The Royal Exchange

THE CORPORATION.

AN earlier chapter gave some account of the origin and beginnings of the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation. It would not be in keeping with this note on the occasion of the Bicentenary of the Corporation to enter into those details of profits, advantages and benefits, which are more suitable to a prospectus. But certain landmarks may well be noted.

The year 1720 was, as we have seen, the difficult year in the history of the Corporation. It was the first year when the Corporation worked under its new Charter, and under its present name. It was the one year of all its two hundred in which for reasons which we have understood it paid no dividend upon its stock. Yet, during this one year of 1720, it gave such proofs of courage and vitality as must have inspired all intimately interested in its operations, with a very stout confidence; for although the threat of disaster was at the door, its Directors went blithely on their way, organising the extension of its business.

In 1720 it absorbed the Sadler’s Hall Company, which with a nominal capital of two millions was unable to obtain a Charter under which it could do business. In 1721, the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation added to the Charter which it already possessed, another, granting it power to insure for life and against fire. In 1721, it appointed its first agent. Let us set down the actual date and record the name of the man, the fore-runner of so many thousands who were to carry on the torch, each in his turn, through the next two hundred years. On 22nd May, the Directors appointed Mr. Palmer, of Ockingham, in Berkshire, its agent.

After that day the Corporation set to work very quickly to extend its agencies, for on the 31st of the same month it agreed to appoint “as many country postmasters as are proper to be country correspondents”; and by the next year, so widely had the system been increased, that it resolved, by a formal declaration, to undertake no responsibility in any town of America where it had not already an agent appointed.

The Corporation’s machinery for dealing with fires was at this time, primitive as all such arrangements then were. It appointed one man whose business it was to fix the firemarks upon the houses insured, and in his odd times to run messages for the office. The firemark itself was an object of some discussion at the meetings of the Board. It was too heavy, and it seems there was too much gilding to satisfy the frugality of the Directors. Mr. Spelman, the Fire Clerk, was accordingly ordered to provide two new samples from which the Directors might choose; and he was especially enjoined to inform the Committee of the exact price of the mark “distinguishing what the lead will cost and what the gilding will come to.” It seems that the unfortunate Mr. Spelman, even with this sharp hint to remind him of his duties, could not restrain his passion for gilding. The Fire Committee accordingly took the matter out of Mr. Spelman’s hands and ordered “the Plumber that used to serve the Company to make a model of the mark with a large crown, and lay the expense before the Committee.” The Plumber understood his Committee better than Mr. Spelman, and the Firemark with the large crown, which to-day decorates some of the houses originally insured under a policy with the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation, is the very same mark which was designed in 1721 by that economical and understanding plumber. Mr. Smith, who founded the plumber’s design, received 14½d. for each firemark. The ha’penny alone should have been sufficient by the confidence which it inspired in the economical management of the Company to have brought hundreds of annuitants on to those hone stones which paved the second Royal Exchange as they had done the first.

To the one fireman and messenger combined were shortly added others, and we find in the year 1752 that thirty-six firemen, nine porters and four carmen paraded the West end of the town—it is to be supposed as an advertisement for the Corporation. It was the custom of those days to employ as firemen, watermen who plied habitually on the Thames. These were stout and handy men, although since the Thames was the general highway of London, it looks as if their ordinary occupation must have suffered. They wore the liveries of their separate offices, and those employed by the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation must have cut a fine figure when they paraded the West end of the town, in a livery of yellow lined with pink, with music playing in front of them, and five shillings in their pockets for their dinners. The custom by which each separate insurance company kept its own firemen was a bad one in the public interest. For it meant that if the house in flames bore the firemark of a different company, the firemen simply went home and left the building burning. It was not until January 1866, that the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, as we know it, came into existence.

The Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation stands to-day its own evidence and justification. It was the first Insurance Office to extend its work to the troubled country of Ireland, where fires were more than ordinarily common, for it opened its first office in Abbey Street, Dublin, in the year 1722: and it retains to-day by the activity of its agents and the extension of its business that pre-eminence which its priority in time first gave to it. Of late years it has undertaken much work which in other days would have been deemed quite outside the scope of an Insurance Corporation. It was the first Insurance Office in England to set up a Trustee branch. This was in 1904, when as yet there was no Public Trustee, and many a legatee’s affairs were plunged into confusion by the death or business inexperience of an Executor. Thus, though not a philanthropic institution, the Corporation has pursued its business by beneficent means. It has seen companies—such as that which was originated by the famed Mr. Montague Tigg—blaze for a moment in a false prosperity and then disappear. It has remained proud in its antiquity, faithful to its traditions, and yet alert to each new development of the machinery of life which could strengthen its foundations and extend its influence. It has survived the most momentous changes and the most difficult crises in the national life of Great Britain. Yes, but self-preservation is not everything. For a Corporation to live for two hundred years is very well in itself; but to live at the end of that time amidst the increasing confidence and good will of those who have entrusted their interests to its care is a greater matter of which the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation may well be infinitely proud.

A. E. W. Mason.

Jas. Truscott & Son, Ltd., London. E.C.