{"title":"British horse tramway company accounting practices, 1870–1914","authors":"H. Pollins","doi":"10.1080/09585209100000039","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this article1is primarily to add to the knowledge of past accounting practices. It does this through an examination of one short-lived industry of the late nineteenth century. As part of the transport sector the horse tramway companies were subject to public regulation and control of which the most interesting feature was their liability to be purchased by local authorities after twenty-one years. Their accounting practices, typically for the period, varied greatly. Despite its being a small compact industry, the form of the companies’ published final accounts was not uniform. One of the questions pursued here is the extent to which the companies used the double-account system, introduced for the railways on the eve of the tramway era and adopted by many public utility enterprises. Another field of examination is depreciation, a subject of intense discussion in the same period, associated with a number of judicial decisions.","PeriodicalId":252763,"journal":{"name":"Accounting, Business and Financial History","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Accounting, Business and Financial History","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09585209100000039","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
The purpose of this article1is primarily to add to the knowledge of past accounting practices. It does this through an examination of one short-lived industry of the late nineteenth century. As part of the transport sector the horse tramway companies were subject to public regulation and control of which the most interesting feature was their liability to be purchased by local authorities after twenty-one years. Their accounting practices, typically for the period, varied greatly. Despite its being a small compact industry, the form of the companies’ published final accounts was not uniform. One of the questions pursued here is the extent to which the companies used the double-account system, introduced for the railways on the eve of the tramway era and adopted by many public utility enterprises. Another field of examination is depreciation, a subject of intense discussion in the same period, associated with a number of judicial decisions.