Sacro y Real Monte de Piedad de Ánimas: pledge credit for the poor of Mexico City, 1775

A silver magnate gave 300,000 pesos to open a pawn bank in Mexico City in February 1775 that lent against clothes and jewels and charged nothing, asking only whatever alms the borrower chose to leave. Its own printed returns count 755,191 loans and 13.5 million pesos advanced in the first twenty-two years. The same returns record the alms turning into a fixed three per cent, and a later compendium records the fund collapsing to 105,809 pesos by 1814.