The new bank, under the name of the "Birmingham Banking Company Limited," was formed with all speed. Josiah Mason--then plain Mister--was the first chairman, and Mr. T.F. Shaw manager. The shares "came out" at a small premium, from which they gradually rose. From that time it has gone on steadily and surely. It has secured a good _clientele_, and is doing a large and profitable, business. It pays good dividends, and its shares stand well in the market. Mr. Shaw retired, from "continued ill health," in May, 1876. Mr. P.W. Walker was appointed manager _pro tem._, and at the end of the year, Mr. James Leigh, who had been manager of the Birmingham branch of the Worcester Bank, took the helm. May the bank under his guidance have, _fortitudine et prudentia_, a long career of prosperity and usefulness before it! I shall now have to go back again to the year 1836. At this time trade was good and everything looked prosperous. Mr. Geach, who was still a clerk in the Bank of England, conceived the idea of starting a fresh bank, and having secured the adhesion of a few influential men, the prospectus was issued of the Town and District Bank, capital L500,000, in 25,000 shares of L20 each. The shares were taken up readily, and the branch commenced business in Colmore Row, on the 1st of July, 1836. The directors were Messrs. George Bacchus (chairman), Edward Armfield, George J. Green, George C. Lingham, John G. Reeves, Josiah Richards, and Philip Williams. Although the bank had been started entirely through the exertions of Mr. Geach, who naturally expected to be appointed the manager, he was left out in the cold, and the appointment fell upon Mr. Bassett Smith. This gentleman had been a clerk to the firm of Gibbins, Smith, and Co., until their stoppage, and he afterwards was manager of a bank at Walsall, which appointment he threw up when he came to the District Bank. He held his position as manager here for many years, but was eventually induced to retire; He certainly was not a great banking genius. He was led more by impulse and feeling than by sound business judgment and coolness, and he often made mistakes in his estimate of the customers. Some--whom he liked--would "get on" easily enough, while others, equally worthy of attention, might ask in vain for slight accommodation. Nor was his manner judicious. I was in the bank one day, when a highly respectable man brought some bills to the counter to be placed to his account. The clerk took them to Mr. Smith, who was near the counter; he turned them over in his hand, and giving them back to the clerk, with a contemptuous gesture, said, loud enough to be heard by everyone there, "No!--a thousand times no!" Had the customer been a swindler he could not have been treated with greater insult and contumely. It was a fortunate thing for the bank when Mr. Barney became manager. From that time the bank has assumed its proper position. Under its new designation of the "Birmingham and Dudley