| Code | DS/UK/265 |
| Surname | Cotton |
| Forenames | William |
| Dates | 1786 - 1866 |
| Epithet | Deputy Governor (1841 - 1842); Governor (1842 - 1845) |
| Activity | William Cotton was born in Essex on 12th September 1786. He was educated at Chigwell Grammar School. In 1807 - 1808, Cotton became a partner of Charles Hampden Turner in the firm of Huddart & Co., a rope making company, which he soon took sole control of.
Following in the footsteps of his maternal grandfather, Cotton became a Director of the Bank of England in 1822 (1822 - 1824, 1825 - 1827 and 1828 - 1830). He was Deputy Governor from 1841 to 1842 and Governor from 1842 - 1845 (his term unusually extended from two to three years). As Governor, he worked closely with Sir Robert Peel and Henry Goulburn in the formulation and implementation of the Bank Charter Act of 1844. He shared in a Peelite dislike of speculation fed by overextended credit and paper currency, and his support proved invaluable when many within the bank, the City, and the country at large distrusted the act's overly rigid management of money. He remained, particularly in the wake of the commercial crisis of 1847, one of the act's strongest defenders, both publicly and within the bank. Cotton's mechanical ingenuity also served the bank well, for, when it faced the task of reweighing the nation's coinage (an essential part of the campaign for sound money), he devised in 1842 an automatic weighing machine for sovereigns. Suitably nicknamed ‘the governor’, it won a medal at the Great Exhibition of 1851, was long used at the bank, and was later placed in its museum.'
He died in Leytonstone on 1st December 1866. |
| Source | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |
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