THE JOBBING SYSTEM ON THE LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE: AN ORAL HISTORY

Interview No. 22: Richard Davie

Interviewer: Bernard Attard

Institute of Historical Research: 10 May 1990

Tape 1, side 1

BA: Could you first tell me, Mr Davie, where and when you were born?

RD: Claygate, Surrey, 1913.

BA: What was the date in 1913?

RD: 17 January.

BA: What were the names of your parents?

RD: Archibald Davie and Amy Ellen Davie.

BA: What did your father do for a living?

RD: Stock jobber.

BA: Had any of your grandparents been in the City also?

RD: No, my grandfather on that side of the family was a bank manager.  

BA: And what did your other grandfather do?

RD: He was a flour mill owner - not a cotton mill - a flour mill owner.

BA: Which stockjobbing firm had your father been with?

RD: Well, it was called Davie & Hepworth. And then the Great War came and then he joined a firm called Lemon Brothers. 

BA: Which market had they been jobbing in?

RD: Lemon Brothers dealt in the Kaffir market, the Australian market, oil market in a small way, and  industrial market in a small way.

BA: Did your father ever talk about his work at home?  Did you ever form much of an impression about what he did when you were young?

RD: Very little.

BA: Did you have any brothers or sisters?

RD: One brother and two sisters.

BA: And what did they do?

RD: My brother was a farmer.

BA: Where did your father send you to school?

RD: Well, I went to a day-school in East Grinstead, Sussex.  I then went to a preparatory boarding school in Bournemouth, and then I went to Taunton School.

BA: Did you have any ambitions for yourself while you were at school?

RD: Only to be an engine driver.

BA: And did you try and pursue that?

RD: No. No, I didn't think there was too much future there!  Then I thought about being a farmer but then I realised there was not enough money to do much about farming, so I thought I'd be a chartered accountant.  I passed the preliminary exam for accountancy, although I say it myself, at a fairly young age.  But then I thought it was too much work for me.  

BA: How old were you?

RD: 16.

BA: And so what....?

RD: And then I went to school in Switzerland for six months, which I can recommend to anybody.  It's far better, in my view, than going to University; it broadens everything and you don't waste time like you do at University, in my opinion.  If you're going to be a lawyer, doctor, go to University, but not when you're going into the Stock Exchange - waste of time.

BA: Had the Stock Exchange provided your family with a reasonably secure living?

RD: Good question.  I would say, in the end, yes, but the Great War and the aftermath was very bad for everybody as you probably know.  Well you're too young to know, but anyway...

BA: So had your father's firm or Lemon Brothers gone through difficult patches?

RD: Well, they all went through a difficult patch.  Don't forget, apart from after the War, it was low business, and then eventually there was some business, then you had the 1929 crash. All the reverberations of that went on for about 3 years I suppose, maybe four.  But luckily Lemon Brothers were in the gold market and in the early thirties the money was being made in the gold market and the gilt edge market.

BA: What had been the attitude to money in your family - had they been fairly careful about money?

RD: Well, basically speaking they didn't have any.  My father was virtually bankrupt in about 1926 and believe it or not brought up four children on £500 a year - you wouldn't believe that, would you - for about two years.  

BA: What did you think the attitude was, or do you recall your friends having a view about the City and about the Stock market when you were young?  When you were at school, for example, did people ever pass comments about the fact that your father was a stock jobber?

RD: I would say no.  I would say that in my experience of school, nobody really took any interest in what any parents did, be they farmers or stock brokers or anybody else.  I don't think they were interested in other people's parents, in that sense.

BA: What about the City itself.  If someone had suggested that they were going to go off to be a broker or a stock broker would people have thought that was acceptable?

RD: In those days, I don't think school... You're talking about the school?  

BA: Yes.

RD: They didn't, basically speaking, really take too much interest in what you were going to do when you left school, like I believe they do now.  Nobody really discussed it, I don't think.  

BA: What were your plans when you had finished your education in Switzerland?  

RD:  I think my plans then were to go into the Stock Exchange because I had already passed my chartered accountants preliminary exam and I told you I thought it was too much work. And I don't know whether I really thought about it, but I'm not a night bird and I took the view that if you are a chartered accountant or something like that you'd have quite a lot of work at night and I think I realised then that I was not a night bird.  I'm a morning person, and I think that affected me to a certain extent.  

BA: So how did you go about finding a job?

RD: Well, that was, I don't know whether you call it nepotism, but I just went into my father's firm.  He was a partner and he was very friendly with the senior partner, who I got on with.  And I just went in, got a job at a £1 a week, as an office boy.

BA: Can you remember when that was?

RD: I can tell you the exact date, 17 January 1930 - my birthday, my 17th birthday.  

BA: How would you describe the firm at that time, do you have any early memories of the firm - the partners, the office?

RD: Well, at that time they were recovering from the '29 crash and people were beginning to take an interest in South African, mostly South African, gold shares and to a certain extent Australian gold shares, which were a very minor part of the business.  So I would say the firm was making a living, in 1930. 

BA: Were they dealing in any other shares?

RD: Well, I said earlier on they were dealing in industrials and oils but not making very much there because they were very small in that section anyway.  

BA: About how many partners were there?

RD: Well in those days partnerships were limited to 20, as you probably know.  I'd say they had about 14 partners.  

BA: So within the terms of the time, they were quite a substantial firm.

RD: Oh, yes, they were, oh yes.  They were a well-known, well-liked firm.  

BA: Were they quite an old firm?

RD: Guessing, I'd say thirty years old. 

BA: Do you have any recollection about what the offices were like, were they fairly small or large?

RD: Very small, no lift, two floors, cramped - not uncomfortable, but cramped.

BA: What were the first jobs they had you doing?  You mentioned that you started in the office.

RD: Well, really running round the City with pieces of paper.  Every day you had to deliver stock to other people's offices and then once on account day you had to go round the City and collect cheques.  So it was really delivering stock, collecting cheques, taking bits of paper, letters, messages round the City of London, in the streets of London - the City really, not London.

BA: And how long were you doing that, roughly?

RD: I suppose about a year.

BA: And then what did you move on to?

RD: Well then I started doing the books;  learning how to keep a journal, how to keep a ledger, and how the settlement system worked. And another thing one had to do in those days was you had to [check bargains]. I mean that was later on.  Every bargain you did had to be checked.  Because you see when you do a bargain the situation's all computerised today, but in those days, if you did a bargain, you never wrote a letter, you said, 'Sell you a thousand shares at in such and such a company at a pound', and wrote it in your own book.  And the broker who bought them wrote it in his book.  But in case there had been an accident or a misunderstanding, the broker's representative came to the jobber's representative the next day and said, 'I buy one thousand xyz at a pound.'  And the jobber would say, 'Sell you a thousand.'  End of story, except for settlement.  There was no contract and all that sent out.  A broker sends a contract note to a client but a jobber doesn't send a contract note to a broker, or vice versa.  So I was also on that when I was about 19, I suppose.  

BA: Did you have much in the way of office equipment or were you fairly simple in...?

RD: Well, the big excitement was when we got, after I think I'd been in the firm for a few years, maybe three or four, we had comptometers which was the beginning, I suppose, of the present computer thing.  We had comptometer girls who pressed a lot of buttons like a typewriter. And of course before that you might have sold 27 shares to somebody at £4 13/16ths and a 64th, for example.  Well to work out 27 at £4 whatever it is, and a 64th is not exactly easy; you get used to it.  But on a comptometer they just pressed the buttons and there it is.  And I suppose nowadays they press a few more buttons and they get the same answer.  So that was time-saving and quite a revolution in the office.

BA: Were they fairly new-fangled instruments in those days?

RD: I really can't remember, but I think we had a comptometer within the first two or three years of it coming on the market.  Can't believe it can you!

BA: While you were still in the office, I realise that you were still quite young, but did things like the depression generally affect the atmosphere in the office, were you conscious about the wider events in the City, for example, the Hatry crash?

RD: Well, the Hatry crash had taken place just before I got there.  What people don't realise is that the Stock Exchange rallied round and produced a million pounds to help pay the costs on their own.  They didn't have to do it.  Because Hatry was not very honest.  But there was another crash of course, about that time Kreuger & Toll, the Swedish Match, all that business, and he shot himself and somebody else, Loewenstein, jumped out of an aeroplane across the channel.  I think that was a bit later, maybe '31, '32.  There were quite a lot of things going on then, but I think that people in the office naturally talked about it.  They were all interested in the firm making money, if they could do.  But they all worked hard and took it on the chin.  I think human beings were slightly different in those days - their aspirations weren't as high as they are now.

BA: Well, how did you progress through the office?  

RD: Well I just went through the office.  The hope was that I would be good enough to become a partner in the firm at a later time.  As I say it's a form of nepotism if you like.  And after a few years in the office, I suppose when I was about 19, I was given what they call a blue button and went on the floor of the Stock Exchange. 

BA: Can you remember your first impressions of the Stock Exchange, perhaps not the exact first day, but the early impressions about what the Stock Exchange was like?  Were you happy to be given a blue button, or did you find it a bit nerve racking at the beginning?

RD: I was very happy to get a blue button, because it was a step up the ladder.  In those days, it's probably the same now, you were not allowed to deal until you were 21.  And therefore you had a blue button to allow you on the floor of the Stock Exchange, to be a kind of learner, messenger boy, which is what you were to a large extent, You were all the day running from one end of the Stock Exchange to the other leaving messages, either bidding somebody for stock or offering the stock or that sort of thing.  And then when you were 21, if you were lucky, you became what they called an 'Authorised Clerk' and didn't have your blue button.  And then, if you were lucky and somebody could fork out the money, you became a member.  But you don't have to be a member to deal, you probably realise that. Discipline was different in those days, as you know; perhaps you don't.  And therefore when you were on the Stock Exchange you called everybody 'Sir', naturally, and that sort of thing and if you behaved yourself ... I suppose you weren't nervous exactly, but you knew you had to dress properly and behave properly in every sense of the word, including the way you spoke to your so-called superiors.  

BA: What part of the market did they send you into?

RD: Well, I started off in what was known as the Kaffir market.  The Kaffir market is the South African gold share market.

BA: Did you form any early impressions of that market - were there many jobbers, was it a very busy market?

