Access to Archives

The savings bank was established on 25 November 1818 under the terms of the Acts passed in the 57th and 58th years of George III and its rules were deposited with the Clerk of the Peace for Kent [see Q/RSf1/16]. It appears that 1,268 depositors were enrolled by 1824, but for some reason the bank was discontinued (or perhaps collapsed) by 1827 and the final papers for it date from 1830. Fresh legislation regarding Savings Banks was passed in 1838 and the following year a new Margate Savings Bank was established for which records survive until 1863, but the later documents are missing. The documentation for the first bank is full, with ledgers, actuary's accounts, depositors' books and miscellaneous papers. For the second bank depositors' books alone survive.

The records consist of a large series of bills and vouchers and miscellaneous papers many concerning individual vessels but others of a more general character; registers and accounts for agency work and a letter book. It appears that Cobb's interest in insurance, salvage, victualling and providing anchors and cables was fully operative from at least 1770 and that this side of the business also involved him in an extensive carrying and postal agency and later in becoming vice-consul for states concerned with this trade. To support the accounts and other records is a very considerable class of correspondence with sea captains and the firms they served. The coast round Margate was notoriously dangerous and the records preserved here, coupled with those of the Cinque Ports Court of Admiralty K.A.O. CPw/A, provide a detailed picture of the loss of shipping on this coast. One must also relate the many sale particulars of ships goods to this side of the business. It is not always easy to decide when Cobb was acting in a strictly official capacity in matters of salvage and when he was merely a business agent.
The series of bills, vouchers, etc. is itself complex and office methods appear to have varied from time to time. Between 1780 and 1794 it was the custom to take the papers relating to a specific vessel and make these into a packet usually covered with the whole or part of a sale particular, the packet being endorsed with the name of the vessel, the master and the cause or account, contained. Possibly all those for a particular year were then formed into a larger bundle but the only example of such is for 1790. Either not all papers were treated in this way, or subsequent treatment has broken up original series, but only some of the documents found can be related to this early series.