PALACE SERVANTS

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 423, 3 May 1937, Page 3

PALACE SERVANTS

LATE KING'S PLANS Building Society Suggested London, March 27. It was revealed this week that King George V had considered launching a building society for the benefit of his servants, but the scheme had to be abandoned owing to the financial crisis of 1931. The story was told by Sir Ralph Harwood, who was deputy-treasurer to King George V and later his financial secretary. Sir Ralph described the projected scheme as “the building society of the borrower’s dreams.” It was going to charge the borrowers only 2 per cent, on their mortgages, and it Would have been willing to advance the full 100 per cent, of the cost of the mortgaged property. But it was to be strictly limited in its

operation. Sir Ralph told of a conversation he had had with King George V in the spring of 1931, and went on: “His Majesty had been discussing with me my financial report on the Civil List for the previous year, and at the end of our talk the King said to me, which was so typical of .him, words' to the effect that the financial position was so satisfactory that he would like to do something for the permanent benefit of the servants. “He did not want to give all-round icreases of wages, for their wages were quite good, and increases might not always be put to useful purposes, but might be wasted. He wanted to do something which would help them and encourage them to be thrifty, and be of permanent advantage to them; and he asked me whether I could not think out something to achieve this object.

“I readily undertook to do that, and before I got back to my own room the idea of a building society, subsidised by the King for the advantage of the servants, came into my mind. “I went straight back to the King and put the idea to him. He warmly welcomed it and in the weeks which followed the idea developed into a cut-and-dried scheme. But, alas, the financial crisis of 1931 came and the King immediately asked that the Civil List should be reduced by £50,000 per annum. And so my pet scheme was dropped.”