March 26, 2004
Charles Dickens Explains It All, Part 1: Payday Loans

"In like manner, did young Ralph Nickleby avoid all those minute and intricate calculations of odd days, which nobody who as ever worked sums in simple-interest can fail to have found most embarrassing, by establishing the one general rule that all sums of principal and interest should be paid on pocket-money day, that is to say, on Saturday; and that whether a loan were contracted on the Monday or on the Friday, the amount of interest should be in both cases the same. Indeed, he argued, and with great show of reason, that it ought to be rather more for one day than for five, inasmuch as the borrower might in the former case be very fairly presumed to be in great extremity, otherwise he would not borrow at all with such odds against him."

- from Nicholas Nickleby, 1838