Historical timeline: 1851 - 1900

Date	Coutts event	World event
1851		The Great Exhibition takes place in Hyde Park and attracts six million visitors during its six month run
1853		William Gladstone presents his first Budget in a five hour speech and is praised both as a financier and as an orator
1854		The start of the Crimean War between Russia and an alliance of Britain, France, Turkey and Sardinia
1856		The Victoria Cross is introduced by Queen Victoria to reward valour during the Crimean War
1859	The Coutts Staff Library is founded with a donation of books from Angela Burdett-Coutts	Charles Darwin publishes his ‘Origin of Species’
1861		Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, dies at Windsor Castle
1863	Building work to expand Coutts’ offices at 59 Strand are completed, including a dining-room for clerks	The London Underground is opened, connecting Paddington with Farringdon Street (now Farringdon)
1864	Coutts now employs 39 clerks
1865		The American Civil War ends and slavery is abolished in America
1866		The bank Overend & Gurney collapses, drawing a large crowd to their Lombard Street office and prompting a run on the business
1867		The Reform Act of 1867 extends the right to vote to male homeowners in England and Wales, enfranchising the urban male working class
1868	One of Coutts’ partners Edward Marjoribanks dies, having worked for the Bank for almost 70 years	Outside the walls of Newgate Prison, Michael Barrett becomes the last man to be publicly executed in Britain. Barrett was sentenced to death for his part in the Clerkenwell bombings in 1867, which killed 12 people
1869		The Suez Canal opens in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea
1871	Angela Burdett-Coutts is created a Baroness, the first woman to receive such an honour in her own right	The Bank Holiday Act is passed, establishing the first Bank Holidays in the United Kingdom
1872		The Mary Celeste leaves New York and is discovered unmanned and abandoned one month later
1873	Lord Archibald Campbell, the second son of the 8th Duke of Argyll, becomes a partner at Coutts. Known for his charm, he was an artist and a poet with a love for all things Scottish
1875	Coutts now employs 75 clerks	Captain Matthew Webb is the first person to swim the English Channel, swimming from Dover to Calais in 22 hours
1876		The Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell obtains a patent for his telephone
1877	William Matthew Coulthurst, one of Coutts’ senior partners, dies at his home in Croydon. He left £10,000 in his will to establish the Clerks’ Widows and Orphans Fund at Coutts	The American inventor Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, which could both record and reproduce sounds
1880	Coutts now employs 97 clerks	The First Boer War begins
1881	Angela Burdett-Coutts forfeits the majority of her fortune at the age of 67 when she marries her 29 year old American secretary, William Ashmead Bartlett	Godalming in Surrey becomes the first town in the world to have its own public electricity supply
1882		Following a cricket match near Melbourne, a cricket ball was burnt and placed in an urn which was then given to the English cricketer Ivo Bligh, marking the birth of The Ashes
1884		Greenwich meridian is selected as the official prime meridian at the International Meridian Conference in Washington D.C.
1886		The first successful petrol-driven car is patented by Karl Benz
1887		Queen Victoria celebrates her Golden Jubilee
1889		Construction of the Eiffel Tower is completed in Paris
1891		The first American Express travellers cheque is cashed
1892	Coutts becomes an Unlimited Liability Company	The Panama Canal Scandal exposes corruption in France’s Chamber of Deputies
1893		Henry Ford produces his first motor car
1894		The Manchester Ship Canal opens
1895		The Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi sends and receives his first radio transmission
1897		Hawaii is annexed by the USA
1898		America declares war on Spain, ending in the signing of the Treaty of Paris. As a result, Spain loses control over its overseas empire
1899	One of Coutts’ partners Hugh Lindsay Antrobus dies at the age of 80 Hugh Burdett Money-Coutts joins the bank as a partner after finishing his final term at Oxford and being warned to prepare for ‘three or four years of rather disagreeable drudgery’	The Second Boer War begins