Researching the absence of professional organisation in Victorian England

Abstract

Professionalisation is a major research focus of accounting historians, with particular attention paid to circumstances attending the formation and spread of accounting associations. This paper adds a new dimension to such research by examining the failure of public accountants to create a professional body in circumstances that appear conducive to organisational formation whether viewed from a functionalist or critical perspective. It is argued that strategies adopted by Bristol's leading public accountants enabled them to achieve economic and social advance in the absence of organisational formation. Of importance was how they positioned themselves in Bristol society through geographical location, the political, philanthropic and religious networks that connected them to the governing élite, and devices employed for publicising their services. Also relevant was their association with key venues where professionals and businessmen met to discuss commercial affairs. No inconsistency is revealed between the failure of Bristol's leading accountants to form a professional association in the 1870s and their enthusiastic embrace of chartered status following formation of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales in 1880.

Keywords:

• professionalization
• Bristol
• accountants
• élites
• networks

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Stephen Walker for comments on an early version of this paper, to Peter Wardley for suggesting a number of avenues of inquiry, and to the anonymous referees for constructive suggestions for improvement.

Notes

Public accountants are defined for the purpose of this paper as those who offered their services to the public through the medium of the city-based directories regularly published in Britain during the nineteenth century.

Contributing significantly to Edwards and Walker's (2007, 69) discovery of a high density of accountants in the south-west of Britain and heavy congregation around seaports, in 1881, was a ‘[p]articularly noteworthy’ presence of public and employee-accountants (191 per 100,000 inhabitants or 555 in total) in the Bristol area.

Penny (1997) gives a useful summary of economic developments in the Bristol area between 1780 and 1850.

See Cornwell (1991, appendix 2) for a list of industries in the 1820s and the leading families connected with them.

The other three started out in the city of initial organisational formation in England – Liverpool. Boys (1994, 17–8) identifies six London firms formed in the 1820s with a continuous existence up to 1994.

Local criticism of Bristol's administration contrasts with the Royal Commissioners’ assessment of the ‘admirable manner in which the books are kept’ (Royal Commission on Municipal Corporations 1835, xxiv, 537), based on the system of double-entry bookkeeping rarely employed by local government bodies at that time (Coombs and Edwards 1996).

Atkinson (1987, 84) acknowledges ‘the strength of Bristol Nonconformity’.

For examples of inconsistency see Parker (2004, 58) and Boys (1994, 6). For some of the causes of these deficiencies, see Edwards, Anderson, and Chandler (2007, 65–6).

The directory was by then compiled by the national supplier, J. Wright & Co. The title page records continuity with Mathews and that nomenclature will be used throughout this paper.

E.T. Jones, who Hill Vellacott (1988) records as moving to London in the 1820s, is not listed.

George Swithinbank and James Wood Sully, each listed in Mathews’ Directory, lived in London and principally worked out of the London offices of firms bearing their name. The audits they conducted are therefore excluded from Table 5, except for Swithinbank's audit of the Bristol-based Great Western Colliery Co. where his Bristol-based partner William Briggs was company secretary.

Tryon's association with Tribe, Clarke & Co. is inferred from the fact that, although describing himself as public accountant in the census returns, he never features in the classified trade directories and was certainly with Tribe, Clarke & Co. when admitted to the ICAEW as a fellow on 7 February 1894.

We have excluded a small number of solicitors who gave their home address in Mathews’ Directory on the assumption that they were either retired or in employment. The same has been done in the case of accountants listed in the Commercial Directory.

Not all the 16 firms in ‘other locations’ were far afield; the location of seven more firms are captured by Figure 1 – four in Queen Square and one each in Baldwin Street, Prince Street and Welsh Back.

The office addresses are taken in the first instance from Mathews’ Directory 1881; failing that from the ICAEW lists of members. Excluded from Table 7 are Frederick George Painter and Richard Garnaut Cawker who lived, respectively, in London and Swansea.

Five (Frederick Denning, James Milne, John Parsons, Samuel Brazier Parsons, Philip Triggs) joined as the result of their prior membership of the Society of Accountants in England, while William Briggs had been a member of the London-based Institute of Accountants.

The first three of these are listed as ‘founder firms’ by Howitt (1966) under their then names of Curtis, Jenkins, Cornwell & Co., Grace, Derbyshire & Todd and Tribe, Clarke & Co. The successor firm of W.H. Williams & Co. (Hudson Smith, Briggs & Co.) merged with Price Waterhouse & Co. in 1963 (Matthews, Anderson, and Edwards 1998, 312).

Élite public accountants who later competed for public office include Henry Anstey who became a member of Bristol City Council in 1895 and was elected Alderman in 1913 (Obituary 1924, 663) and Edward T. Collins who became a member of the Council in 1902 (Obituary 1912a, 665).

The other elected auditor during that period was the auctioneer and arbitrator George Snow Tricks, himself son and brother respectively of élite public accountants William and Frank.

The Dolphin was formed by the Tories, the Anchor by the Whigs, while the Grateful was non-partisan (Jordan 1999, 300–1).

One of the Colston societies paid the premium for Edward Thomas Jones’ apprenticeship to John Mallard (Etor 2004).

A further important meeting place for leading businessmen has been the Masonic Lodge (Burt 2003). The Provincial Grand Lodge of Bristol was constituted in 1786, and it is known that John Curtis Jr was heavily involved, serving as Past Master and Treasurer of the St Vincent's Lodge for many years (Obituary 1918, 283). Edward T. Collins crops up again here as ‘one of the oldest Freemasons in Bristol, and one of the most active’ (Obituary 1912a, 665). Positions of prominence in the movement and his achievements are detailed in both The Accountant and Western Daily Press (Obituary 1912a, 1912b). Unfortunately, it has proved impossible to investigate further the public accountant–mason connection due to the refusal of the Provincial Lodge of Bristol to allow access to its membership records, citing the lack of a librarian.

A letter to the editor of The Accountant (11 August, 12–13) from the secretary of the Bristol Chamber explains why ‘the defects of the present Act [should] be remedied by amendments’ rather than abolition.

Similar concerns were expressed elsewhere by Sir George Jessell, Master of the Rolls, and Sir James Bacon, Chief Judge in Bankruptcy (Chandler, Anderson, and Edwards 2008).

Bristol Times and Daily Mirror, 13 November 1867, 3, quoted in Jordan (1999, 293).

New members by 1885–7 included Edward T. Collins, Edwin J. Richards, E.J. Pike and Frank N. Tribe (BRO 37454/6/B).

The extent to which these features were evident in the business and professional communities of other British cities is an appropriate subject for future comparative research.

Lack of enthusiasm for a local society continued, with The Accountant (8 February 1896) expressing surprise at ‘inaction’ given institutional formation ‘in other large towns’. The Bristol (now West of England) Society of Chartered Accountants was eventually founded in 1903.