Some very interesting comments. On assurance, that's an interesting point. Victorian banks would have faced much higher risk than modern ones, I imagine, but it's possible that regulation has imposed greater requirements on them. (By the way, it seems that it was the exhibition organisers who did chasing up of guarantors, rather than the bank.)
On convincing potential guarantors, that does seem to have been the key thing to convince them of - that they wouldn't be called upon. That said, the evidence seems to suggest that they would guarantee much higher amounts, and more quickly, than they would donate. Many of the largest up-front donors to the Great Exhibition were willing to then guarantee about 5-10x what they had donated.
You give a very compelling hypothesis for the decline of the guarantee fund as an institution. Exhibitions being taken over by governments may well have removed one of the primary demands for it. I also suspect that we saw a big move away from setting up self-funding charities, towards simple direct transfers to causes. One thing I need to research is just how widespread it ever was in the first place (though the fact that the way guarantee funds worked is almost never explained - even in the literature on the Great Exhibition - suggests that it was quite common)
A fascinating piece. I had no idea. Intrigued to know if there are any other examples from19C or indeed later. I wonder if charity law permits the grant-giving foundations to do this? Charitable leverage to use your expression….
Yes, I'm keeping an eye out for similar cases. It's just something that stuck out at me while thinking about how to organise a modern industrial exhibition, but I only know about it from having read internal documents in the archive - one hardly finds anything at all about it when simply looking up how the event was organised.
It would certainly be interesting to look into charity law on this.
Potentially. Though from what I've seen from exhibitions, guarantors did tend to have quite a bit of control, similar to donors today. The fact that the method was used for over 80 years, if not longer, and with quite a bit of success, suggests that it did appeal at the time. What I wonder is if I'm missing something about how preferences changed, though I suspect the explanation for their decline will be much more prosaic - something like it falling out of use due to the interruption of the Second World War or something.
As a user of the London Chatham and Dover Railway's infrastructure, I consider myself a beneficiary of Sir Samuel Morton Peto's exceptionally dodgy financial engineering (the construction, however, was good).
Reading this just makes me believe that this could work brilliantly today, like this could defiantly be a thriving business with someone inspired at the helm...
Some very interesting comments. On assurance, that's an interesting point. Victorian banks would have faced much higher risk than modern ones, I imagine, but it's possible that regulation has imposed greater requirements on them. (By the way, it seems that it was the exhibition organisers who did chasing up of guarantors, rather than the bank.)
On convincing potential guarantors, that does seem to have been the key thing to convince them of - that they wouldn't be called upon. That said, the evidence seems to suggest that they would guarantee much higher amounts, and more quickly, than they would donate. Many of the largest up-front donors to the Great Exhibition were willing to then guarantee about 5-10x what they had donated.
You give a very compelling hypothesis for the decline of the guarantee fund as an institution. Exhibitions being taken over by governments may well have removed one of the primary demands for it. I also suspect that we saw a big move away from setting up self-funding charities, towards simple direct transfers to causes. One thing I need to research is just how widespread it ever was in the first place (though the fact that the way guarantee funds worked is almost never explained - even in the literature on the Great Exhibition - suggests that it was quite common)
A fascinating piece. I had no idea. Intrigued to know if there are any other examples from19C or indeed later. I wonder if charity law permits the grant-giving foundations to do this? Charitable leverage to use your expression….
Yes, I'm keeping an eye out for similar cases. It's just something that stuck out at me while thinking about how to organise a modern industrial exhibition, but I only know about it from having read internal documents in the archive - one hardly finds anything at all about it when simply looking up how the event was organised.
It would certainly be interesting to look into charity law on this.
Donors want control. Investors want profits. This approach provides neither. So it does not appeal to the people with the money.
Potentially. Though from what I've seen from exhibitions, guarantors did tend to have quite a bit of control, similar to donors today. The fact that the method was used for over 80 years, if not longer, and with quite a bit of success, suggests that it did appeal at the time. What I wonder is if I'm missing something about how preferences changed, though I suspect the explanation for their decline will be much more prosaic - something like it falling out of use due to the interruption of the Second World War or something.
As a user of the London Chatham and Dover Railway's infrastructure, I consider myself a beneficiary of Sir Samuel Morton Peto's exceptionally dodgy financial engineering (the construction, however, was good).
Reading this just makes me believe that this could work brilliantly today, like this could defiantly be a thriving business with someone inspired at the helm...