Savings banks are financial institutions that emerged in the late 18th century, inspired by the Enlightenment. There had been similar projects in Northern Europe earlier, such as the mont-de-piété (mount of piety, a public pawn shop as a charitable institution based on an Italian ecclesiastical model) of Hugues Delestre in Paris (1611) and Daniel Defoe’s project of a “pension office” in England (1697), conceived on the …