Records reveal that a historic Liverpool city centre bank used to keep insulting descriptions of its customers so that the clerks working there could recognise them.
These days, banks tend to go the extra mile to look after their customers, but one early Liverpool bank took a different approach and it was probably best that its customers never knew what the bank staff thought of them. The Grade II listed Brunswick Street building that today houses The Alchemist cocktail bar was once home to Heywood's Bank.
Built in 1800, the building is Liverpool’s oldest surviving purpose-built bank. The fascinating history of the institution, published in 1949 and available on the Martins Bank archive website ( www.martinsbank.co.uk ), reveals clerks found a creative way to keep track on their many illiterate customers in the early 19th century.