RD: In those days, yes.  I said earlier on, in the early thirties gold shares were very very popular and the man in the street was interested in gold shares rather more than he was in say ICI or something, in general terms, so it was a busy market.  And of course some of the shares - and don't forget money was different in those days - a lot of shares were £5, £8 and £10.  Nowadays you don't find so many £10 shares about, funnily enough.  But now some of those £10 shares in those companies are £50 with inflation - still going; the shares that I used to run about in are still going now, 50, 60 years later.  I can't tell you the names without looking at the paper.  Certain of them are going, same gold mines.

BA: Can you explain in a little bit more detail the kind of things that you were doing as a blue button?  Were you deputed to stand with a particular partner?

RD: Well, you stood near a partner.  Don't forget that jobbers, mostly, stood up all day.  But some had seats they could sit on when they were tired, but basically you did not sit down and do a deal, very exceptionally.  If you dealt with somebody you stood up, or you were standing up when he arrived, because he was standing up.  So really you were not allotted to a particular partner perhaps, unless he was the only one dealing in that particular section.  The Kaffir market had what they called the 'Deep section', don't ask me why; the Orange Free State section, that speaks for itself; the finance section so to speak.  So you had one or two partners dealing in the Orange Free State stocks, one or two dealing in the deep levels and one or two dealing in the finances.  So you as a blue button were attached, perhaps to the Orange Free State section, but you were literally almost touching shoulders with the people who were dealing in the Deep.  They were very close together.  So you were basically answerable perhaps to one or two partners, but any partner who was busy would call on you and say, 'Dick, go over to stand 12 and bid for Reefontein or Randfontein, bid £20' - or whatever they were - '£10.'  So you were really a bit of dog's body in a way.  

BA: When you say, 'go to the stand and bid', is that bid a broker?

RD: That's to bid a broker, that's right.  I don't know how much you know about it, but in those days there were stands all round the Stock Exchange, numbering from 1 to ... My memory's not what it was.  It certainly went from 1 to 14 if I remember rightly.  So say Cazenove: you would find them at stand 2, although they had what they called a box as well; so with Cazenove you probably didn't go to the stand you went to their box which was just outside the Stock Exchange. But if you went to another firm like, for example, a well known firm in those days was Govett.  Well, Govett were at stand 12, I think, so you go Govett at stand 12.  They'd say, 'Go to stand 12 and bid Govett £10,' or whatever, so you took the note with you and you would call them.  And if there was no representative of Govett there you left the piece of paper with a waiter who stood up and when the Govett chap came he gave them the note.  That was the sort of thing.

BA: Do you recall whether you enjoyed yourself being a blue button, or being in the Stock Exchange?

RD: The answer to that is in general terms I enjoyed it, yes.  Very, very much.  Great sense of humour, very human.  Am I allowed to tell you a little story of the Stock Exchange humour?

BA: Yes, please.

RD: Well, there were two brothers [called Frisby] in the Stock Exchange who dealt in the rubber market, which before the war was a very busy market. I think a lot of people gambled in rubber shares, Malayan and all that sort of thing.  The War came.  They both survived the War.  One Frisby got the Victoria Cross and the other got a DSO, and after the War the one that got the DSO was named 'the Coward', which is Stock Exchange schoolboy humour. But you see some would say, 'Oh I dealt with the Coward', or 'I dealt with the Victoria Cross', you see.  It may sound silly but that was the sort of humour of the Stock Exchange and it keeps the place going.  So I enjoyed the whole thing.

BA: Do you have any particular memories of experiences as a blue button?  I mean I understand that you were fairly limited in what you could do and you were still fairly young.

RD: Not really.  Obviously you trod on somebody's foot when you were in a hurry and got ticked off by some older gentleman who was a bit crotchety; he'd give you a ticking off and tell you to behave yourself. But basically speaking you were well treated by everybody.  They knew you had a job to do and that was it.

BA: Where were you living at the time?  Were you still living at home?

RD: I was living at home, yes.  I was living in East Grinstead in those days.  Mind you the Stock Exchange didn't work until half past [nine].  You didn't really have to get there before about quarter past nine, even as a junior, basically speaking, but one had to leave East Grinstead on the 7.30 or something, an hour and half on the train.  And also most days you didn't work very late.  But during the time [as] a blue button, on what they call account day, for about six months I worked on Saturday mornings and Sundays and every other day. And on account day - not account day - settlement day shall we say, I used to get a taxi back and stay with [a partner] at 2 o'clock in the morning.  So we worked quite hard.  You  worked 7 days a week, 6 1/2 days a week and one day a fortnight until 2 o'clock in the morning, and most of the days of the week you left the office at about 9 o'clock.  So my hours were a twelve-hour day.  

BA: So were you working a lot harder than you had originally anticipated?

RD: I probably was.  But it wasn't study.  

BA: So I take it you were a blue button for about two years?

RD: I think that's right, yes.  And when I became 21 I was made a dealer.

BA: Now what was involved in that step?  How did your work change?

RD: Well, I mean if somebody came to me as a blue button, a broker, and said, "What are xyzs?', as a blue button, say that the partner or partners were busy, I could say, 'They're 22 and a penny ha'penny, sixpence'.  And he said, 'Thank you very much', and he'd go away.  He couldn't deal with me, but he accepted the fact that I knew the price.  If I didn't know the price I'd say, 'I'm sorry I don't know.  Half an hour ago they were 22 and a penny ha'penny sixpence but I don't know what they are.'  But the point was it was not a binding price, he was just asking what the price was so he could rush off and tell a client, and he didn't want to wait to speak to the dealer.  But when I became a dealer and somebody said, 'What are so and so?' and I made 22 and a penny ha'penny sixpence, I committed myself basically, and he'd say, 'Sell you 2,000', or he might not; but that was what I'd laid myself open to if you see what I mean; or he could buy them.  So I became a dealer, my price meant something on which he could deal.  

BA: Now which book were you working on when you became a dealer?

RD: Well, by that time I was with my father in the Australian market.  And so when I started dealing although I had spent a couple of years in the Kaffir market, when I was a dealer I was put into the Australian market.

BA: And how many of you were there on that book?

RD:  Well in those days there were only two partners and myself.  I was a dealer, so I would say three.  But you dealt in other things, not only Australians.  We dealt in a thing called Yukon Consolidated which is a gold grading proposition in Alaska or in the Ukon - which is Alaska, isn't it? - and Mountain Copper which was based in San Francisco. So you had a fairly wide spread of interest.  But there were three dealers - two partners and myself.

BA: Was it a very big market, were there several jobbers?

RD: Oh yes in those days.  Some people called it the Australian market and some people call it the miscellaneous mining market.  I suppose it was called the miscellaneous market (of which the Australian section was a section of it) because in those days there was a tin market - tin mines - in Malaysia, particularly.  That's all died out now - Malaysian tins; in fact, Cornish tins.  And then there was sort of goldmine in Venezuala.  That's another thing.  I don't think it ever was a gold mine, but we thought there was!

BA: So you were dealing in the shares of this company that was set up as a gold mining firm?

RD: To be fair, there was a hole in the ground and I think they did produce some gold, but it wasn't very successful, I'll put it that way.  I don't think in my experience I have ever dealt in a thing which really didn't exist, which has happened in the history of the Stock Exchange, but I think those days were over before the First World War.  

BA: Did you feel ready to become authorised?

RD: Oh, I think so, yes.  I was very confident.

BA: How did the book actually work.  There were the two partners and you were the junior.  Were you given your own stocks to deal in?

RD: Good point.  Well, I was given about four stocks to deal in, for which I was given responsibility....

Tape 1, side 2

RD: So I was expected to make prices in other stocks, having been instructed on the prices before one or the other partners went out to lunch or went to see somebody.  And if they were on holiday, it probably meant I had to do a bit of dealing to help the book.  But it depended of course on how busy you were.  Sometimes you did very, very little; sometimes you had a rush. But I can tell you that one of the stocks in which I remember dealing very clearly, I was given responsibility for [it], I can remember these figures so well - and don't forget that money was different in those days: I dealt in Yukon Consolidated, which speaking slightly from memory were round about 5s. a share, and in about a month or so I made £2,000 jobbing in those things.  I patted myself on the back, and I got patted on the back, and I felt very pleased with myself.  But in the next two months I lost the whole lot.  And that was a very good lesson, a very good lesson - I thought it was easy.

BA: Did you have any particular successes or particular failures or was it simply a case of, as you said, some periods you would be doing reasonably well and other periods more difficult conditions and you wouldn't make any money?

RD: I mean that's stock jobbing.  That taught me a big lesson when I lost that lot because what I did was to get too cocky and go in too big.  Around that time, don't foget, I was learning, and to be fair I didn't think I knew it all but I thought I was pretty clever when I made this money in this particular [stock].  I made a bit of money in the other stocks but that was my big thing - £2,000. Because £2,000 in those days was a lot of money, a lot of money.  And that's why I felt all that much better.  But you realise, in my view, a good stock jobber will be wrong three times in ten when he opens his mouth;  that is to say when he does a deal he'll be wrong. He may not want to do some of the deals, don't forget, but he'll be wrong three times out of ten or four times out of ten.  If he's wrong five times out of ten he is probably a bit average; if he's wrong six times out of ten he probably won't last.  But of course don't forget when I say that, every time you open your mouth it's not the same size.  One minute you open your mouth and you deal in 10,000 shares, another time you open your mouth, you're only dealing in 1000 shares, you may be wrong on the 1000 if you're lucky, and not the 10,000.  So it doesn't convey too much about the profits and the losses.  You're going to make a lot of mistakes and you have to learn to live with them.  You must learn the first loss is the best loss, which is half the trouble nowadays; people do not cut their losses.  You must not go bigger than the market.  You shouldn't really have a [big] position.  Mind you, things have changed now - you get the big shots, the intellectuals or whatever they call themselves, saying 'ICI are very cheap, put half a million on the book', or something. That is not stock jobbing, that is not trading and in my view it is disgraceful. And if you want a little example, read the Financial Times yesterday where James Capel lost 7 million pounds in three months dealing in convertible something or other.  That is a classic example of being a bloody fool and going too big.  You should be able to cut your losses within three days' business.

BA: So I take it then that you as a firm weren't carrying big positions?

