An institution in London established by the bankers for the adjustment of their mutual claims for cheques and bills, by exchanging them and settling the balances. Extended to imitations of this in other places, and to institutions of a similar nature, as the Railway Clearing House, an office in which the mutual claims of the different railways for through tickets and freights, etc., are settled.
1832. Babbage, Econ. Manuf., xiv. (ed. 3), 126. In London this is avoided, by making all checks paid in to bankers pass through what is technically called ‘The Clearing House.’
1848. Mill, Pol. Econ., I. xi. 48. The clearing house to which every City banker sends each afternoon all the checques on other bankers which he has received during the day.
1848–60. Bartlett, Dict. Amer., Clearing House, an establishment recently organized in the city of New York.
1849. Sir F. B. Head, Stokers & Pokers, xiv. (1851), 141. The London Clearing-House is enabled to trace the course of all waggons and passenger-carriages.
1861. Goschen, For. Exch., 37. Indirect and intermediate settlements, in which London appears as the clearing-house of the world.
1866. Crump, Banking, i. 37. The Clearing-house … was established by the principal bankers in London in the year 1775.
1881. H. H. Gibbs, Double Stand., 39. France acting as a clearing-house between England and India.
b. attrib. So also clearing-banker, a banker who has admission to the Clearing House.
1878. M. Marble, in N. Amer. Rev., CXXVI. 163. Our bank-notes, checks, drafts, book-accounts, and clearing-house machinery.
1885. Whitaker’s Almanack, 221. Every Bank in London and the Country is represented by Clearing Bankers, who, as agents, send through the Clearing House all drafts payable in the City and in the Country.
