Savings Bank at Mansfield

 The following first-hand accounts of incidents in the building of Mansfield's Savings Bank in 1841 come from a diary written at the time by William Moss of Leeming Street in Mansfield**.

  6 September 1841: The first stone of the new Savings Bank was laid by Mr Joseph Wood; several halfpence and farthings of the present reign were put under it

 7 December 1841:  A sad accident happened about noon to-day.  One of the builders employed at the new Savings Bank had the misfortune to fall from the highest scaffold.... It was a mercy he was not killed on the spot.  He no doubt would have been had he fell outside; but as he fell inside several things broke his fall.  He first fell on one of the window heads, then on the joists of the first floor, and then to the ground.  His name is Taplin from Nottingham.  He has a wife and five children, and was the best builder on the ground.

** By other entries in the diary we know that William and his father worked as Coopers.  In the 1841 Census we find Joseph Moss (his father) aged 54, a Cooper, living on Leeming Street with his wife Catherine (57), his son William (27, the diarist and also a Cooper) and daughter Elizabeth (17).  Also in the house is Edward Simpson (15), a Coopers apprentice

William kept his diary in the blank pages of copy of the "Christian Almanack" published by the Religious Tract Society, and it was transcribed and published in the Mansfield and North Notts Advertiser in 1911