It's a special day in the world of banknotes because Alan Turing gets to appear on thenew £50 note. It's also the day the Bank of England completes another series of banknotes, that's Series G, finally marking the end of the switch to polymer.
Series D £1 Isaac Newton (1978-1988) £5 Duke of Wellington (1971-1991) £10 Florence Nightingale (1975-1994) £20 William Shakespeare (1970-1993) £50 Christopher Wren (1981-1996)
Series F £20 Adam Smith (2007-2022) £50 Boulton and Watt (2011-2022)
Series E £5 George Stephenson (1990-2003) £10 Charles Dickens (1992-2003) £20 Michael Faraday (1991-2001) £50 John Houblon (1994-2014)
Series G £5 Winston Churchill (2016-) £10 Jane Austen (2017-) £20 JMW Turner (2020-) £50 Alan Turing (2021-)
Series E (revised) £5 Elizabeth Fry (2002-2017) £10 Charles Darwin (2000-2018) £20 Edward Elgar (1999-2010)
The Bank of England has long been chastised for their lack of diversity in selecting men over women, a mismatch currently running at 16 to 3. But also, as I pointed out in a series of posts fifteen years ago, they're guilty of relentlessly picking Londoners. Back in 2006 only one person who'd appeared on a banknote - that's the entire first column - hadn't lived in Greater London. Now that we've reached another banknote landmark I wondered if Londoners still dominate or whether geographical diversity has improved.
Series D £1 Isaac Newton: Moved to London aged 53 to take up the role of Master of the Royal Mint. His house at 87 Jermyn Street (1696-1709) has a blue plaque. Died in Kensington aged 84. £5 Duke of Wellington: Lived at Apsley House, Piccadilly (known as Number One London) from the age of 48. Was Prime Minister a couple of times. £10 Florence Nightingale: Moved to 10 South Street, Mayfair at the age of 45, and died here at the age of 90. £20 William Shakespeare: Moved to London in his mid-twenties. Acted and wrote most of his famous plays here. Lived in various parts of the capital. Left to return permanently to Stratford aged 49. £50 Christopher Wren: Appointed Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College aged 25. Lived on Bankside while St Paul's was being constructed. Also lived in the Surveyor-General's lodgings on Whitehall, and at Old Court House at Hampton Court where he spent his retirement years.
Born in London: 0 / Lived in London: 5 / Died in London: 3
Series E £5 George Stephenson: The odd one out. Never lived in London. Even his Rocket has been taken back to the North East. £10 Charles Dickens: Lived in Fitzrovia aged four and Marshalsea Debtors Prison aged 12. Went to school in Camden. Lived in Holborn aged 22, Bloomsbury aged 25 and Marylebone aged 27-39. £20 Michael Faraday: Born at Newington Butts, Southwark. Lived and worked at the Royal Institution in Mayfair for almost 50 years. Died at Hampton Court. £50 John Houblon: Born in Threadneedle Street. Became the first ever Governor of the Bank of England aged 62 and Lord Mayor of London aged 63. Died in the City of London. Probably the Londoniest banknotee ever.
Born in London: 2 / Lived in London: 3 / Died in London: 2
Series E (revised) £5 Elizabeth Fry: Moved from Norwich to the City of London after getting married aged 20. Lived in East Ham aged 29-49, then Forest Gate for another fifteen years. £10 Charles Darwin: Lived on Gower Street aged 29, then lived at Down House for 40 years until his death aged 73. £20 Edward Elgar: Four of the composer's 21 residences were in London, including a house in Kensington aged 33, ten years in Hampstead from the age of 55 and (after his wife's death) a flat in St James's. Born in London: 0 / Lived in London: 3 / Died in London: 1
Series F £20 Adam Smith: Spent most of his life in Scotland but lived at 27 Suffolk Street (off Pall Mall) for two years while writing his seminal economics book, The Wealth of Nations. £50 Matthew Boulton and James Watt: Matthew was a confirmed Brummie, but spent a month living in Rotherhithe ('a suitably obscure corner in London') to establish residence in the parish before marrying his dead wife's sister. James was Scottish and later very much Midlands-based, but at the age of 18 spent a year in London training as an apprentice instrument maker. Born in London: 0 / Lived in London: 3 / Died in London: 0
Series G £5 Winston Churchill: Really Londony. It was in the capital that he went to school (Harrow, aged 13), sat at Parliament (aged 25-89), married (St Margaret's, Westminster, aged 33), lived with his family (in numerous residences, mostly around Mayfair), served as Prime Minister (twice), coordinated much of the war effort and died (at 28 Hyde Park Gate). £10 Jane Austen: Jane's life was mainly Hampshire-based but she was a frequent visitor to London because her brother lived here. She took lengthy summer trips to Covent Garden and Knightsbridge in her late 30s, but the plaques out front merely state 'stayed here' so we can't count her as a Londoner. £20 JMW Turner: Born in Covent Garden, spent some of his childhood in Brentford, bought a house in Harley Street aged 25 which he used as a gallery, moved to the Chelsea Embankment aged 71 and died there five years later. A Londoner through and through. £50 Alan Turing: Yet another London birth, indeed today would have been Alan's 109th birthday. Let's tell the tale of his arrival properly... Born in London: 2 / Lived in London: 3 / Died in London: 1
This is 2 Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale, a white stucco residence over five floors. Although it's where Alan Turing was born it isn't the kind of place you'd expect Britain's greatest computer scientist to have grown up, indeed he didn't because it hadn't been a house since Victorian times. The building was knocked together with the house nextdoor to create a boarding school in 1880, and a few years later became the Warrington Lodge Medical and Surgery Home for Ladies. Ethel Turing checked in briefly in June 1912 while her husband was on leave from his position with the Indian Civil Service, and it was here on Sunday 23rd June that baby Alan Mathison Turing was born. The building became a hotel in 1938, first the Esplanade, now the Colonnade, and usually offers 43 rooms to mostly Middle Eastern guests (which is why there's a posh Persian restaurant on the ground floor).
Alan in fact grew up in St Leonard's-on-Sea while his father's Indian commission continued, spending his pre-boarding years in the care of a retired army colonel. He went to school in Dorset and university in Cambridge where he published his seminal paper "On Computable Numbers". WW2 saw him summoned to Bletchley Park where his breakthroughs in codebreaking technology helped crack Germany's impenetrable Enigma machine, shortened the war and kickstarted the first electronic computers. Few 20th century CVs are more impressive. In 1945 Alan moved to Teddington to work on the design of the Automatic Computing Engine at the National Physical Laboratory, lodging in a house in Hampton, which ticks the Greater London box again. But after two years he was off to Manchester via Cambridge, which is where his life came to an untimely end.
Alan's closeted homosexuality came to the notice of the police after his home was burgled. He was convicted of gross indecency, required to submit to hormone therapy and lost his official security clearance ending his work on computers overnight. Two years later his housekeeper found him dead from cyanide poisoning - suicide assumed - at the tragically young age of 41. An official pardon took 55 years, the delay caused more by societal intolerance than national security. But Alan's contribution to the nation is now suitably lauded, and today he ends up on a banknote you'll probably never hold.
Born in London: 4(21%) Lived in London: 17 (89%) Died in London: 7 (41%)
Of the 19 figures thus far featured on our banknotes the vast majority moved to London at some point in their lives and then most moved away. No other region of the country displays this dominance, for mostly historical reasons, but that's no reason to perpetuate the Bank's blinkered focus in the future. Series H is likely some years off, but it's not just gender, race and sexual orientation that deserve a bit more diversity.
