The recent Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin has a really nice article on the City of Glasgow Bank crash which occurred in October 1878 - click here for the article and see below for an interview with one of the the authors. This article draws very heavily on my 2008 paper on the City of Glasgow Bank crash and my book Banking in Crisis. The authors do a great job of outlining seven lessons from the crash for modern-day policymakers.
My colleague and former PhD student Gareth Campbell has created a website about the British Railway Mania - click here . This episode has been described by the Economist as probably the greatest bubble in human history. Gareth's website provides background on the Mania and posits some explanations for the 'bubble'. In his explanation of why the bubble happened, Gareth places a lot of emphasis on investor myopia regarding future dividends and uncalled capital. His study of investors during the episode does not support the view that this episode was fuelled by naive and irrational investors.