RD: Very seldom. We had some large positions. Of course don't forget that while I'm talking about the mining market I'm not talking about the gilt edged market which is millions; that's a different kettle of fish, although it's the same principle that applies.  This sounds rather silly but it's a good example.  After I'd given up active jobbing, I found that we had a position in 50,000 - we were a bear - (now they wouldn't think about this sort of figure), but we were a bear of 50,000 Mount Isa Mines.  I don't know whether they were two or three pounds in those days, they've changed; now they're about £1.  But I think they were £3 and probably you got twice the number.  And I looked at the book and over a week we had dealt in 10,000 in one week.  So I said to the dealer concerned: 'This is absolutely disgraceful, you've got a book in 50,000 Mount Isa which is going against you, which it always does.  It's too big.  You've dealt in 10,000 shares in one week.  So it's going to take you at that rate three weeks to cut that loss if you want to cut it.'  Now you can multiply that and call it half a million, but it's the principal of the thing.  So in other words, if you're a good jobber, you don't run a position you can't cut in about three days on the kind of turnover.  Now, a year later in Mount Isa, say, a bear of 50,000 wouldn't matter because the whole world and his wife wanted to deal in Mount Isa.  You might be dealing in 50,000 every day.  That's a different kettle of fish. 

BA: Was there anyone in particular who you learned your jobbing skills from or influenced you?

RD: I learned it from my father who had been a jobber for 40 years or something, and other partners.  All the partners with whom I came in contact, all added their little bit of information.  I picked it up over the years.

BA: How would you describe your father as a jobber?  Would he actually talk to you about jobbing and even outside of the House about what you should and shouldn't do?

RD: Well he talked to me outside the House, yes.  But he was the one who really I suppose... I was with him - I wasn't with him all that length of time - but over the years probably about 5 or 7 years; because the War came of course, that caused a gap of 6 years. But he was quite a good jobber, I'd say.  It was other people, and you learned it yourself as well, of course, especially when you had just lost a lot of money.

BA: You've already referred to the size of the bargains.  What were the size of bargains like in that period?  Were they fairly small by today's standards?

RD: Relative to today, very small.  Relatively small.  But as I said before, you've got to realise that 2,000 quid in those days is like £20,000 now, maybe more, maybe £30,000. Don't forget, in those days I think the general public owned about 50% of the Stock Exchange or maybe 60%, and the pension fund institutions the other 40.  Now it's 70-30 in favour of the institutions which makes a lot of difference because the institutions want to deal in a big way.  But the size of the books were much smaller, much smaller.

BA: Can you remember roughly what kind of capital you needed to run a book?

RD: Well, I'd be interested to know, but you mustn't tell me, what Jimmy Priestly said about that.  Although I do know a bit about it because since I've been with Wedd Durlacher, or brought my son in, I know quite a lot about it in fact.  I probably know about Jimmy Priestley's business quite well too, but it's very... I don't really know.  You see, a stock jobber, was able to borrow a lot of money.  A gilt edge jobber could borrow 90% of his book, maybe even more.  So if he's got a book in x million he can borrow 90% of x million.  I suppose in my days in George M Hill & Co. we could borrow probably 70% against mining shares.  I think it depended a bit on your name, but I can't really answer the question terribly well.  You see, what's capital?  What I mean by that is, a lot of people say they're worth 200,000 say.  They've probably got 100,000 in their house, plus a mortgage, maybe, and the other 100,000 in the firm, but you also know that if the firm's up the creek he's got to get out a bigger mortgage or sell his house. So how much capital you need is basically how much capital you are prepared to lose.  I haven't answered that question very well, perhaps.  But it isn't easy.  I was a partner in Wedd Durlacher for a short while.  But you see the point was you knew the senior partner had got a quarter of a million in the firm, and maybe more, I don't remember now.  But you knew you got a house and a farm worth half a million, and a yacht or something, so is that part of your capital?

BA: Well I was thinking more particularly about whether you were in fact allotted a certain amount of money with which to run your book?

RD: Correct, that's different.  When I was at George Hill, we tried to not have a bigger book than £700,000 one way; and we nearly always balanced that up with say a quarter of a million pounds of bear.  So your net was half a million, but of course every now and again it went over the top.  But that was the kind of figure we tried to keep at George M Hill, which was later in my life of course.

BA: Well, going back to the earlier period, were there many jobbers within your particular sector of the market?

RD: Well, in the Australian market where I was there was ... Just after the War I was with Lemon Brothers and we had George Hill next door, we had C. T. Pulley, we had Parmenter, we had Francis Egerton, we had C.M. Mitchell, and W.M. Rudge. That's a good effort of memory really.  And H.G.M. Smith.  So in that Australian miscellaneous mining market as they called it, as I said before, tin mines and you name it, there were eight jobbers.  

BA: Were any of these what other people have described to me as spoon-fed jobbers, that is to say, they were fairly small firms who would basically do the business for a broker?

RD: Well, I think spoon-fed refers to the gilt-edged market; I think Priestley brought that up.  Because it's a fact of life,  in the gilt-edged market, as Priestly no doubt told you, the small jobbers were spoon fed a bit,  but spoon-fed by the big jobbers.  The small jobbers went to Wedd or Akroyd & Smithers and said 'I'm a bear of a quarter of million xyzs, it's too big for me, can I buy a quarter of a million or can I buy 200,000?'  And the big jobber would say, 'I'll sell you 200,000' and put his book right for him.  It may cost the chap money but he was in a way, in my view, spoon-fed in that sense.  But there were jobbers in the Stock Exchange a long time ago who were spoon-fed but it didn't last so very long in my time.  A broker would not go to the jobber, he would have his little friend, and say, 'Go into the Australian market and buy 5,000 in Lakeview & Star at £1'.  And the little chap would go in there and go to the jobber and he'd make 3 farthings a share out of it, so that was a spoon-fed.  The answer to that is amongst those 8 jobbers, no.

BA: Were you dealing though with these jobbers coming up to you?

RD: Well, we all dealt with each other, that's part of the risk of the game.  In those days, much more now, when you wanted, for all sorts of reasons... you'd walk into the market and say, 'Buy 5,000 Lakeview and Star at a pound.  Buy 5,000 at a pound.'  Well one or two other jobbers might say, 'Sell you 1,000.'  They had them on the book and they thought they were high enough so you'd buy by just shouting out, the other jobber just popped 2 or 3,000 shares in to you maybe, and if you wanted to put the market up you bid a bit more.  But those biddings stopped .... A lot of shouting used to go on.

BA: Were there brokers who specialised in Australian shares or in mining shares?

RD: The answer's very much yes.  In those days anybody said to me 'I want a broker', I'd have said, 'What sort of broker?', and if they said, 'Well, I want a mix of them', I'd say, 'Right go to broker A if you're interested in industrial shares or oil shares, but if you're interested in mining shares go to broker B, don't go anywhere near broker A.'  And I don't know whether that still applies, it probably does, but it very much did until the Big Bang, I'd say.  

BA: Was the mining market a fairly specialised market in terms of the Stock Exchange?

RD: I suppose it was really.  It's a different concept you see.  It's not very difficult, if you're clever enough, to go to Austin Motors in those days and go to some factory and put your nose round and learn a few things; but it's not so easy to go round trying to find out whether the mine's any good or not.

BA: Did your partners have much contact with the Houses in whose stocks you were dealing?

RD:  Yes, especially in the Kaffir market.  Some of the big houses like - they'd been taken over by (I was just going to say something I shouldn't) by Mr Hanson or Lord Hanson - Consolidated Goldfield - they were always very closely connected with the market.  There was no insider trading or anything like that, but they would look after the market.  They wanted a market and they didn't want the jobbers to get into a frightful mess. So they would sell stock to the market when the market was very good and they'd buy stock when it was very flat.  They didn't come every day.  It didn't make life easy but they were in the background.  You see, all the Rhodesian mines, they all had what they call a shop, funny enough, and that's probably a slight difference now I come to think about it with the industrial market.  But I expect the industrial market has a shop that seems to help. Something like ICI is a bit big.  They'll support the market if they think it's a bit too flat.  There were professional supporters, shops, I think, even to this day.  Even some merchant banks tend to support some of the companies they're close to. They feel these things are damn cheap and they buy 50,000, 100,000 or these things are a bit too high, they'll sell them. But the mining market was much better than that in those days.

BA: In what sense: there were more shops operating?

RD: Well in helping you more.  I'm sure it's much easier to go to a mining house and say, 'We're in a terrible mess, in Lakeview and Star or Randfontein', it didn't matter what, and they would listen with sympathy and say - you'd do it through a broker, you probably wouldn't go and see them directly, because they knew who you were, they knew Lemon Brothers - and they'd say [i.e. the broker to the Mining House], 'Well, we do need some help because they've got themselves in a mess, they can't help it because...', and they'd sell some stock.  But they wouldn't actually sell it to you at a profit, necessarily; they'd say, 'what are you short at?' and you would say, '£1' or something.  They'd say 'we don't mind selling some at 21s'.  So they weren't benefactors but at least they helped you to do what I said earlier, to cut your losses and get your book to a more manageable situation. 

BA: Were there ever cases or situations where these shops were in a position to abuse their relationship with the company?  And I'm not necessarily asking within your personal experience, but for example, the mining market perhaps traditionally was regarded as a bit speculative and it would be one where there were booms, busts...?

RD: Oh, absolutely right and it is.

BA: Could it possibly happen that there was cases of abuse?

RD: Oh, it has happened.  I'd say over the years, quite a lot of times.  Not frequently in any one year but over the years, yes; because you've always got crooks in every business.  It doesn't make any difference whether it's Shell or British Petroleum or Mount Isa mines, you've always got some bloody twister.  But basically the mining houses behaved extremely fairly.  I can remember very distinctly with a mine called Wiluna which was an Australian mine, for some reason which is slightly beyond my comprehension, it had been a good mine, quite rich, and almost over night they came to a dead end.  I'm not a mining engineer.  I know a bit about it but not very much.  And it was that absolutely obvious that Wiluna, which was standing at about £2 pounds a share, were going to be worthless in a year or two's time.  Because they'd got some gold to keep them going, you'd get a dividend or two, but they certainly weren't anything like £2 a share.  Now the mining house concerned told everybody as quickly as they possibly could.  There was no question of anybody rushing in insider trading and selling a bear and all that business.  They were very fair over that.  But mostly the mining houses are fair as they can be.  It's very difficult.

BA: Did your partners even in those days go out to South Africa or to Australia and visit the mines?

