87

__________________________

* "There is an informal understanding that a director of Brown, Shipley 

should be on the Board of the Bank of England, and Norman was 

elected to it in 1907." Montagu Norman, Current Biography, 1940.

49

It is hardly surprising that the most popular host in London would also 

become a very successful businessman, particularly with the House of 

Rothschild supporting him behind the scenes. Peabody often operated 

with a capital of 500,000 pounds on hand, and became very astute in 

his buying and selling on both sides of the Atlantic. His American agent 

was the Boston firm of Beebe, Morgan and Company, headed by 

Junius S. Morgan, father of John Pierpont Morgan. Peabody, who 

never married, had no one to succeed him, and he was very favorably 

impressed by the tall, handsome Junius Morgan. He persuaded 

Morgan to join him in London as a partner in George Peabody and 

Company in 1854. In 1860, John Pierpont Morgan had been taken on 

as an apprentice by the firm of Duncan, Sherman in New York. He was 

not very attentive to business, and in 1864, Morgan’s father was 

outraged when Duncan, Sherman refused to make his son a partner. 

He promptly extended an arrangement whereby one of the chief 

employees of Duncan, Sherman, Charles H. Dabney, was persuaded 

to join John Pierpont Morgan in a new firm, Dabney, Morgan and 

Company. Bankers Magazine, December, 1864, noted that Peabody 

had withdrawn his account from Duncan, Sherman, and that other 

firms were expected to do so. The Peabody account, of course, went 

to Dabney, Morgan Company.