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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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National Savings
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The name since 1969 of what was previously called Post Office Savings. The use of the post offices as outlets for a national savings scheme dates back to the Post Office Savings Bank Act of 1861. Over the next century the Savings Bank introduced a succession of schemes to persuade people to put aside part of their wages, including savings stamps for sticking into books (or, for the patriotic in World War II, for sticking on the side of tanks or bomb casings as a contribution to the war effort), savings certificates and *premium bonds. In 1969, when the *Post Office became a separate nationalized industry, savings remained within the civil service as the Department for National Savings. By the early 1990s the high-street banks had been added to the post offices as retail outlets.
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