the Act, as provincial banking companies merged to form larger banks, they lost their right to issue notes. The English private banknote eventually disappeared, leaving the Bank of England with a monopoly of note issue in England and Wales. The last private bank to issue its own banknotes in England and Wales was Fox, Fowler and Company in 1921. The Bank Notes (Scotland) Act 1845 adopted a year later was more lenient, allowing banks in Scotland to issue more than their 1845 circulation amount, as long as the additional circulation was backed pound-for-pound with gold reserves at head office. Merging banks were also allowed to combine their issues. Today three commercial banks in Scotland and four in Northern Ireland continue to issue their own sterling banknotes, regulated by the Bank of England. Banking Act 2009 The Banking Act 2009 abolished the "weekly return" of the number of banknotes issued by the Bank of England: "Section 6 of the Bank Charter Act 1844 (Bank to produce weekly account) shall cease to have effect". Outcomes The Cambridge economic historian Charles Read has argued that this legislation reduced Britain's fiscal capacity to pay for humanitarian relief during the Great Famine in Ireland (18451852), and that it also made the financial crises of 1847, 1857 and 1866 worse than they would otherwise have been. (More traditional explanations for the UK Government's decisions to withhold relief and intervention are given in the article about the famine.) See also Henry Meulen – a critic who saw the Bank Charter Act as a cause of economic depression and political revolution Banknotes of the pound sterling – a list of note-issuing banks in the Sterling area Banknotes of Scotland Banknotes of Northern Ireland Fractional reserve banking Central bank References External links Bank Charter Act 1844 - full text United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1844 Banking legislation in the United Kingdom 1844 in economics Robert Peel