Pounds & Prejudice The inside story of the Jane Austen £10 note
The story of how the 19th-century author came to be on the new £10 note is the stuff of novels, says Claire Cohen
When I tell freinds that I am off to visit the Bank of England, they ooh, ahh and tell me that “it will be just like Gringotts in Harry Potter – all underground vaults and heavy oak doors”.
The reality is less Old England and more Ocean’s Eleven. For this is not the bank’s famous City of London HQ, but its fortress-like factory – in the rather less salubrious setting of Debden, Essex. Surrounded by high fences and topped with menacing curls of barbed wire, not even George Clooney could penetrate this.
I am here for a sneak peek at the new £10 note. It won’t be in circulation until September but the finished version, featuring Jane Austen, was unveiled to the public yesterday at Winchester Cathedral, where the writer was buried 200 years ago this week.
Austen was announced as the heir to Charles Darwin – who has been on the £10 note since the millennium
– in 2013, in response to the “We need women on British banknotes” campaign, started by activist Caroline Criado-perez, after Winston Churchill replaced social reformer Elizabeth Fry on the new £5 note last September. A petition attracted almost 36,000 signatures and successfully lobbied the Bank, with the support of Conservative and Labour MPS. Today, however, Victoria Cleland, chief cashier, tells me that our heroine was already waiting in the wings: “Austen was already chosen,” she says. “We knew you couldn’t have no women on banknotes forever. But in response [to the campaign] we said it much sooner than we would have done. We would rather have announced her later, as she would have got more attention rather than just ‘it’s a woman’.”
The Bank of England factory is not used to visitors. I am only the second journalist to be allowed in and security is tight. I have to remove any banknotes from my purse and leave them in a locker. Guards watch my every move and yes, I am searched on the way out.
Inside, machines whirr, pressure valves spin and I almost expect to see bubbles rising – it reminds me of Willy Wonka’s factory, but churning out cold, hard cash instead of chocolate. By September, when the tenner goes into circulation, a billion banknotes will have been made here. It will be the second note made of polymer and the first to feature raised dots to help the visually impaired. Yet parts of the process are still sweetly old-fashioned. All around me, women and men wearing white gloves are straightening blank sheets of polymer and feeding them into machines. Between 25 and 30 shades of ink are used for each note and each is mixed by hand; it’s more like a hardware shop than the Royal Mint. Even more archaic is what happens next: after the design has been printed, the notes are taken to a vault and left to dry for five days before the holograms, serial numbers and varnish are applied. In total, each takes four weeks to complete. As well as Austen’s face, the notes feature illustrations of Elizabeth Bennet, Godmersham Park (the Kent home of Austen’s brother, which inspired some of her novels), and her writing table. There’s also a quote from Pride and Prejudice: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” – included with slight irony, some have suggested, given it is uttered by one of the novel’s most disingenuous characters, Caroline Bingley; a woman with no interest in books (beyond their material value) at all. After such controversial beginnings, it would probably have been too much to ask that the note’s production continue quietly. The latest row has centred on the picture of Austen used – an 1870 portrait, commissioned by her nephew James Edward Austen-leigh, and adapted from a less than flattering sketch by her sister Cassandra. It has provoked outrage, with some accusing the Bank of “airbrushing”. Historian Lucy Worsley said: “It’s deeply ironic that the image chosen by the Bank of England isn’t really her... It’s an author publicity portrait after she died in which she’s been given the Georgian equivalent of an airbrushing.” The Jane
Austen Centre in Bath, meanwhile, claims to have contacted the Bank three years ago and offered it their own specially-commissioned image. “They unfortunately rejected this portrait in favour of the ‘saccharine’ version,” said a disgruntled spokesperson.
Cleland admits to being surprised by the backlash. “The version we chose was supported by her family. We went for an image of Austen that the public would recognise. She hasn’t been airbrushed,” she says. The note will be the last commissioned entirely by governor Mark Carney and his staff. Following the 2013 campaign, he announced that future subjects would be chosen via a public consultation. A new £20, due to come into circulation in 2020, will feature one of Britain’s greatest painters, JMW Turner. It was picked by a panel of experts after a public nomination. I voted for Beatrix Potter, I tell Cleland; isn’t it a shame that a woman wasn’t chosen for the £20 note, too?
“A banknote is about trying to celebrate people who have made a lasting achievement,” she explains. “They need to have been around a relatively long time ago and the sad thing is that, at that time, there weren’t many women.” Give it 10 years, she suggests. As chief cashier, only the second woman to hold the position, Cleland is responsible for the issue, distribution and security of the notes. And, since 1870, the holder of this prestigious position has been afforded another privilege: to have their signature on every one. Reach for your wallet now and take a look. If it was printed after March 2014 – when she was appointed chief cashier, having worked for the Bank since her 20s – it will feature Cleland’s cursive.
She is also one of the first people to be gifted a coveted new note. “The first always goes to the Queen. For the £5 note, I got the seventh, which is quite cool. It has the serial number 007. I keep it very safe; it was a labour of love, making the thing.” It is dizzying being surrounded by so much money. To my left, a machine is inspecting every single finished note – any rejects shoot up a tube to be immediately shredded. To my right, plastic-wrapped ‘sausages’ – the technical term – of notes chug along a conveyor belt. Each contains £50,000, and is surprisingly heavy. Nervously perching on a huge stack of notes, I do some rapid mental arithmetic – realising I am sitting on £675,000, I have a sudden urge to give my estate agent a call.
Of course, you would be forgiven for thinking that all this effort was a little, well, pointless. After all, aren’t we now a cashless society, wedded to contactless and banking apps? “Demand for banknotes is actually increasing,” says Cleland. “People like how reliable they are – and that they don’t have anyone collecting their data.”
We also enjoy trying to trash them. When the polymer £5 note was released, it became something of a challenge; social media was awash with videos of people running it over and sticking it in the microwave.
“Because we said they were stronger, people took that to mean indestructible,” sighs Cleland. “You can destroy it if you want to, but general wear and tear is very slow.”
Next on the Bank’s agenda could be a shiny new £50, “but we haven’t made a decision”.
One can’t help but look at Austen, the only woman – apart from the Queen – on a British banknote, and think that might be the sense and sensibility option.