The first Post Office Savings Bank in the district was established at the Clifton Branch Post Office on the 16th September, 1861, the year in which savings bank business was commenced throughout the country generally. Several accounts were opened on that day, and the amount deposited was £35 4s. A similar institution was opened in the city in March, 1862, at the Money Order Office, then located in the corner shop in Albion Chambers, Small Street, opposite the present Head Post Office. From such small beginnings a vast savings bank business has grown up. The sum standing to the credit of depositors in the Post Office Savings Bank in the Bristol postal area at the end of 1895, when the last account was published, was nearly £2,000,000, deposited by some 100,000 separate individuals. The deposits made at the head office in Small Street reached close upon £400,000, and the other part of the amount is made up thus: Gloucestershire side--Town Post Offices, £659,085; rural Post Offices, £192,934. Somersetshire side--Town Post Offices, £215,295; rural Post Offices, £91,944. The estimated amount due to depositors in the Post Office Savings Banks throughout the whole country on the 21st December, 1898, was £123,155,000, and the amount due to trustees of Savings Banks on November 20th, 1898,--the latest date on which the figures were made up--was £50,634,655. The Bristol Savings Bank was closed in 1888, and its 12,814 accounts were transferred to the Post Office Savings Bank. The amount of money involved was a little over half a million. During Mr. Fawcett's administration at the Post Office, thrift on the part of the nation was encouraged in every possible way. Then was inaugurated the now familiar system for facilitating the placing of small sums in the Post Office Savings Bank by means of postage stamps affixed to a Post Office form as penny after penny is saved until an amount of one shilling is reached, the minimum for a Post Office Savings Bank deposit. A case occurred at a Bristol Post Office fifteen years since, in which a young servant girl, in her desire to be thrifty under the system alluded to, craftily obtained the key of the letter box from the secret place in which the sub-postmaster kept it, and abstracted a number of circular letters on School Board business, and took off the stamps for attachment to the Savings Bank slips. She was sentenced to a term of imprisonment, which, on account of her youth, was limited to six months.