilberforce, the leader of the campaign against the slave trade and also a personal friend of William Pitt the Younger.

Raikes died in 1813.

[edit] References

  • Source: Kent's Directory for the Year 1794. Cities of London and Westminster, & Borough of Southwark.
  • Cfr D. RAIKES, Pedigree of Raikes, published 1980
  • J.M. HARRIS, Robert Raikes, the man and his works.
  • Frank BOOTH, Robert Raikes of Gloucester published 1980.
  • John CLAPHAM " History of the Bank of England"
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