More Bizet Bankruptcy

Until the Debtors Act of 1869 insolvent debtors were regarded as criminals and could be imprisoned. For those without friends and relations or lenient creditors this could be a life sentence.

Insolvency was seen as the moral failure of a person to live within their means and the processes seem to have evolved to shame the debtor. Details of bankruptcy proceeding were published in the London Gazette for all to see.

Members of the extended d'Egville family were unable to avoid debt and insolvency in the nineteenth century. My working hypothesis is that where the families were clustered together in London, Brighton and Worcester there were just too many d'Egvilles and Michaus trying to make their livings as teachers. Of course being a good dancing teacher is not necessarily correlated with possessing good business sense.

The bankrupt George Harvey d'Egville relocated from Worcester to Edinburgh where he seems to have avoided the courts. His uncle, George Harvey d'Egville, spent the second half of his life in Atherstone where he never had to endure the ignominy of Bankruptcy.

This is not to say that these two gentlemen were not in debt. Despite the shame associated with bankruptcy credit was a driving economic force among the middle classes. A household would have relied on informal credit arrangements with local traders for its day to day operation. Then, as now, it was a fine line between successfully those managing credit arrangements and falling into insolvency.

London Gazette 20 February 1863

London Gazette 9 May 1873