RD:  Very seldom.  I think one or two partners in Lemon Brothers went to South Africa in the '30s and maybe even the '20s, because we had an agent out there, and they may have gone to one mine.  The boss of the firm I eventually went to, [the firm] George Hill, old George Hill was the senior partner and he went to Australia after the War, but he never went near a mine, [he went] to see agents.  But it was communication.  Before the War if you went to South Africa, I think the voyage was 15 days each way or something, so that's a month just to get there and back.  And then getting down to a mine and all that business, you would have been away two months.  And I think everybody, it may sound silly to you, but I think they would have had a prick of conscience that they were going off on a kind of holiday, two weeks on a Union Castle Line and two weeks back.  And don't forget in those days, when I first went to work I think my annual holiday was certainly not more than three weeks, and I think it was only two.  

BA: You mentioned that these firms had agents in the countries concerned.  Could you elaborate on that a little bit?  What do you mean?

RD: Well we had stockbrokers.  We called it arbitrage.  You can't arbitrage unless you've got someone the other end, if you see what I mean.  So your agent, really, is your arbitrageur.  They didn't have jobbers - they had jobbers in New York before the '29 crash - but Australia and South Africa for example didn't have jobbers per se, they were all brokers.  But you had a broker.  Don't forget the telephone before the war was virtually impossible to South Africa, or Australia even worse.  So you sent a cable every night, 'Please sell' - well you wouldn't put please because it's a waste of money but - 'Sell 1,000 Randfontein, 4,000 Durban Deep, Vaal Reef,' all those things are slowly coming back now to my mind or 'buy 2,000 General Mining.'  Sometimes you would say, 'at best' because you were in a mess, and sometimes you would put a price on them.  And that was your agent in Johannesburg or Melbourne or wherever.  And the next morning you might be happy or unhappy.  You might find they'd done the whole bloody lot or none, and you would be disappointed if they'd done none.  Or perhaps they'd do part of it.  If you say, 'Sell 1,000 Johannesburg Investment,' I think they were about 20 quid in those days.   That was quite a lot of money, £20,000, in those days.  So they might have sold 500.  Well he'd done something.  That was really the agents.  In George Hill we had agents eventually in Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney.

BA: So you were still making a turn on the difference in price between the different markets?

RD: Yes, well trying to.  That's the arbitrage.

BA: Was settlement difficult under those circumstances or was that something that the agents took care of?

RD: Well, settlement wasn't difficult, it just took a long time.  It was done through banks mostly.  The banks had a section for a firm and you had to pay for it.  When you said, 'Sell 1,000 Johannesburg Consolidated' or something, you had to take in the expenses.  You had to say: 'We've bought them this end if we sell them in South Africa it will be a month before we get the money.  Therefore we have to allow for interest on the money for a month.  The bank will charge...', I can't now remember what the banks [charged] but they charged for the work quite fairly.  And those sort of things.  So you had to put that in the price.  So if you sell something at £1 in this country, you probably had to charge 20 and 6d in that money to sell it in Australia or South Africa for obvious reasons.  But the system worked alright and very seldom went wrong, but it took a long time.  But then once you've got a stream going it doesn't really matter if it does take a long time, up to a point.  

BA: Did you have a street market in any of these stocks in which you were dealing?

RD: In the stocks in which I've ever dealt there was only a street market on the very, very few occasions when the Stock Exchange was closed when the government or the Bank of England or whoever asked the Stock Exchange to shut, some crisis.  But there was a bloody street market, crisis or no crisis.  But there was a street market in American shares before the War.  They literally were on the street.  The weather wasn't like this, but they were in the streets probably until... I think the Stock Exhange doors shut at probably 5 o'clock in those days.  The Stock Exchange bell rang at half past three but you still went on.  I think you were able to stay on the floor for a certain length of time.  I would say the street market went on, sometimes if it was busy, probably until 8 o'clock at night when New York closed.  And in those days you could actually write on a cable, 'Sell 4,000 Radio at 2 or 8 (that's dollars) and you would get a reply back within 3 minutes.  Now they talk about all this modern [technology]. You can't do much better than that.  That was exceptional but you would get an answer back in 5.  And that message went to Wall Street and back and the deal was done in 5 minutes, that's not bad.  So there was a street market for several years in American stocks, and funny enough it proves that the jobbing system must have something in it.  It was a bigger market in a London Street in the ten or fifteen stocks they dealt in than there was in New York, because of the jobbers.

BA: I take it the streets around the Stock Exchange.....

Tape 2, side 1

BA: Do you recall the political climate during the period, the 1930s, ever influencing the market?  Or were you as jobbers not really aware of it in the course of trading?  

RD: I think jobbers had to be aware of everything.  A jobber really shouldn't take more - I'm generalising - than a week's thinking in advance because he is a trader.  And that is where people are going wrong today.  They are not trading anymore.  They think they're jobbers, and they're not, they are gamblers.  A jobber had to take notice of politics because people are very funny: if there is a row about Mrs Thatcher today and she looks as if she's going, it affects sentiment; but only perhaps for 24 hours. But it's bound to affect sentiment and somebody's bound to sell something.  That may sound silly, and tomorrow morning they wish they hadn't and they may even buy them back, and Mrs Thatcher's fine again tomorrow.  So you can't ignore politics at all as a stock jobber.  In fact a broker probably can, 'Oh Mrs Smith don't sell the stock'.  But we're traders, somebody's going to sell us stock, wrongly perhaps.  

BA:  Do you recall particular crises of the period affecting business?

RD: There was the abdication.  I don't really remember what effect it had on the Stock Exchange, it's too long ago, but I'm damned sure that it would have had a dampening affect on the Stock Exchange, which meant a few people felt miserable and sold stock.  A lot of people sell stock or buy stock on impulse.  You can't explain it, but it's a fact - 'Oh Christ, I'm going to sell some stock, I feel miserable,' or 'I'm going to reduce my overdraft because the King's abdicating'.  It's a fact of life as a trader, you've got to recognise all these things.

BA: Well, can we take up the story of your career again, about the mid thirties you became an authorised dealer and you were working on the Australian book with a few other miscellaneous stocks.  How did things develop for you?

RD: Well, I suppose, you could say they developed quite well, I got married in 1936.

BA: How had you met your wife?

RD: At a dance, I think.

BA: So she wasn't connected with a Stock Exchange family or anything like that?

RD: No, just a dance, something like that.  It's the first time I remember meeting her but I think that was probably the dance.  I do remember, if it's of any interest, that in 1935 as [an] authorised clerk, I was earning £400 a year, with the possibility of a bonus.  And the senior partner said, 'I don't approve of long engagements.  When you get married, we'll raise your salary to £500 a year. '  Can't believe really now can you!  But I just went steadily on really.  The market, if I remember rightly, in mining shares was reasonably steady.  We made a reasonable living.  I couldn't tell you what my bonus was but it wouldn't have been very much.  By modern standards it was probably quite a bit.  I suppose the bonus might have been £200 a year, something like that. And I just went on really as an authorised clerk - a dealer was called an authorised clerk - until the War broke out.  

BA: At some point did you become a member?

RD: I became a member in 1935.  

BA: How did that come about?  Did the firm decide that it would be...?

RD: Well, the firm liked it and my father very kindly put up the money.  You had to buy a share and a nomination, and I think, funnily enough the firm bought the share and my father bought the nomination, so it was a bit of joint.  The nomination was more than a share.  And that was in 1935.  So I became a member. It was a bit of a cache, I suppose you can say, to be a member and a dealer, it made no difference actually in the fact of anything on the floor, really, except that if you trod on somebody's toe you could answer back!

BA: Are there any particular characters that you can remember from the Stock Exchange during that period?  Any characters in the mining market?

RD:  It's a bit blurred to tell you the truth.  They had some chap in the copper market who was known as 'the Zulu' or something.  I'll wake up in the night [and remember], something like 'the Zulu'.  I can remember on one occasion going out in the sunshine, not that it really matters that the sun was shining, and walking down the street were six members of the Stock Exchange, with grass skirts round and their suspenders - no trousers;  they'd got grass skirts; I think they had pants and all that sort of thing on - with spears and blackened faces.  And they went into the Stock Exchange and did a sort of war dance round the 'Zulu' - it was some name like 'the Zulu'; and they used to tap 'the Zulu' when they had nothing else to do.  They used to open a drawer, an empty  drawer, one of the desks on the floor of the Stock Exchange, and get an apple, don't ask me why it was an apple, and make a sort of 'boom boom boom, boom boom boom, boom boom boom'.  And business more or less stopped and everybody gathered round the Zulu when this 'boom boom boom' came out.  And they sang some song, I can't remember what the bloody hell it was.  But I think it must have been his fiftieth birthday when they came round and did the war dance with their skirts and black faces.  Mind you there wasn't much to do in those days. And then there were certain characters in those days.  I can't really remember them too well.  

BA: Do you have any memories of the partners in the firm of Lemon Brothers? How would you describe them, were they strong disciplinarians?

RD: Well, the answer's 'yes' they were, but they didn't have to be.  We accepted discipline in those days especially if you'd been to a public school, you accepted discipline, it didn't cross your mind.  It was very firmly run, very fairly run.  When I first went there I was not allowed - quite rightly in my view - to leave the Floor of the Stock Exchange unless I wanted to go to the lavatory or go out to lunch.  I was not allowed to go out and have a cup of coffee, certainly wasn't allowed to have a drink of any sort.  And I think basically upon reflection, it was quite right. Now they go out for coffee at ten o'clock, and a pint of beer or something at 11 o'clock, and I'm buggered to know what they do.  It's not the same.  But it wouldn't happen, you weren't allowed to do it, but you didn't argue. And then on your birthday you were allowed to do it and if it was somebody else's birthday you were allowed to go out and have a drink.  So it just worked.  You didn't need discipline.  

BA: Did you find them fairly imposing people? 

RD: Well, of course when I first went there I thought they were God, I suppose.  But after you had been with them for five or seven years, you began to realise.  It is a bit of a leveller when you think somebody's God and you listen to him dealing and he makes a balls of everything and loses a few hundred quid three days running.  You don't have the same respect for them. You think well they make a bloody fool of themselves like everybody else does.  

BA: People have said that brokers and jobbers were distinct groups of people.  Did you ever feel that that was true?

