Her Majesty's Mails

Savings' banks have suffered most severely from frauds in the management, and the feeling of insecurity which these frauds have engendered from time to time has gone far to mar their usefulness. Government is only responsible to the trustees for the amounts actually placed in its hands. The law, previous to 1844, gave the depositor a remedy against the trustees in case of wilful neglect or default. In 1844, the Legislature thought right to make a most important change in the law, by which trustees of savings' banks were released from all liability, except where it was voluntarily assumed. It remains a most significant fact, that all the great frauds with this class of banks have occurred since that date. We have, indeed, to thank only the influential gentlemen, who, as a rule, take upon themselves the management of savings' banks, that such cases have been so rare as they have.[180] The known frauds in savings' banks are calculated to have swallowed up a quarter of a million of hard-earned money. The fraud in the Cuffe Street bank, in Dublin, amounted to 56,000l.; the Tralee bank stopped payment in 1848 with liabilities to depositors to the extent of 36,768l., and only 1,660l. of available assets; in the same year, the Killarney savings' bank stopped with liabilities of 36,000l., and assets of only half that amount. About the same time, the Rochdale bank frauds became known, and losses to the extent of 40,000l. were the result.