It's probably one of the greatest myths of economic history that women have spent most of history as housewives.

The average woman had no choice but to work, but you were locked out of the banking system.

So you really had nowhere to put your hard-earned savings.

And with it, no ability, of of course to earn interest on those savings

which you know was a great shame so priscilla took people's deposits she invested them in bonds

and then she was able to return to her customers a a 5% interest.

Today on the story of money, we are going to go back to the year 1798 in London, the early decades of the British Industrial Revolution.

There are power looms and canals and factories powered by steam engines.

The city's population is exploding.

And it's a time of energy and opportunity.

Absolutely.

And in fact, in many ways, it's a lot like the emerging markets today.

And the story we're going to tell is very salutary in that respect. But the key point to note,

or to start with, is that although there were extraordinary opportunities for men at the time,

women had far fewer opportunities, particularly married women.

Yeah, and this was a time when thousands of people were migrating from the countryside to the new industrial towns, and they were being paid relatively decent wages in cash for

the first time, pretty much in history. But they had nowhere really to put the money that they didn't spend

right away. Again, there's a lot of parallels with what's happening in the emerging markets now.

So just for a moment, though, imagine you're a hardworking woman in the late 1700s. You've got a bit

of money that you've really struggled to collect. Not a fortune, but you want to keep it. So the question is, where do you put it if the banking system is closed to women? Well, yeah, do you just stashed it under the bed and hope for the best? Well, that's certainly one option, and many people have done that over the years. But there wasn't any safety with that. If you put it in a sock,

someone might steal that sock. And yes, I'm guessing that sock didn't pay an interest, right?

Absolutely not. However, there was a woman who decided to start changing it, and her name has often been written out of the history books, but she was called Priscilla Wakefield. She was an educational author and a Quaker who in 1798 set up the first ever women and children's bank.

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