The Bank of England and the genesis of modern management

In 1965 Sidney Pollard published The Genesis of Modern Management, an extended discussion of the problems, during Britain’s initial period of industrialisation, of the ‘internal management’ of the firm. But, in his focus on industry, Pollard ignored one of the largest, most significant and most innovative of the enterprises of the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth centuries: The Bank of England. This paper focuses on the Bank as a site of precocious managerial development. It first establishes that the Bank, by the latter part of the eighteenth century, encompassed the complexities of a large-scale industrial enterprise. It employed a workforce of several hundred. Its workers operated in specialised and coordinated capacities. Its managerial hierarchy was diffuse and dependent on employed men, rather than the elected directorate. The Bank, therefore, warrants comparison with the types of enterprises identified by Pollard. Focusing on the 1780s, the paper then explores the Bank’s organisational and management structure against Pollard’s four aspects of management: ‘the creation and training of a class of managers; ‘the recruitment, training, disciplining and acculturation of labour’; the use of ‘accountancy, and other information …in the rational determination of their decisions’ and finally the question of whether there emerged a ‘theory and practice of “management”’. It will demonstrate that, although not always applied effectively, the Bank’s senior men did show managerial innovation and skill in training and organising the workforce and were able to make informed decisions which had the potential to improve some of the Bank’s processes

‘You do manage it so well that I cannot do better’: the working life of Elizabeth Jeake of Rye (1667-1736)

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Women's History Review on 27 March 2018, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2018.145556. Under embargo until 27 September 2019.This article contributes to the debate around early modern women’s work. It concerns not waged labour but rather the unpaid contributions made by women to both home and the business undertaken by their husband. It focuses on Elizabeth Jeake, the wife of Samuel Jeake, a merchant from the Sussex port of Rye. Through the letters exchanged between the family, it explores Elizabeth’s skilled work in support of her husband. This included giving instructions to contractors, gathering and disseminating business and investment information, negotiations with Samuel’s business partners and acquaintances, managing property and tenants, negotiating credit relationships and purchasing and selling commodities.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

We have been ruined by Whores”: Perceptions of Female Involvement in the South Sea Scheme

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston. This is the accepted manuscript version of a book chapter which has been published in final form with ISBN 978-3-11-059056-

Embedding Guides Where Students Learn: Do Design Choices and Librarian Behavior Make a Difference?

This study investigated whether library guides embedded in a university’s learning management system fulfill their mission to promote library resources and maintain a librarian presence in the online course environment. Specifically, the study examined whether design elements, promotional practices, or other behaviors influenced guide use. It questioned whether students located the library guides and, if so, did students find the guides helpful. Results confirmed that students who used library guides found the guides helpful. Select faculty and librarian behaviors may also influence student use of library guides. Promotion and marketing practices, however, are not the only factors encouraging students to use library guides.Publisher allows immediate open acces

Female Rats are More Vulnerable to the Long-Term Consequences of Neonatal Inflammatory Injury

Premature infants are routinely exposed to invasive medical procedures during neonatal intensive care treatment that are largely performed in the absence of anesthetics or analgesics. Data collected to date suggest that exposure to early insult during this time of increased plasticity alters the development of the CNS and influences future pain responses. As previous studies examining the impact of neonatal injury on nociception have been conducted primarily in males, the potential adverse effects on females are not known. Therefore, the present studies were conducted to determine whether neonatal injury differentially impacts male and female sensory thresholds in adulthood. A short lasting inflammatory response was evoked in male and female rats on the day of birth with an injection of carrageenan (CGN; 1% or 2%) into the right hindpaw. Nociceptive thresholds were assessed using a noxious thermal stimulus at both adolescence (P40) and adulthood (P60). A more persistent inflammation was subsequently evoked in adult rats with an intraplantar injection of Complete Freund’s adjuvant (CFA). Neonatally injured females exhibited significantly greater hypoalgesia at P60, and displayed enhanced inflammatory hyperalgesia following re-injury in adulthood compared to neonatally injured males and controls. These results demonstrate that the long-term adverse effects of neonatal injury are exacerbated in females, and may contribute to the higher prevalence, severity and duration of pain syndromes noted in women compared to men

Long Term Impact of Neonatal Injury in Male and Female Rats: Sex Differences, Mechanisms and Clinical Implications

Over the last several decades, the relative contribution of early life events to individual disease susceptibility has been explored extensively. Only fairly recently, however, has it become evident that abnormal or excessive nociceptive activity experienced during the perinatal period may permanently alter the normal development of the CNS and influence future responses to somatosensory input. Given the significant rise in the number of premature infants receiving high‐technology intensive care over the last twenty years, ex‐preterm neonates may be exceedingly vulnerable to the long‐term effects of repeated invasive interventions. The present review summarizes available clinical and laboratory findings on the lasting impact of exposure to noxious stimulation during early development, with a focus on the structural and functional alterations in nociceptive circuits, and its sexually dimorphic impact

Neonatal Injury Alters Adult Pain Sensitivity by Increasing Opioid Tone in the Periaqueductal Gray

