20 Ways Travelers Guarded Money Before ATMs Existed

The rich European travelers of the 18th-century Grand Tour, a months-long journey around Europe, didn’t bring paper with them. Instead, they brought gold. Coins such as the British gold sovereign or the French louis d’or were locked away in trunks with iron bands because foreign banknotes weren’t always accepted outside their country of origin. They had to have special wagons for the trunks, and armed outriders followed to protect them from highway robbers. If you wanted to move money around Europe, then you needed to move weight under escort.

Marcellus Flemming Berry, an American Express employee, came up with the traveler’s check trick in 1891 when the company’s president had trouble getting letters of credit redeemed in small European villages. The buyer would sign the check when buying it, and then sign it again when paying a merchant. The clerk would compare the signatures and reject the check if they didn’t match. Paper travel credit had existed for over a century, so the idea behind it was not new. But what Berry gave them was the credibility that made merchants accept them.

Victorian and early-20th-century travelers also worried about pickpockets and kept their paper banknotes in hand-sewn pockets in their clothes, lining the inside of coats or their petticoats and corsets. To retrieve the money, you had to make your way to a private space and cut open the seam instead of unpicking stitches in front of other people. People would also plan ahead by only taking out what they thought they would spend each day.

The postwar shortage of foreign exchange led the British government to pass the Exchange Control Act of 1947, regulating how much money could be taken out of Britain for travel purposes. This led to various restrictions over the years, including a cap of £50 a year during Harold Wilson’s time as prime minister, from 1966 to 1970. The sum was physically marked in the passport, and authorities could open bags to check that travelers did not exceed the legal limit.

Theft was common with 19th-century luggage, which passed through too many hands, too many porters and carriage drivers, and ship crews. Those with more money paid for trunks with false bottoms or hired cobblers to make boots with hollowed-out heels, which they stuffed with folded high-denomination bills or gold coins as a last resort. It worked, but only barely. Should the trunk or boots themselves be stolen while in transit, then the cash inside would be lost as well.

A British travel pioneer named Thomas Cook, who created the first mass tourism industry, invented the detachable paper hotel coupon in 1868. Tourists could purchase coupon books at home in British pounds. Each coupon was valid for a single service: a bed, breakfast, or dinner, at any hotel on the official Cook list. Travelers no longer had to deal with the hassle of foreign exchange when paying for lodging and meals. They were simply expected to eat prearranged meals only at the hotels designated by Cook.

With transatlantic telegraph cables connecting Europe and the United States from the late 1860s onward, a stranded traveler with no funds could send a coded message home requesting assistance. The traveler’s family would deposit cash at their local bank, which would then transmit a transfer request to a correspondent bank abroad. Even after receiving the authorization, however, decoding the message, verifying signatures, and clearing transactions between banks required three to seven days. In the interim, the traveler languished at the hotel, unable to settle the bill.

Prior to the advent of lightweight synthetic fabrics, travelers in the late 1800s and early 1900s were advised by travel catalogs to buy a heavy leather or canvas money belt with a sturdy metal buckle and buttoned pockets. The women would wear garter purses, strapped to their thighs and hidden beneath long skirts, and the men wore a waist belt under the trousers and undershirt. But in warm climates, the leather belts chafed, and even a mundane activity like purchasing a train ticket required a detour to the restroom or an alleyway.

To avoid having to carry around and barter with foreign money-changers for exchange rates, middle-class people in the 1800s started to book escorted group tours. The British travel pioneer Thomas Cook organized the first continental package trip to the 1855 Paris exhibition, and a year later he began offering his branded “Tour of the Continent.” Travelers would pay one sum up front at home, and the tour conductor would take care of all the train tickets, hotel bills, and restaurant checks.

From the 1930s, and even more so after World War II, European governments imposed strict currency controls in order to prevent capital from exiting their territory and to defend their gold reserves. Traveling across the continent by train, ferry, or car meant having to complete a customs declaration that listed all banknotes, coins, and traveler’s checks one possessed. This form was then stamped upon entry and rechecked at exit. Any discrepancy between these documents could lead to questioning, fines, or confiscation.

