private-wire house

English

Alternative forms

• private wire house

Etymology

1894, due to these brokerage companies owning or leasing telegraph lines (which occurred since 1873), so that market information could be transmitted more quickly.

Noun

private-wire house (plural private-wire houses)

1. (Canada, US, finance, obsolete) A brokerage company with a telegraph line, telephone line, or electronic communication network.
   • 1894, “Chicago Was Afraid of Wall Street”, The New York Times, February 10, 1894, page 2:

     All the private-wire houses were active on the selling side, those most talked of in connection with the Wall Street bull interest being the most active.

   • 1895, Forest and Stream,, volume 44, page 463:

     Commission men, as a rule, will not accept discretionary orders. Their risk is great enough when directions are explicit. The following is the eloquent plea made, in a letter to a private-wire house, …

   • 1899 December 14, “Chicago Broker Expelled: Large Private Wire House Guilty of Connection with Bucket Shops .”, in The New York Times, page 2:

     Edward Leland of the firm of Leland Ware, which in its line did the biggest private-wire business in the country, was expelled from the Chicago Stock Exchange today on the general charge of indulging in methods detrimental to the interests and contrary to the rules of the institution of which he had been a member only a year.

Derived terms

• wire house

References

• “Private-wire house”, TeachMeFinance.com, Mark McCracken, 2007