RD: Yes, I did. I think - and I might say this - that some jobbers ought to have been brokers and some brokers ought to have been jobbers.  It's a different way of life.  A broker is an agent.  You've got to remember one thing that a jobber is a principal.  It's his own money.  The broker, it's not his own money; it's the poor old client, if he loses money.  The only thing a broker's got to worry about is to make enough commission, be nice to people, and have the brains to do it.  But a jobber had to live on his wits.  And a lot of people can't live on their wits.  So there was a different type of person.  And I think a jobber's got to be a bit tough, not rude perhaps but tough.  You mustn't be all things to all men as a stock jobber, it's fatal.  Because they'll come up: 'Oh, Dick, you know, I've got a new client and if only you'll sell me this stock, my name will be so nice'.  You fall for it once or twice and the next minute, up they go and you've lost yourself, and you realise you'd been a ... 'idiot'. So you've got to be: 'I'm sorry George, can't do it, can't help your client.'  That sort of attitude, you've got to have.  

BA: What was the attitude to jobbing as a profession?  Were jobbers regarded as being slightly second class compared to brokers?

RD: No, I would say if anything the reverse was true. 

BA: Can you elaborate on that a little bit, in what sense?

RD: Well, I think they respected the jobbers because they realised the jobbers took risks.  Admittedly in those days or my day ... well they're all relative - they took the risks.  And they respected the jobbers because they were probably more honest than the brokers.  They respected them, I think, because they knew more what was going on.  If the Chairman of the Stock Exchange wanted to know what was really going on the Floor of the Stock Exchange, he'd go to a jobber; he wouldn't go to a broker, because brokers only saw each other.  The jobber, especially if he was a big jobber practically saw every firm on the Stock Exchange.  I've been up before now and told the Stock Exchange, the Chairman, that 'so and so's a bloody crook', or 'we think that so and so would be broke within six months'. They don't always take any notice, mind you, but you could know.  

BA: Were you still with Lemon Brothers when War broke out?

RD: Yes, I was still there when War broke out and was still there when I came back.  And then in 1948 George M Hill & Co., who stood about as far away as that door from where I had been standing since about 1935.  (I had an uncle in the firm), said they'd like me to join them.  I thought very long about it, because I had loyalty to the firm.  They'd been very good to me and they'd paid me a small sum in the War, not very much but I felt very loyal.  But eventually I decided that Lemon Brothers were going down hill, which it was, and I thought I would be alright.  I liked Alex Hill; his father was still the senior partner then, so I changed firms.  The best thing I ever did.

BA: In what sense were Lemon Brothers going down hill?

RD: Well Claude Lemon who was the boss, was a wonderful man.  He died in the War.  He died young. I don't know what of.  And all the other partners, the pre-War partners, had either gone to the War (and one of them was killed, the main spring of the post-War firm who would have been the senior partner) and the rest of them, basically speaking, the more senior ones, were too old, had got to retirement age.  My father had got to retirement age about that time, 1948, 1950, and there was nobody at the top of the firm to run it.  And also the Kaffir market wasn't the power it was before the War.  I don't know whether apartheid had started, I don't really know.  It was just falling apart really.  Bad management you could say, not enough senior partners.

BA: So did George M Hill offer you a partnership or did you go to them as a...?

RD: No, they offered me a partnership.  That was another sore point because they wouldn't make me a partner in Lemon Brothers, that's why I left partly.  I don't know why they wouldn't, I really couldn't tell you.

BA: How would you describe George M Hill as a firm, perhaps contrasting them with Lemon?

RD: Well first of all Lemon Brothers was spread [around]. The Kaffir market was a bigger market in those days than the miscellaneous mining market, both money wise, price of shares etc.  And they had interests, as I said before, in the oil market and the industrial market - not very big but enough.  And they were in the copper market which we weren't at that time. So Lemon Brothers was a bigger firm and more spread around, whereas George M Hill was a much smaller firm concentrating really on the Australian market; whereas the Australian market, with Lemon Brothers was a part of a bigger organization.  In other words George Hill was a much bigger force in this miscellaneous market, or call it what you will market, than Lemon Brothers, who were relatively small.  George Hill had four partners in the market and I think Lemon Brothers had one and a half - one permanent, one who sometimes turned up when we were busy.  

BA:  Have you got any idea why he went into that particular market?  Had he started the firm, George M Hill?

RD: I can't tell you.  All I know is it started in about 1908 and have reason to believe that when they started they were in the American market. And I honestly don't know, I should do, why they got into the Australian mining market, I really don't know.  I think they must have made the decision before the War.

BA: What was the Australian market like in the post-War period?  Was it an interesting market in which to be jobbing, was it an active market?

RD:  Well, it wasn't very active after the War. It was quiet.  I think the Australians, don't forget, were the same as us - they didn't have bread rationing like we did -  one forgets all those sorts of things, and their economy: they were feeling the strain of the War and all that business, so it was very quiet and, I suppose you could say, pretty uninteresting. But of course we did deal in a few other things around the world, as I said before, but not very much.  But I'll give you some idea.  I joined George Hill in about I think 1948, [in] about 1952 somebody told us that we should start a service company to help our tax position.  So we went round to an accountant who was quite a clever chap, and discussed this matter, and when we got back to the office, I said to my joint senior partner (we were both joint senior partners) Alec Hill, whose father had more or less retired: 'As I understand it, unless we - you and I - make £6,000 a year each, it's not worth doing this business.' He said, 'I agree with that, I don't understand it either.  I agree with this.'  I said, 'Well, what do you feel about 6?'.  'Well, he said, 'I can't see any way we're going to make more than £6,000 a year, as far as I can see for years to come.'  And that was in 1952.  So that gives you some idea what wasn't going on in the Australian market.  And also one lived quite reasonably well.  And when you consider that it got to £100,000 a year, it makes you think, doesn't it?

BA: Was this a fairly difficult period for jobbers or the Stock Exchange in the immediate post War years while the country was recovering?

RD: Well it was only difficult because there wasn't the turnover.  You see, a jobber like a broker, has to have turnover.  This is where they're going wrong now.  If you don't get turnover, you can't job. Don't forget a jobber's a bookmaker.  You imagine going to the races, everybody goes to the bookmaker and has 50p - they wouldn't take it now - but you know, £2, or they wouldn't make a living.  And that was the sort of state it was.  I don't think there was the money about after the war.  We were still recovering.  Income tax was Christ knows what.  There wasn't the turnover basically.  As I say, we didn't think we were going to make more than £6,000 a year and we were quite happy.

BA: Did you spend a lot of time actually trying to make business, rather than waiting for people coming up to you to...?

RD: No, I don't think that jobbers can make business, basically.  They can only make business if they think they know something, and I don't mean insider trading necessarily.  When I came back from Australia that was different, things had changed then.  But I'd come back from Australia and I'd say to somebody, 'Look I've been down Mount Isa Mines and I've seen it and everybody else has seen it and I think it's a wonderful mine, and I think copper's going up, and I think leads and zinc are going up and I think they must be bloody cheap.'  So to that extent, if they believed you, they would get on to say half a dozen clients and say, 'We've just talked to Dick Davie.  He's just come back from Australia and he thinks that Mount Isa Mines are bloody cheap, it's well run, and bonkety bonkety bonk'.  And therefore they'd come along and say, 'Buy a few thousand shares.'  It might get up to 100,000 shares, but otherwise there's no way of making money, unless you're dishonest, basically.

BA: Did that happen, I'm not saying with your firm, but did jobbers, when times were difficult, resort to those things?

RD: No, I'd say not, no.  I mean obviously you would get the nigger in the wood pile, but basically I would say no.

BA: When did you start visiting the mines and visiting the countries?

RD: 1953, was my first effort.

BA: Was that regarded as a slightly strange thing for a jobber to do or was it by that time becoming regarded as a practical thing?

RD: It was still pretty unfashionable.  I think by that time people had flown to South Africa a bit more because it was much nearer and all that sort of thing; that was before the jets, so you've still got the old props which took quite a long time.  I think people went to South Africa.  But going to Australia was still considered quite a...  Anyway people didn't look on Australia in the same light they looked on South Africa, for example.  So I was not exactly a pioneer, my partner went before I did, but it was quite something really.

BA: What was your particular aim with that first visit?  Was it to visit the mines?

RD: Well, my particular aim was to go and see the then agents who weren't very good, in Melbourne funnily enough.  And I don't think... we had fixed up with somebody in Sydney and I was to go and visit somebody in Brisbane who was going to be an agent.  And also I got very friendly for some [reason], I don't know why with the Mount Isa mine people, or mining trust it was in those days.  I think it was accidental. I said I wanted to go down a mine, so they invited me to go down the mine and I got VIP treatment and all that sort of thing.  So it broadened my education. But it was fairly unusual.  

BA: Was there much understanding among the Australians about what you did as a jobber and where you fitted into the scheme of things?  

RD: I should say none at all, excepting when I told them I was bookmaker, then they began.  You know what the Australians are like, gambling all the time.  When I said I was a bookmaker, they began to take more interest I think.  But they didn't really understand it.  They didn't have it themselves.  I don't think they could understand how we could make a living either.  And of course, you see, one had to go out there, it sounds rather pompous, but you had to go out there to educate our agency in what we thought they ought to do and what we wanted them to do, which is not so easy; and were they prepared to take a few risks, and if so what?  So that took a bit of time.  Then it took two or three years to get them properly organised, and us.  You had to understand each other, and of course trust each other.  

BA: And did these visits become a regular part of your work?

RD: Yes, as I say, I've been there about 25 times.  I practically began going every year.  And it was invaluable, basically.  As I said earlier, I think I said at the start of this conversation, you don't learn on the telephone, you only learn by going there.  And one of the troubles is you think you learn on the telephone, that's another danger.  One of the worst things in life is to think you know something, isn't it?

BA: What was your position in the firm at this time.  Were you in charge of a book?  Were you one of the more senior partners?

RD: George Hill, really, got too old.  I can't remember now, he died sometime, but Alec Hill and myself were joint senior partners.  The other partners when I went in there were junior partners and I was put above them for age and all sorts of reasons.  So he and I were joint senior partners.  And basically speaking, we didn't really have a book.  Alec and I ran the book between us and directed what we thought the others should do, and the others had their own little books.  And of course when we became very busy, which was later on, then you had to divide the book up, because one stock - you'd do two or three hundred bargains in one day.  Well, you try and deal 200 times.  You think it takes 30 seconds or something, it's quite a lot of minutes.  But in those days we ran the whole lot really. 