Those with the means to do so could obtain a circular letter of credit from a London banking house that would allow them to withdraw their money at a partner bank in a major European city. They’d show up at their destination, hand over their letter of credit, sit back, and wait for a teller to check the letter and write their withdrawal into the book by hand. If there was no partner bank, or if the bank was closed, they got nothing.

Prior to the advent of circular letters of credit, travelers might purchase a foreign bank draft that would pay out at a particular bank in a particular city, such as Paris. There, you could turn this draft into local currency fairly easily. However, if something happened, such as getting sick, a storm, or a war, you couldn’t use your Paris-specific money to get by.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, it was not unusual for a teller at a foreign bank or innkeeper to have doubts about honoring a letter of credit drawn on an unknown account. There were no central credit agencies yet. Instead, travelers relied on letters of introduction to well-known merchants, government officials, and other foreign citizens living overseas. Their signatures provided assurance, either personally or in writing, of a traveler’s good reputation and financial stability. Without such sponsorship, they were sometimes simply refused accommodation on credit or loans.

Even companies such as American Express and Thomas Cook, the British pioneer of tourism, would replace lost or stolen travelers’ checks, but only if you could identify the serial numbers on the stolen checks. A tally sheet came with each booklet, and buyers were advised to record all check serial numbers on it, keep the sheet separate from the booklet itself, and cross off the serial numbers of the checks that had been redeemed. Losing both the booklet and the sheet meant that reclaiming the value of the stolen checks was not straightforward.

Since passports did not yet include photos, people traveling with circular letters of credit or circular notes had no way of establishing identity. To remedy this, the issuing bank in London would provide another document, written in French, which was the international language of diplomacy at the time. The letter listed the traveler’s name, a sample signature, and all the banks that could honor the letter or note. The bank encouraged clients to keep the letter of credit and this letter separate, so a thief who stole the money couldn’t easily forge the signature too.

If the foreign bank had no electronic system with which to cross-check a traveler’s circular note or letter of credit, a heavy, bound signature book, mailed to the branch months before by the issuing bank, had to be brought out. An employee then used a magnifying glass to match the signatures on the note and passport against those recorded in the book, one by one. This could take 30 minutes or even several hours in the banking hall.

The early 1770s saw Scottish merchant and banker Sir Robert Herries use his London Credit Exchange Company to sell “circular notes,” more than a century before American Express made its famous version. They were similar in concept, fixed-value paper notes purchased in London and then converted into local cash at banks across Europe via a network of correspondent bankers. And while they allowed travelers to avoid the burden of carrying coinage, the circular notes had no value in towns without a corresponding bank.

Prior to the electronic calculator, switching between currency denominations such as pre-1971 UK pounds, shillings, and pence was a truly challenging mental exercise for a foreign traveler. The travel agents, travel guides, and banks gave out pocket currency conversion cards, printed tables, and miniature cardboard slide rules that the tourist could pull out at the shop counter or ticket office to see if the seller had given them a good deal. After all, some fast-talking vendors were likely to count on the tourist’s lack of currency knowledge so they wouldn’t notice.

When international postal money orders were adopted in the 1870s, budget travelers, students, and people without bank accounts used the post office to draw funds from home. The sender purchased the money order at home, and the recipient had to go to the main post office in some strange city and present a passport, whereupon the postal clerks spent time comparing the voucher with slips in their ledgers. Their working hours were limited, and the lines were often long, making the process slow.

European and Latin American official banks did not offer the best prices for foreign currency after World War II, operating within a fixed exchange-rate system which frequently overvalued the local currency relative to the dollar or pound. To stretch their funds, many travelers made illegal deals with street money changers outside train stations and cafes through the 1950s. Though the rates were better than those offered by banks, the risk was equally high: undercover police stings, outright theft, or stacks of bills with worthless ones underneath.

This content was created with the help of AI.