3-085-984 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

A part of the transfer office, Lipton, Limited, 1898. '£1 for every man and woman in the Kingdom. £50,000,000 Subscribed...there has been no rush for shares in an industrial enterprise to equal that for the Lipton conversion. The National Bank of Scotland in Nicholas Lane, the Brokers, and Sir Thomas Lipton's own offices in City Road have been literally deluged with applications...an enormous number of applicants attended personally at the National Bank of Scotland, and considerable difficulty was found in conducting business...The crowd was so great that the manager was obliged to engage some seventy additional clerks to enable him to cope with the rush, and these worked all night... So great, indeed, was the pressure on Wednesday that the adjoining premises of the Bank of Agra were taken for the accommodation of would-be subscribers. In the Scottish Bank itself a couple of rooms had to be fitted up specially where applications could be received, in order that the regular business of the bank might not be rendered impossible, as it was on the opening day...Never before has the City seen an issue attended with so much excitement as that which has characterised the conversion of Sir Thomas Lipton's gigantic business...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1898.