Firms can be killed by competitive forces in the marketplace or they can die solvent, peacefully in their beds. They come to the end of their lives for a number of reasons: because they have been transformed by a merger or takeover; because their guiding light goes elsewhere or retires; and because they are losing money. Only the last of these can definitely be thought of as failure, though on occasions the other two reasons involve it as well. Failure is in fact very difficult to define. An inability to maximise profits is failure of sorts, just as is the non-achievement of goals specified by the businessmen themselves. But bankruptcy is a reasonable way of defining and quantifying business failure, for all firms try to avoid insolvency. Here, failure might best be thought of as a degree of indebtedness which either the creditor or debtor takes to be permanent. Unfortunately, in the eighteenth century bankruptcy does not precisely reflect such a state, largely because of the conditions attached to its legal definition. The eighteenth–century layman's definition of a bankrupt, which is similar to that which we use today, did not coincide with the law's specifications. Only some of those who were insolvent were dealt with as bankrupts; others were dealt with by alternative legal mechanisms; and some escaped the law altogether, though not necessarily their creditors. Only traders owing at least £100 who had committed an ‘act of bankruptcy’ could be dealt with by the law as bankrupts. Eighteenth-century bankruptcy, therefore, constitutes the tip of the iceberg of insolvency as failure. But quite what the relative proportions above and below the waterline were, it is impossible to judge.