BA: Was the competition more or less the same as it had been in the pre-War period or...?

RD:  I think all the jobbers who were there pre-War all came back, if they weren't killed.  But I think the firms came back and they were still there, but I think we were successful, that's the answer.

BA: Was it a very competitive market?

RD: No, not really.  Everybody was trying to make a few pounds in their own way, but it wasn't a very big market, didn't become a big market until Western Mining.  I don't know when that started, about 1960 something.  By that time you see we had been to Australia, Alec went once or twice, so we really got our nice connections going and we had everything going a treat, although I say it myself.  

BA: What was the importance of the connections, now you've mentioned the arbitrage?

RD: Well, they were abitrageurs you see.  But then they would take risks and then of course the telephone system came along and that was successful.  I don't know when the telephone became useable. I don't think it was until about 1960.  You could pick up the 'phone then.  But before, I dont know whether you realise, you'd say. 'Hello ...? Oh ...! What?' About five minutes passed and you got nowhere at all.  It was hopeless, so you didn't even try.  And the chances were that you thought you had dealt with the chap on the telephone, he hadn't heard you.  So it didn't work.  But when the telephone came, your situation with the agent was a bit different then you see, because he could then say, 'Well I'm going to sell, 5,000 Western Mining because I think they're quite high enough.'  And I'd say, 'Right, I'll sell 5,000 and we'll sort of deal for '[not clear]'.  But he was taking the risk.  But if I said - well we still sent cables at night because they were in bed - 'Sell 5,000, Western Mining,' well that was my risk and they dealt and took a commission. But sometimes we'd deal together and get ourselves a position between us and take the risk.  

BA: And then you would simply split the turn?

RD: No, we didn't actually split it in that sense but we bought them back if we were a bear at the same price, basically.  But they may have sold them a bit earlier or a bit later or whatever, you couldn't do that.  

BA: Would you still be going into the market and openly bidding and offering as you had in the Kaffir or in other markets?

RD: Very seldom.  I never did it very much, I've got the wrong voice or something, I hardly ever opened my mouth and nor did my partners either.  That bidding and noise-making began to die all round the Stock Exchange.  They didn't hardly ever do it in the industrial market.  It was nearly always the mining market that made the noise, I don't know why, and it died out.  And I should say that in the last few years, nobody on the market opened their mouth.  Very occasionally, if you really wanted to make sure the whole world knew you were going to buy Mount Isa or something you made a noise, but very seldom.

Tape 2, side 2

BA: Did you ever contemplate expanding the firm or moving into other markets?

RD: No. I liked to think that we had enough sense to realise that we were doing alright thank you and that the cobbler should stick to his Last.  I happen to hold that view still unless you're something exceptional.  And of course a lot of the time taxation was so high, it sounds ridiculous, but it wasn't worth making any money, when we had to pay 90% out.  And then it got lower of course.  So the answer is, no we thought we were alright as we were.

BA: Were you conscious, though, as we come to the 1960s, of the number of jobbing firms decreasing, of firms like Wedd and Akroyd getting involved in these big mergers?

RD: Yes, but it didn't worry us because we thought - this may sound big-headed - that we were quite alright.  I'm getting a bit carried away but I think we realised that we had the best reputation in the whole Stock Exchange of any jobber.  

BA: Could you elaborate on that a bit?

RD: Well, I'm not suggesting the other jobbers were dishonest in that sense, although there were some who were, but I think they came to us because they knew we were 120% honest.  And Alec Hill, in particular, who was quite a big shot in the City in his own way -  Captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club.  This is part of the Club they talk about in the Stock Exchange.  If you're captain of the R & A or if you're captain of Middlesex Cricket you've got a sort of cache; don't ask me, it's the way, or was the way, of the world.  And Alec was pretty influential around the place and when people wanted to know something they came around to us more than other people.  There's nothing wrong with other jobbers, I just think - Jimmy Priestley couldn't be more popular for example - but we had something that other people hadn't got.  And I think they thought, which was quite right, that we basically had no axe to grind.  We weren't trying to get on the Council, we weren't trying to be Chairman.  I'm not suggesting Priestley was for one moment, don't get me wrong.  I just think we had just that reputation and we were completely fearless, if that's the right word, of upsetting anybody.  Most stock jobbers are frightened of upsetting a broker because he may lose his business.  We were so strong in our own market - I'm sorry to show off - but we were so strong in our own market, we could do what we liked and we bloody well did do, and told people off, and refused to deal with them.  And that all added up to our reputation, I don't know what else.

BA: Are there any particular examples you can give of those situations, perhaps not necessarily going into names and so on?

RD: I could give you an example. I don't know whether this is very relevant, but a long time ago now, some Tobacco Company were buying up Gallahers.  I think it's that way round, it may have been Gallahers buying, the other way round.  But we didn't deal in the stock.  And the price was 34s and 9d. - it's funny how I remember figures - and the arrangement was that the brokers who were doing the business for the buyer - it was quite open and above board - were giving 34s and 9d.  And I think there were two brokers doing the business for the buyer and the jobbers would get 34s and 8 1/4d.  And this was going very nicely.  We didn't deal in the tobacco market and it was getting on and somebody in Cazenove, I don't really want this repeated outside this room, although it doesn't really matter.

BA: Shall I turn the tape off?

RD: No, no, I don't mind, because it doesn't really matter, it's true so it doesn't matter.  And Cazenove bid 34s 9d to the dealers outside and cut out the jobber.  It was to get the business because the chap outside got 3 farthings more.  And this eventually caused trouble.  There's nothing in the Stock Exchange rules which said they couldn't do it.  It was just ungentlemanly conduct, or section 45 of the army act, which you've never heard of, is conduct detrimental to Her Majesty's forces or something like that.  I wrote a letter to the Stock Exchange Council and sent a copy to Cazenove and said I thought this was disgraceful, it was very bad for the Stock Exchange, the name of the Stock Exchange, etc, etc, and Cazenove should be ashamed of themselves, or words to this effect.  And the next morning, the Chairman of the Stock Exchange and ten other different members of the Council came down and said, 'Well, done Dick, but you're a bloody fool.' 'Why am I a bloody fool?'  'Well Cazenove are never going to deal with you again, and you've lost their business.'  I said, 'We'll see, when you tell the truth...'  Anyway, but 'Well done,' the Chairman said, 'this is what we want.'  I said, 'We don't deal in the market, it hasn't affected our pockets but it's the name of the Stock Exchange.'  Well, about an hour later, the senior partner of Cazenove who is now dead, Sir Antony Hornby, came over red in the face and said, 'Dick, this letter, bloody disgraceful.'  I said, 'I'm not disgraceful, Anthony, you're the disgraceful man, [the way] your firm has behaved... You're meant to be the Rolls Royce of the Stock Exchange, behaving like this, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, not me.'  He said, 'Oh, what am I going to do?'  Just like that.  I said, 'Go upstairs and say you've made a balls of it and you're very sorry, and you may be censured, because the whole Stock Exchange knows about it, but nobody's going to be...'  He goes upstairs and says he's very sorry and I think they put a notice on the Stock Exchange, and of course we got more business with Cazenove not less, but that was the attitude.  Ten or twelve members came down and said, 'You're going to lose your business.'  So that's why George M Hill and Co. did stand up and everybody knew it and I know it did us a lot of good.  Cazenove never went anywhere else [after that incident].

BA: What was happening to the other jobbers in your market, were they beginning to thin out?

RD: Some of them were getting too old and the turnover dropped.  I think largely most of them were getting too old and they didn't take on anybody who was any good. In the end when we eventually merged with Wedd at a later date, I think I'm right in saying there were only three jobbers left.  

BA: Can you remember who they were?

RD: Pulley were still there, and Smith Brothers came into the market when they saw a bit of money around the place.   I don't blame them, but Smith Brothers were opportunists, cost them a fortune, but still.  And Pulley and Smith Brothers were there, who came later,.... and H.G.M Smith, they stayed.  Parmenter had gone; Mitchell stayed I think until about 1970, but he became a one-man firm, or two-man firm  (you couldn't have a one-man firm); Parmenter had gone; Rudge had gone; Egerton had gone.  Oh, there was another firm, C.S. Williamson - they went, they went a long time ago.  So I think there were only about three left at the end of the day.

BA: Was business itself changing, were bargains getting any bigger, were the investors changing?

RD:  Well, the bargains got a bit bigger.  But the facts of life are we wouldn't do it. That's what is going on now, everybody is trying to outdo the next one, and [saying], 'We'll make a price in 100,000' - they've stopped it now because they lost so much - 'if BZW are making a price in 100,000, we Warburg will make a price in 150,000, and Smith Brothers 200,000', and of course it's bloody bonkers, they're all paying the bill.  Hence Capel losing seven million pounds trying to be too big.  The bargains were getting a bit bigger, but then we were  getting a bit bigger.  I don't know how much you know about jobbing, but you see what would happen, if somebody wanted to buy 20,000 Mount Isa (now, I don't know who would do it; it's probably not a very good example in Mount Isa, because that market's done this [points down]) he would come hopefully to George Hill, mostly he would - not always, of course, he could go to Pulley or somebody else - and say, 'What's the price of Mount Isa?' You'd say, '72s to 72/6d' (I'm sorry about talking in this language, but I'm talking about the days when it was that).  '72s to 6d - which was quite a close price - 'how many can I deal in?' '5,000.'  'I want to deal in more than that.'  'Well if it's 10,000 we'll make you 3d outside it.'  You weren't meant to try and find out whether the broker wanted to buy or sell, you realise that, that was not very honest; so you made a price, or you could say to him, 'If you don't mind me opening you' - that's to say if you want to tell me what you want to do - 'I'll make a price one way and I'll widen it one way.' So sometimes he didn't mind and sometimes he did.  So eventually he'd say, 'But I want to deal in 25,000'.  'Sorry, can't make a price in 25,000.'  'Alright.' 'I'll make you a price in 12,500 and you leave me the other 12,500 for an hour or two hours or the rest of the day.'  'Fine.'  Well, that gave me a chance to go round the place and bid a few people, if he was a buyer, and maybe go to another jobber and buy a few from him.  But now, you see, they are all, 'That's 25, that's nothing to me, quarter of a million that's alright.'

