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Mr Johnson earned just over £13,000 a year, so finance involved a hire-purchase agreement and an extra personal loan.

It’s a form of hire-purchase that can work out dear.

But the stock of lending in the Bank's category of "other loans" - typically bank loans, overdrafts and hire-purchase agreements - dropped by £200m, as consumers repaid more loans that month than they took out.

Originally applied to the sale of the more expensive kinds of goods, such as pianos and articles of furniture, the hire-purchase agreement has now been extended to almost every description.

He took the young man round to a neighbouring costumier’s, and secured a dress-suit on the hire-purchase system, at a very small outlay of ready money which he advanced.