Palgrave, Sir Robert Harry Inglis, FRS FSS

Sir Robert Harry Inglis Palgrave (known as Inglis), was educated at Charterhouse School, but did not go to a university. He was the son of Sir Francis Palgrave and his wife Elizabeth Turner, who was the daughter of the banker, Dawson Turner. He was named after his godfather, Sir Robert Harry Inglis, the Member of Parliament for Oxford University. Inglis Palgrave’s father was an eminent historian and his work, The Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth became a classic.

Inglis’s father, Sir Francis Palgrave (1788-1861) was born Francis Ephraim Cohen in London, the son of Meyer Cohen, a Jewish stockbroker, who was financially ruined in 1810 in a stock market crash and Francis, his eldest son, became responsible for supporting his parents. Francis was a child progeny and became a lawyer and in 1838 he was appointed deputy keeper of Her Majesty's Records and is considered to be the founder of the Public Record Office. In 1819, he made the acquaintance of the banker Dawson Turner and his daughter Elizabeth at the house of the Quaker banker, Hudson Gurney and he offered to correct the proofs of Turner's Architectural Antiquities of Normandy. In 1821, Francis Cohen was admitted to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, one of his sponsors being Dawson Turner. Francis Cohen converted to Anglican Christianity before his marriage to Elizabeth Turner in 1823. He changed his name from Cohen to the maiden name of his future mother in law. She was the granddaughter of William Palgrave of Coltishall. It is not clear if either the religious conversion or his name change were conditions of his marriage. However, his father- in-law, Dawson Turner, paid for the expenses of the name change, and settled £3,000 on the couple. Sir Francis Palgrave is buried at Irstead Church in Norfolk.

In 1843, Francis’ son, Inglis Palgrave at the age of 16 years, joined the bank of Deacon, Williams and Company in London, where he was groomed to replace his grandfather Dawson Turner at the bank in Great Yarmouth. In 1845, he joined Turner and Gurney Bank in Yarmouth. Gurney’s Bank amalgamated with Barclay and Company in 1896.

From the electoral registers, we find Inglis Palgrave living in Great Yarmouth at Britannia Terrace (Marine Parade) at least from 1869 to 1883. From the town directory and the census returns, we learn that the house number was four in the 1860s. On the census returns by 1871 and 1881 he had moved to 11 Britannia Terrace.

Britannia Terrace has been absorbed into Marine Parade. On Laing’s map of Great Yarmouth dated 1855 we see that eight houses of Britannia Terrace have been built and these were at the north end, so it is probable that the terrace was numbered from the north.

In 1859, Inglis Palgrave married Sarah Maria Brightwen, the daughter of George Brightwen of Saffron Walden.

Inglis Palgrave began publishing in the late 1860s. His 1871 essay won a prize from the Statistical Society of London. His 1873 treatise, focusing particularly on bank statistics, set him out as one of the leading authorities on banking matters and spokesman of the country banks. In 1875, Inglis Palgrave gave testimony to the House of Commons on banks of issue (that is banks empowered by government to issue currency). In 1877, Inglis Palgrave became the financial editor of The Economist and became editor-in-chief in the same year, a position he held until 1883. He edited the collected historical works of his father, Sir Francis Palgrave. He also edited The Banking Almanac until his death, and for a time was the editor of The Bankers’ Magazine. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June 1882. He was knighted in 1909 and the year after received the Freedom of Great Yarmouth.

In 1885, Inglis Palgrave was appointed one of Her Majesty’s Commission on the Depression of Trade and Industry, to which he contributed an appendix to the report. He wrote many publications including Notes on Banking in Great Britain and Ireland, Sweden, Denmark and Hamburg and for this work was honoured by the King of Sweden with the Order of Vasa.

But, perhaps Inglis Palgrave's principal claim to fame is editing the comprehensive three- volume Dictionary of Political Economy. He gathered a distinguished group of international contributors, and the three volumes originally appeared between 1894 and 1899. This was a landmark in both publishing and economics: a liberal and scholarly overview of the whole sphere of economic thought in its day. Henry Higgs's revised edition, Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy (1923-6), retained the spirit of the original publication while embracing new concepts in the development of economics as a discipline. A four volume The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics was published in 1987 to international acclaim. Obviously, its scope had expanded and evolved almost beyond what Palgrave himself would have recognised. Well into the 21st century it remained a standard work for economists. In 2008, Palgrave Macmillan published The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edition.

In Great Yarmouth, Inglis Palgrave’s activities in committee work were numerous. Great Yarmouth owes to Inglis Palgrave the preservation of the Greyfriars Cloisters, which he purchased and handed over to trustees for the public.

Inglis Palgrave died in Bournemouth in 1919, where he was spending the winter. His body was brought back to Fritton and he was buried alongside his wife in Fritton churchyard. He left £47,450 (approximately one million pounds today). The Times wrote that: he was, indeed, the grand old man of British banking and banking literature.

Inglis Palgrave was the last of four famous sons of Sir Francis Palgrave. The Palgraves were an extraordinary family; four brothers who in widely separate fields each earned recognition.