BA: Would you ever have contemplated going joint book with another firm to handle a particularly large order?

RD: I'd say, no.  It sounds rather big-headed, but I think we were too big for that.  People might have come to us occasionally and said [could we go joint].  But we didn't have to take a position like you seem to have to now, we just told the broker, 'Sorry' or we'd say to the broker in 25,000, 'fine we'll stick to 5,000 and go around the market and see whether you can deal with the other jobbers.'  They did that sometimes, sometimes with success, sometimes without success.  It varied a lot you see. 

BA: Now again, as I asked you earlier, were there any particular brokers who specialised in the type of stocks in which you were dealing?

RD: Yes.  But most of those brokers had connections  either with what I call the 'Shop', or connections with say, Australia, or with, say, South Africa.  One big dealer in Australia who would have done you a bit of good so to speak in the nicest possible way was Kitcat.  They did a lot of business with Australia.  And if you wanted to deal in Australian mines, I'd have said go to Kitcat or Govett did quite a lot, but Kitcat was one.  Cazenove did a bit, but they weren't all that big in Australia as Kitcat was and D.A. Bevan did quite a lot.  There were quite a few brokers.  Then there was another firm called Morton Brothers but they were arbitrage brokers, as opposed to arbitrage jobbers.  But I wouldn't have gone to them if I'd been a private client.  I wouldn't have put them onto Morton because they're more interested in making their own money, if you see what I mean.

BA: Were the shops very important in the liquidity of the market?

RD: In my life, no, because in the Australian market we didn't have much of a shop.  You see Goldfield, they had a few interests in Australia and they helped us; when I say helped us they used to deal with us in things like Wiluna was one of theirs which went up the pole, but Lakeview & Star, and one or two things like that; but we didn't have the shops like they had in the Kaffir market.  You see, in the Kaffir, don't forget there was Johny's as they call them - Johnannesburg Investment - General Mining was a shop, Consolidated Goldfields was a shop, and Anglo-American was a shop.  Anglo were very interested in the copper markets. So they had those shops.  We didn't have that in the Australian market.  I don't think that there's ever been a big mining house owning a lot of stocks in the Australian market that I can think of.  

BA: Now, by the sixties, the minerals boom in Australia was beginning to take off.  Did that influence your business?

RD: Oh, yes, they began to go up like this.  A lot more money was needed and the whole thing changed.  Because we had two booms.  We had the Western Mining boom.  If I remember Western Mining went from - they weren't called Western Mining in the very early stages, they were called Gold Exploration - and they were about 17s 6d, and then I think they got to about 30s.  I can't remember now whether they changed their name; they became Western Mining.  And then come about 30s one began to realise that something big was happening in the nickel.  And of course they went from 30s to, at one stage they hit the equivalent of £40, which is a fairly hefty rise.  And of course the whole business expanded and one thing attracted another; because [they'd think]: 'What else can we buy?  Western Mining have gone up from £6 to £8 this last week, and we wonder ...  There must be something else, of course.  All the clever buggers out in Australia have found something'.  One or two never really got off the ground.

BA: People were sometimes criticised for over speculation in mining stocks, that you'd get a sudden boom and then a sudden collapse.  Did this affect your business in any way?

RD: Oh yes, quite.  Good God yes, we were traders.  You were dealing in thousands, tens of thousands of things, Oil Search, I can't remember them all, all sorts of bloody things.  Then of course they started saying that the North Kalgoorlie had got nickel because they happened to be quite near Western Mining, so they went from £1 to, I don't know what, about £5 or something.  I can remember to this day, somebody died and we bought I think it was a  quarter of a million Hampton Areas at 2d three farthings.  I think we eventually sold them at 3d; a very nice profit percentage wise.  Well they went to £6 from 2d 3 farthings.  I don't know what they are today, I think they're probably about a £1.  They did have an interest in nickel, but not that big.  But it just expanded left, right and centre; one thing leads to another.  And then as I say, they can't buy Western Mining, they want to buy something else, so you can't stop anybody speculating.  But of course unfortunately, there were people out in Australia who were bloody crooks, really crooks.

BA: What did you think about a lot of the stocks in which you were dealing, or didn't it matter to you, they were simply apples and pears?

RD: Well, we dealt in what was quoted.  If a stock was quoted on the Australian Stock Exchange we would deal in it.  If people asked us what we thought about it we'd have to sometimes say, 'I don't know', because we didn't know.  But that's another reason for going to Australia because you found [out].  I went to see the Chairman of Mount Isa once upon a time and asked him about somebody whose name I can't remember now, and he said, 'I don't know Dick.  He either ought to have been in a lunatic asylum or prison.'  Well that gave me all the message I wanted to know.  I knew that that bloody thing was useless.  It was.  And he said he'd got a whole mountain of copper and all he had to do was to dig the mountain away.  I can't remember what the name was but they went to about £5.  This is the chap who ought to have been in prison or a lunatic asylum.  He had a little tiny sort of hole in the ground that was some copper company and he used to send 400 tons of copper ore, not the copper, to Mount Isa to be treated and that's all it was. But he was carrying on as if he'd got ...  One knew, so one came back to London and told everybody that you knew - 'Get out!'  Some did, some didn't. 

BA: Were you regarded as a source of information on a lot of these mining stocks?

RD: Yes. 

BA: Would people approach you outside of the house as well as inside?

RD: Very seldom. In the golf club they would.  The reporters used to come round of course.  Reporters would ring up or come round and all that sort of thing and that's why I got on television, because: 'was the boom going to finish?'  I was going on television, I had to go the Chairman of the Stock Exchange, and I said, 'I'm going on television tonight, with your permission.'  He said, 'Well that's alright, what are you going to say?'  I said, 'I don't know, they won't tell me what they're going to ask me, but I can guess.  I shall just tell them the truth as I see it Martin.  I shall make it quite clear it's my own opinion.'  And I think Poseidon at that moment in time were £90 a share.  Well of course I had to tell my fellow jobbers I was going on television, and they all read it incorrectly and the bloody market went down about 5% in London, because R Davie was going on television.  It was a big drop!  And the Evening Standard thought it was very bad, and they said 'I bet he's a bear,' when I don't think we were a bull or a bear particularly.  But anyway I was very careful what I said, and the market went back the next morning, because I didn't say what they thought I was going to say. So I did have, although I say it myself, what's the word... well people listened to what I had to say, and I must confess I was usually right because I knew what I was saying, having been to the place. I told them to bloody well sell Poseidon, nobody listened but that's neither here nor there.

BA: Was there much pressure on you as a firm to get together with other firms - did you have approaches from other firms being made to you?  

RD: Oh, yes we were on the pig's back.  We had an approach from, well Wedd Durlacher was the final one, but we had an approach from Berger, who went broke eventually.  They weren't our opposition, they were in another mining market, I can't remember what they were, I suppose they were in the diamond market and they were in the greyhound market, and I think they were in the Kaffir market.  And they approached us and our accountant said, 'Well you ought to get a 60:40 in your favour'.  They suggested 60:40 in their favour so we didn't stay with them very long.  And then Akroyd were interested.  I never went to Akroyd and we eventually went to Wedd Durlacher.  

BA: Now what were the circumstances?  You said earlier that you never contemplated expanding the firm because you felt that you were quite successful and that you were the best jobber in your market, what caused you to contemplate merging with Wedd?

RD: Well, basically it was caused by people coming to us and asking us whether we were prepared to join them. And with Berger we listened because they were a fairly small firm. But the whole thing was Alec Hill had retired.  I by this time was getting on. I can't remember now how old I was. I suppose I was about 60.  And a jobber, in my view, should pack up active dealing probably at 55, certainly 60; he's lost what's needed to be a jobber.  It's alright to sit there as a senior partner but not to be an active trader; do a bit.  So I'd got to that age.  The younger generation of the firm were getting... I don't know what was the matter with them actually.  Two or three of them weren't very good anyway, and they'd made a lot of money and I think they were going for safety.  Quite frankly I don't think they had the bloody moral fibre to carry on the firm as it then was.  And they thought they were going to get with big brother.  That's what I really think, and I really couldn't stop it because - I could have stopped it - but it wasn't fair to stop it because I was going to retire at some stage - not then - basically.  It was no way because we wanted to get bigger per se.  We were quite happy as we were.  But as it turns out I think it was probably right because the Australian market has gone up the pole.  But at the same time, one doesn't know, if George M Hill & Co. had gone on dealing in the Australian market, whether the Australian market would have gone up the pole in the same way as it has done.  Because I think it's the chicken and the egg - if people can't deal they won't deal.  And dealing became more and more impossible so that people don't deal.  Well if George M Hill had gone on, I don't know... probably it would have packed up.

BA: Did you continue jobbing when the merger took place?

RD:  I didn't, no, I was too old. I was a kind of eminence grise I suppose you could say. I still went to Australia several times after we had merged and I still kept an eye on the general situation; and what I just told you, when that chap was a bear of 50,000 Mount Isa, I saw the books and did something.  I was overseer you might say.  

BA: How did you find suddenly being part of this very big firm that covered a whole range of markets?  Did you find that as jobbers they were different, they had a different outlook?

RD: Well, I thought it was too big. I'm not saying I was right, but I thought they were too big.  In my view, it was very difficult for them to keep control on the whole organisation.  I think I'm right in saying that Wedd Durlacher dealt in 7,000 different stocks.  Well there's no way in the world anybody ... I've been to about 20 different Stock Exchanges all round the world and I don't think even Tokyo has 7,000 stocks!  Admittedly, some of them only changed hands once a month, but they're still a stock and there's still money involved and that sort of thing.  And I think it was too big and too much dead wood.  That's what I thought.  I spoke to Esmond, the great Esmond Durlacher, who was the one who brought them all together years ago and saw the future quite rightly.  I said, 'Esmond, I think you're having too much dead wood aren't you?'  He said, 'Well, I don't know about that.'  I said, 'Well why is it that those people over there', - just pointing -, 'are dissatisfied that they haven't got as big a percentage as those people over there losing all the money?  This is one of your problems.'  'How do you know, boy?'  He used to call me boy, 'How do you know boy?'  I said, 'Well I don't know, I put two and two together' 'Well you're dead right!' he said.  But that was one of the troubles.  They're so big.  Those get 2% which is 2% of a few million, which is quite a lot; and those people were getting 3 and they were losing money hand over fist; and these people were making a fortune and they get furious so you have to put them right.  And that's just one of the little things.  The thing is the dead wood is people who don't make any bloody money.   Wedd Durlacher had probably 30% dead wood, when 15 is about right.  You've got to have dead wood full stop, whether it's the civil service or a bloody shop, you can't be 100% whatever you do. But 15% was about what I thought.  He said, 'What do you know?'

