‘Just Like One of the Family’ the Agent, the Established Firm and Working Class Credit before 1945

Abstract

The relationship between ‘agents’ or collectors and their customers is central to the whole edifice of the weekly-collected credit system used by the working class. The agent, as intermediary between the creditor and the debtor, has a central role in this study. In the discussion that follows, the term agent refers to any individual acting on behalf of any organisation that offers ‘doorstep’ credit to individual consumers. ‘Doorstep’ credit is usually described as ‘weekly-collected credit’ by the industry itself.¹ This is because loans are usually paid in weekly instalments and, ‘The instalments are usually collected personally by someone who calls on the customer each week or month.’² So the agent acts as the interface between the consumer and the organisation. As the agents of mail order companies fulfil the same function, if there is an agent involved in a transaction, mail order credit can also be seen as a type of ‘doorstep’ credit. It should be pointed out that this definition has been made deliberately wide in order to encompass all the different types of credit ‘agents’ who deal with the working class. As well as looking at agents of mail order companies and check trading companies, we will also consider those credit drapers who dealt with the working class directly. The reason for this is that the relationship between the customer and the person offering them credit is of crucial importance in any type of credit collected by agents who regularly visit customers in their own homes.