[Vwoolf] Fwd: checks cheques and bills

[GILL LOWE]

Just re-reading VW's Introductory Letter to Margaret Llewelyn Davies' Life As We Have Known It  (Virago, 1982 ed.) 
Woolf is 'looking at' Mrs Thomas, Mrs Langrish and Miss Bolt of Hebden Bridge. 'They were worth looking at':
'Certainly, there were no armchairs, or electric light, or hot water laid on in their lives; no Greek hills or Mediterranean bays in their dreams. Bakers and butchers did not call for orders. They did not sign a cheque to pay the weekly bills, or order, over the telephone, a cheap but quite adequate seat at the opera' (p.xxiii).
Gill
----Original message----
>From : jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no
Date : 20/07/2017 - 08:18 (GMTDT)
To : vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
Subject : [Vwoolf] checks cheques and bills
  
    
  
  
    
This is from Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford's The
        Inheritors (1901).
    
One day, indeed, the matter was brought
        home to me by the receipt from Polehampton of bills instead of
        my usual cheques. I had a good deal of trouble in cashing the
        things; indeed, people seemed to look askance at them. 
    
    
>From the SOED I gather that a "bill" in this context is the
      equivalent of a promissory note. But how did such a bill work?
      Incidentally, the writer/narrator is in Paris, so the assumption
      seems to be that a cheque or bill written in England could be
      cashed in France. It was not so when I grew up.
    
I write this two days after telling a US publisher that it's not
      much use sending me a check, as no-one uses them in Norway any
      more. The last one I wrote here was about a decade ago I think,
      and my local bank charges 400 kroner (about 60 US dollars) to cash
      a US check.
    
Jeremy H
    
    
    
On 17.07.2017 13:07, Stuart N. Clarke
      wrote:
    
    
      
      
        
          
When I went to open a bank a/c in 1966 with the
            Westminster, I was asked whether anyone could give me a
            reference.  I replied: “I believe my [half-]brother works
            for your bank.”
          
          
(I’ve suddenly remembered something irrelevant but
            comparable.  A friend of mine did Art History under Quentin
            Bell at Leeds.  He applied for a job at the “Daily Mail”. 
            “What school did you go to?”  My friend emigrated to
            Australia.)
          
          
Back to cheques.  In “Zuleika Dobson”, when the Duke of
            Dorset gives his landlady a cheque (presumably made out to
            CASH), he encourages her to go that day to the bank to cash
            it, for she wouldn’t be able to cash it the following day in
            view of his imminent suicide.
          
          
Stuart
           
          
            
              
              
            
          
        
      
    
    
  
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