Sean O'Connell
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199263318
- eISBN:
- 9780191718793
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199263318.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter explains the success of companies such as Provident Financial and Cattles (both members of the FTSE 250 by the 1990s). Their agents serviced the growing sub-prime sector and ...
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This chapter explains the success of companies such as Provident Financial and Cattles (both members of the FTSE 250 by the 1990s). Their agents serviced the growing sub-prime sector and commercialized backstreet feminized affectual relationships between borrowers and lenders. The extent to which their success was dependent on the decline of pawnbroking and mail order agency (and the limitations of the government's Social Fund) is explained. The motivations and limited options of moneylenders' customers are explored as are accusations of ‘predatory lending’ and exploitation. Moneylenders fought PR battles to exclude themselves from the label ‘loan shark’, as images of criminal moneylenders increasingly replaced ones of ‘Shylocks’. The chapter examines the role of violent loan sharks, explaining their small but significant market. Particularly important was the fact that government resisted calls for interest rate caps because it feared legal lenders would abandon their riskiest borrowers, leaving them vulnerable to loan sharks.Less
This chapter explains the success of companies such as Provident Financial and Cattles (both members of the FTSE 250 by the 1990s). Their agents serviced the growing sub-prime sector and commercialized backstreet feminized affectual relationships between borrowers and lenders. The extent to which their success was dependent on the decline of pawnbroking and mail order agency (and the limitations of the government's Social Fund) is explained. The motivations and limited options of moneylenders' customers are explored as are accusations of ‘predatory lending’ and exploitation. Moneylenders fought PR battles to exclude themselves from the label ‘loan shark’, as images of criminal moneylenders increasingly replaced ones of ‘Shylocks’. The chapter examines the role of violent loan sharks, explaining their small but significant market. Particularly important was the fact that government resisted calls for interest rate caps because it feared legal lenders would abandon their riskiest borrowers, leaving them vulnerable to loan sharks.
Cathryn Spence
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781784992538
- eISBN:
- 9781526104182
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992538.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This chapter uses as its main source the Annuity Tax Roll for Edinburgh, which lists every landlord, tenant, and property in Edinburgh in 1635. It considers the presence of women in the tax roll both ...
More
This chapter uses as its main source the Annuity Tax Roll for Edinburgh, which lists every landlord, tenant, and property in Edinburgh in 1635. It considers the presence of women in the tax roll both as landladies and tenants, and therefore explores economic issues such as women's control of property, and social issues such as spinster-clustering. It also uses debt litigation to explore the issue of landlord-tenant relationships, not just in Edinburgh, but also in Haddington, Linlithgow, and Dundee. From there, the chapter examines the control of monetary property, through the practice of moneylending, which also had a clear status element, and the control of small property, through cases of pawnbroking.Less
This chapter uses as its main source the Annuity Tax Roll for Edinburgh, which lists every landlord, tenant, and property in Edinburgh in 1635. It considers the presence of women in the tax roll both as landladies and tenants, and therefore explores economic issues such as women's control of property, and social issues such as spinster-clustering. It also uses debt litigation to explore the issue of landlord-tenant relationships, not just in Edinburgh, but also in Haddington, Linlithgow, and Dundee. From there, the chapter examines the control of monetary property, through the practice of moneylending, which also had a clear status element, and the control of small property, through cases of pawnbroking.