Studies in both rodents and humans have shown that acute inflammatory pain experienced during the perinatal period produces long-term decreases in pain sensitivity (hypoalgesia) (Grunau et al., 1994a , 2001 ; Ren et al., 2004 ; LaPrairie and Murphy, 2007 ). To date, the mechanisms underlying these long-term adaptations, however, have yet to be elucidated. The present studies tested the hypothesis that neonatal inflammatory pain induces an upregulation in endogenous opioid tone that is maintained into adulthood, and that this increase in opioid tone provides the underlying mechanism for the observed hypoalgesia. On the day of birth (P0), inflammatory pain was induced in male and female Sprague-Dawley rats by intraplantar administration of carrageenan (CGN; 1%). In adulthood (P60), these animals displayed significantly increased paw withdrawal latencies in response to a noxious thermal stimulus in comparison to controls. Systemic administration of the brain-penetrant opioid receptor antagonist naloxone HCl, but not the peripherally restricted naloxone methiodide, significantly attenuated the injury-induced hypoalgesia. Direct administration of naloxone HCl or antagonists directed at the mu or delta opioid receptors into the midbrain periaqueductal gray (PAG) also significantly reversed the injury-induced hypoalgesia in adult rats. Parallel anatomical studies revealed that inflammatory pain experienced on the day of birth significantly increased beta-endorphin and met/leu-enkephalin protein levels and decreased opioid receptor expression in the PAG of the adult rat. Thus, early noxious insult produces long-lasting alterations in endogenous opioid tone, thereby profoundly impacting nociceptive responsiveness in adulthood

Tenofovir disoproxil fumarate induces peripheral neuropathy and alters inflammation and mitochondrial biogenesis in the brains of mice.

Mounting evidence suggests that antiretroviral therapy (ART) drugs may contribute to the prevalence of HIV-associated neurological dysfunction. The HIV envelope glycoprotein (gp120) is neurotoxic and has been linked to alterations in mitochondrial function and increased inflammatory gene expression, which are common neuropathological findings in HIV+ cases on ART with neurological disorders. Tenofovir disproxil fumarate (TDF) has been shown to affect neurogenesis in brains of mice and mitochondria in neurons. In this study, we hypothesized that TDF contributes to neurotoxicity by modulating mitochondrial biogenesis and inflammatory pathways. TDF administered to wild-type (wt) and GFAP-gp120 transgenic (tg) mice caused peripheral neuropathy, as indicated by nerve conduction slowing and thermal hyperalgesia. Conversely TDF protected gp120-tg mice from cognitive dysfunction. In the brains of wt and gp120-tg mice, TDF decreased expression of mitochondrial transcription factor A (TFAM). However, double immunolabelling revealed that TFAM was reduced in neurons and increased in astroglia in the hippocampi of TDF-treated wt and gp120-tg mice. TDF also increased expression of GFAP and decreased expression of IBA1 in the wt and gp120-tg mice. TDF increased tumor necrosis factor (TNF) α in wt mice. However, TDF reduced interleukin (IL) 1β and TNFα mRNA in gp120-tg mouse brains. Primary human astroglia were exposed to increasing doses of TDF for 24 hours and then analyzed for mitochondrial alterations and inflammatory gene expression. In astroglia, TDF caused a dose-dependent increase in oxygen consumption rate, extracellular acidification rate and spare respiratory capacity, changes consistent with increased metabolism. TDF also reduced IL-1β-mediated increases in IL-1β and TNFα mRNA. These data demonstrate that TDF causes peripheral neuropathy in mice and alterations in inflammatory signaling and mitochondrial activity in the brain

Performing public credit at the eighteenth-century Bank of England

Much is known about the negotiation of personal credit relationships during the eighteenth century. It has been noted how direct contact and observation allowed individuals to assess the creditworthiness of those with whom they had financial connections and to whom they might lend money. Much less is known about one of the most important credit relationships of the long eighteenth century: that between the state and its creditors. This article shows that investors could experience the performance of public credit at the Bank of England. By 1760 the Bank was the manager of nearly three-quarters of the state's debt and housed the main secondary market in that debt. Thus, it provided a place for public creditors, both current and potential, to attend and scrutinize the performance of the state's promises. The article demonstrates how the Bank acted to embody public credit through its architecture, internal structures, and imagery and through the very visible actions of its clerks and the technologies that they used to record ownership and transfer of the national debt. The Bank of England, by those means, allowed creditors to interrogate the financial stability and reputation of the state in the same ways that they could interrogate the integrity of a private debtor.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

‘Writes a fair hand and appears to be well qualified’ : the recruitment of Bank of England clerks, 1800-1815

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedThe financial strains of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had a significant impact on the Bank of England. In its position as banker to the state and manager of the state’s debt, it experienced a significant increase in workload and thus was forced rapidly to expand its workforce. From a complement of around 300 in the mid-1780s, the number of clerks employed had increased to over 900 in 1815. Using a unique set of records preserved in the Bank’s archives, this article investigates the backgrounds and skills of the men recruited during the expansion of the early nineteenth century. It finds a significant gap between the skills required by the Bank and the skills possessed by its potential workforce.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio