Here are employed a Principal, Deputy Principal, Clerk, Assistant Clerk, and porters.
The gold is kept in solid bars, each bar weighing 16 pounds and valued at £800, or $4,000, and the silver in pigs and bars, while the dollars are kept in bags.
The value of the gold in the vaults of the Bank in 1869 was about twenty millions of pounds, or one hundred millions of dollars.
One day I received an order which was sent me by a friend, giving me full authority to visit the Bank of England. I had not a little curiosity to satisfy, and accordingly I arrived at the Bank as early as eleven o'clock in the day.
LEDGERS AND MONEY-BAGS.
Passing through the central entrance, which is opposite the Mansion House, I found myself in a spacious court well flagged, and here were two boxes in which sat a brace of Old Jewry detectives, who are on duty in this spot from one end of the year to the other. These men receive gratuities from the Bank beside their regular pay. There were also in the yard two big fat beadles in red coats and leggings, their garments being covered with tinsel. These fat, logy looking fellows are the footmen of the Bank, who are employed to watch for suspicious strangers and to guide any visitors who may come.
While an attendant was reading the order which I handed him, I could hear the musical jingle of sovereigns and silver coins, being rattled up and down in the interior of the building.
I was taken by the guide into a large vaulted room with a cupola, in which were a perfect army of clerks, some young and brisk, others old, gray, and ponderous, ranged in long rows behind the desks, making up accounts, weighing gold and paying it over the counters, or writing in huge ledgers.
Outside the circular railings, which run all around this very large room, were stationed a vast crowd of depositors, men and women, or persons drawing money in gold or silver. Continually from the throats of the clerks arose the words:
"How will you have it. Gold or silver? Sovereigns or halves?"