What is a counting house?

[kev67]

What does Mr Scrooge actually do for a living? He was in a partnership of a counting house. The only other place I have come across the term is in a nursery rhyme: "The King was in his counting house, counting all his money."

[Alexander III]

Back in the day before computers, an entire bussnisse's financial affairs had to be checked and recorded accurately by a large number of professional clerks and accountants and such. This was called a counting house. A business would deposit its money in the bank but the counting house was to regolate and verify the cash flow and selecting how much money would be deposited in the bank and how much had to remain in the counting house to keep the business running smoothly and precisely.

[cafolini]

Any accounting department is a counting house. It's still that way today. It started in England with Newton's house of coin.

[kev67]

So, I suppose Scrooge & Marley was a firm of accountants?

[AuntShecky]

an entire bussnisse's financial affairs had to be checked and recorded accurately by a large number of professional clerks and accountants and such.

There have been hundreds of movies,videos, and television shows based on Dickens's classic Yuletide tale. In the endearing version with the Muppets, featuring Michael Caine as Mr. Scrooge (incidentally the only "human" actor),there's a hilarious scene showing the accountants all furiously wielding their quill pens. Because the miserly employer is stingy with the heat, the office is colder than the proverbial witch's you-know-whats, prompting one of The Muppets to complain, "We're freezing our assets off in here!"

[kev67]

There have been hundreds of movies,videos, and television shows based on Dickens's classic Yuletide tale. In the endearing version with the Muppets, featuring Michael Caine as Mr. Scrooge (incidentally the only "human" actor),there's a hilarious scene showing the accountants all furiously wielding their quill pens. Because the miserly employer is stingy with the heat, the office is colder than the proverbial witch's you-know-whats, prompting one of The Muppets to complain, "We're freezing our assets off in here!"

I would not have cast Michael Caine as Scrooge myself, but he was a surprisingly versatile actor. Anyway, let's not get too distracted. So we have established Scrooge was an accountant?

[OrphanPip]

It might have also been a loan agency.