Looking Back: What happened to jobs for life and a gold watch?

It’s a far cry from the banking we knew in the 1950s when there were numerous banks in every district.

The bank manager, often looking like Captain Mainwaring in ‘Dads Army’ was one of the most important people in the local community. He, with the family doctor and the vicar would be privy to family secrets. There wasn’t many working-class families who used banks then.

Men’s wages were often collected by their wives at the factory gate so that they couldn’t fritter it away in the pub. There was usually little left for saving, but if your father did manage to open a bank account he would be subjected to rigorous checks.

There was no input from the woman of the house who wasn’t expected to investigate the finances of her husband. As long as she received her weekly housekeeping money, that was all that mattered. A married women’s place was in the home.

Even as late as the 1970s, women’s wages were not taken into consideration for mortgages, as women gave up paid work when they became pregnant.

Exactly what bank managers did in those days I really don’t know. There were almost no mortgages to manage, certainly not in working class communities, and so it isn’t difficult to realise that the bank manager took a great deal of interest (pardon the pun) into the affairs of what clients he did have.

He seemed to operate a benign dictatorship, had knowledge of people’s financial situation, advising clients into the administration of their finances, even calling them into the branch if he had noticed that they had drawn out an unusually high amount of money.

You could take children into the bank, especially the few who were intending to go to university, for a lecture on the evils of overspending.

The bank clerks weren’t exactly overstretched either!

Like working in steelworks and Local Government, former ‘jobs for life’ now seem to include banking!