Victorian Insolvency: Bankruptcy, Imprisonment for Debt, and Company Winding-up in Nineteenth-Century England
V. Markham Lester
Abstract
This is the first legal and financial history of bankruptcy in 19th-century England. This book offers a full statistical analysis and detailed account of bankruptcy, imprisonment for debt, and company winding-up, and traces the decline in the level of insolvency towards the end of the century. This book's analysis demonstrates the validity of the Victoriansʼ notion that financial failure was a significant problem for English society. The book shows that random factors may have played as great a role as cyclical fluctuations in bankruptcy levels. The book also adds a new and significant dimensi ... More
This is the first legal and financial history of bankruptcy in 19th-century England. This book offers a full statistical analysis and detailed account of bankruptcy, imprisonment for debt, and company winding-up, and traces the decline in the level of insolvency towards the end of the century. This book's analysis demonstrates the validity of the Victoriansʼ notion that financial failure was a significant problem for English society. The book shows that random factors may have played as great a role as cyclical fluctuations in bankruptcy levels. The book also adds a new and significant dimension to the debate on government growth by analysing for the first time the part the English legal system played in the growth of British government. By the end of the 19th century, the administration of bankrupt estates was one of the largest items of government expenditure. The book sets Victorian management of insolvency in the context of other 19th-century legal and financial reforms and assesses its role in the development of the modern British state.
Keywords:
bankruptcy,
imprisonment,
debt,
insolvency,
financial failure,
Victorians,
British government
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 1995 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198205180 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205180.001.0001 |
