Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed (pg. 31)

Now faced with the prospect of large parts of the City of London going under, the commercial bankers in a panic had begun withdrawing gold from their accounts at the Bank of England. Its bullion reserves fell from over $130 million on Wednesday, July 29, [1914] to less than $50 million on Saturday, August 1, [1914] when the Bank, to attract deposits and conserve its rapidly diminishing stock of gold, announced that it had raised its interest rates to an unprecedented 10 percent.