 
Tape 3, side 1

BA: How long did you stay with Wedd Durlacher before you retired from involvement in the firm's business?

RD: Eight years.

BA: And you described yourself during this time as the 'eminence grise'.  What did this involve in practice?

RD: I was a consultant in a way. I eventually became a partner again, but we went to Hong Kong to try and set up a business there, which has now been set up, and I spent about three or four months in Hong Kong with another chap in the firm getting on with the Chinese and the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank and that sort of thing. So I call that eminence grise. But I was an eminence grise in the sense that I had contacts.  I knew more more about the differences of opinion between Joe, Charlie, Willy and Henry, than anybody else did, because they used to come to me.  I think it was partly because in the early days I wasn't a partner, and therefore they thought I might keep my mouth more shut.  Therefore I could influence quite a lot of things, and I did attend board meetings and was treated as an equal.  So in that sense I consider I was an eminence grise.  

BA: Did you miss the actual jobbing on the floor of the House?  

RD: Sometimes, yes; but basically no because - I'm showing off a bit - but I knew I was not what I was and therefore I didn't miss it in a sense. But I missed the bonhomie and the jokes about the Coward.  And of course I missed seeing Mr Parnes who was called the Animal.  You know who I'm referring to of course. That's where the jobbers pick them out.  You can keep that on tape.  So I was a consultant, and don't forget I still went to Australia and Hong Kong, I must have spent 6 months of my life in Hong Kong, and about 5 years of my life in Australia, if you add it all up together.  

BA: Did you find that because Wedd Durlacher was now one of the pillars of the jobbing system that you were mixing in different kinds of company to that you'd been accustomed to with a much more specialised firm during the 1960s?

RD: Well, yes, one can't help it.  Don't forget I think I'm right in saying in my day there were about 45 partners, so where you've gone from say whatever we had, six I think in George Hill speaking off the top of my head, you go to 45.  And furthermore, especially when you're in the office as a consultant, and [at] lunch hour: Wedd Durlacher had, you probably know this, a table in the lunch room at which, I think, you could seat 25 people, and they had two sessions for lunch; and sometimes I would go in at quarter past twelve and sometimes you would go in at quarter past one and you'd see a different set of partners.  So from that point of
view one saw a lot of the partners, which one had never seen before.  And you could hear what they were moaning about, that's where the eminence grise comes in to a certain extent, although they didn't shout their odds too much at the lunch table.  But another interesting thing was that Wilkins did one very good thing, he cut out a lot of the drinking at lunchtime.  When I first went to Wedd I was a bit shaken because they really did drink too much at lunchtime.  They didn't get drunk, but they would have one before lunch in the ante room, maybe a gin and tonic or a glass of beer and then they would have wine, maybe red maybe white, maybe both, that was fine; but I used to wonder when they got to the brandy and the port. And that's what Wilkins cut out, the brandy and the port.  There's no doubt about it, that's too much alcohol when you're going to go back onto the Floor and try and make money, in my view.

BA: Did they invite people from outside of the firm to social occasions?  Did they have contacts?

RD: Well, in what I call the big Lunch Room, quite often there was the odd body from the Stock Exchange, mostly dealing or dealing partners.  But Wedd had, I think it was two in the end, partner's dining rooms where you'd have six people, eight people, not necessarily ... sometimes you had stock brokers, sometimes company directors, I never attended, but I'm pretty sure that once a year the Governor of the Bank of England came round and had lunch with the senior partner,  Wilkins and one or two others, more senior partners.  I was never mixed up in that.  But, you know, the usual sort of City lunches, six or eight people in a small room.

BA: Did you ever feel that Wedd Durlacher had pressures on them that you as a smaller firm in the '60s hadn't?  What I mean is that because they were so big they were expected to deal in size even when perhaps it mightn't have seemed in their interests?

RD: Correct, correct, absolutely right.  You see, we were in a position where we didn't really have to deal bigger than we wanted to, because they couldn't deal elsewhere, and that's where Wedd Durlacher got into a position where  they thought they could deal elsewhere.  But you see, something I should have mentioned earlier when I was talking about the first loss being the best loss, is some of the best deals you do in the Stock Exchange, and I think outside, are the deals you let somebody else have.  Now that is a very important thing.  I wrote to my great friend at the National Australian Bank about a month ago with all these debts with Mr Bond and I said exactly that, 'What you bankers have to realise is that the best deals are the ones you let some other bank have.'  And it's so true and that's what George Hill did and could do.  Wedd Durlacher hadn't got the guts to do it, and they had to.  One year Wedd Durlacher lost £165,000 give or take £10,000 in Distillers.  Now a good jobber - I'm not talking about the bid time, there were tens of thousand Distillers shares changing hands every day - now a good jobber cannot lose money if he's dealing in ten or twenty thousand, fifty thousand a day in Distillers, he can't lose money.  He might lose money in one week, but not in a year.  And that was the sort of thing they were doing, they were dealing too big and a bad dealer - I'm getting excited [Both laugh heartily].  

BA: Well this probably leads into the final group of questions.  What do you feel it took to be a good jobber?  You've referred to a few of the things already.

RD:  Well, I think first of all, I don't say this is the right order of battle so to speak: you've got to be in my book, 100% honest; you've got to be able to take losses on the chin; and above all you've got to realise you are going to make a lot of mistakes and take that on the chin.  If you haven't got the guts to make mistakes, then don't be a jobber.  Because it's cost you money, but it's...  You've got to write off, and I suppose you've got to have - I say I suppose because it's me and I don't know me in a way - you've got to have a quick wit, not to be witty, but a quick turn of mind.  You've also got to be able to read the newspaper quickly; you've got perhaps half an hour to read the Financial Times, maximum, and you've got to go through that Financial Times, and ignore everything that's nothing to do with you and have the knack of picking out the meat quickly.  But I think you learn that probably.  And of course you've got to have a personality with which you can get on with people.  I don't think my personality in that respect is very good, because I'm inclined to be aggressive, but maybe that's a good sign, I don't really know.  Does that answer your question, or do you want more?

BA: What do you feel the strengths of the jobbing system were?  Or did it have strengths?

RD:  Well, I try not, at my age, to behave like an old man and I try, not very successfully, not to be bigotted, but I am convinced that the best system for a Stock Exchange in the world is the stockjobbing system, where you meet people face-to-face, you know who is honest and who is dishonest.  When you press a lot of buttons you don't know who the hell you're dealing with, you don't feel any closeness to him, you don't feel you owe him any duty and it's not jobbing any more - they're all gambling.  The London Stock Exchange has now got no floor now, there is no other Stock Exchange in the world that I know of that works without a floor. I'm not suggesting that a lot of business goes on on the floor,  but you go to Singapore, you go to where I've been, Paris, I've been to Switzerland, I've been to Holland, I've been to Hong Kong, all across Australia, I've been to New York, I've been to San Francisco, and I've been to Tokyo, and they've all got a floor.  As I said before, they've got machines, Christ knows, but they've got a floor.  Now what the hell are we doing without a floor?  You can have a floor without a jobbing system, you've got to have somewhere to deal.  I think the general public, I'm now getting on my high horse, are being taken for a ride by Big Bang.  I'm a member of the Stock Exchange still, after 55 years, and I find it very difficult to deal at a fair price in £5,000 worth of stock.  And they're making prices that if I'd made in my day, I would have been shot, I would have been out of business.  I dealt the other day in a stock which was 30 to 34 pence, they wouldn't make any other price.  In old language that's six shillings to nine pence.  If I'd made 6 shillings to 9 pence, I would have been out of business. I might have made 6 bob to 6 pence, though I doubt it.  I made 6s 1 1/2d, 4 1/2; 'Can I help? 2d farthing, 4 1/2d', but not 6s and 9.  The market has got to up 10% before I made anything. I'm getting carried away again, I'm sorry.  

BA: Do you feel the jobbing system had any weaknesses?

RD: Well, the answer is, it must have, because everything has basically.  I take the view that nothing in life is perfect, therefore the jobbing system certainly wasn't perfect.  But I'm not convinced it had any weaknesses in that sense.  I think the weakness was, although I deprecate the size of the business they're all throwing around the place now, I think possibly that the jobbing system in the old days didn't have enough people prepared to lose money.  It probably lacked a certain amount of capital.  I don't want to be biased, but I don't think it had any weaknesses as a system.  People in it, yes, but the jobbing system I don't think had any weaknesses because it's an honest reflection of the market - as long as you've got competition and not negotiation.  It's common sense if you're competing you're going to give some sort of service and you're a bloody fool if you don't.  But I don't think there were any weakness in it, in that sense.  Maybe you don't agree with me, but I don't think [so], I would like somebody to tell me what the weaknesses are.  Of course, people did say the weakness of the jobbing system was that they made big turns but what they don't realise is the losses.  They say, 'Oh jobbers make an enormous turn,' but it's the end product.  And the end product on the turnover was on the whole I would think a very reasonable... - well,  sometimes very unreasonable, bloody awful; after all, Wedd Durlacher lost 3 million quid one year.  I mean it's all very well.

BA: Reviewing your career now the span of it from when you first started dealing in the late 'thirties to when you finally stopped jobbing on the Floor of the Stock Exchange, did the actual technique of jobbing, standing there day after day on the Floor of the House, change?

RD: The principles didn't change, but some people changed the principles for the worse.  Largely by a) as I've already said, going too big; and trying to compete too much in case the other chap did something - there was more of that after the War, I think, than there was before the War; but the principles of jobbing I don't think changed at all.

BA: Was there ever any point during your career that you contemplated taking up another profession?

RD: Never.  My job I enjoyed it. This sounds a bit pompous, perhaps, but I felt I was doing a job which was worth doing and which I thought was good for the public in my little way and good for the Stock Exchange in my little way.  I was very proud of 'dictum meum pactum' - My word is my Bond.  I was very very proud of that and I still am and that's gone out of the window.

BA: I think that's a good note on which we can finish.  Thank you very much.