A Scion Society of The Baker Street Irregulars
Some Links About the Bank of England
“No living man could tell a Prescott from a Bank of England …”
– The Adventure of the Three Garridebs (3GAR)
A circa 1890 photograph of the Bank of England by George Washington Wilson.
There are only two mentions of the Bank of England thoughout the 60 stories of the Canon – in The Dancing Men and The Three Garridebs. At first, I found this to be very surprising as I expected there to be more references to the Bank. In hindsight, it makes sense for the few references since it was functioning as a central bank (much like our Federal Reserve System), and everyone did their banking with private banks, such as Sherlock Holmes had with the Capital and Counties Bank.
We will share a few links here that deal with the Bank of England for those that might be interested.
- The History of the Bank of England 1734-1984 (pamphlet)
- Timeline of the Bank of England
- Bank of England archive
- Bank of England Museum
- BBC News photo essay of the Bank of England
Sterling silver replica of the Bank of England building – BuildingCollector.com
- The 1954 film The Million Pound Note starring Gregory Peck, based on the Mark Twain short story.
A novelty bank of England 1,000,000 note dated 1903, reputably a film prop from the 1954 film “The Million Pound Note” starring Gregory Peck
Enjoy!
The Bank of England really does have printed 1 million pound notes (called “giants”) as well as 100 million pound notes (“titans”) used for internal purposes. There’s an interesting web page as well as an illustration here: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21145103
They’re used in a different fashion from the one in Twain’s original story, which is a good one to hunt down and read if you’ve never done so. I have it in the same collection as “A Double Barreled Detective Story.”