The medical adviser in life assurance / by Edward Henry Sieveking.

  • Sieveking, Edward H. (Edward Henry), 1816-1904.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical adviser in life assurance / by Edward Henry Sieveking. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/224 (page 9)
    Grateful as we must feel to the enterprising men who first promoted honest life insurance business, we imply no censure when we say that, as a matter of fact, they were groping in the dark, as they could possess no definite principle to guide them, until it was possible to establish a firm basis by the prepara¬ tion of reliable mortality tables. Their rates * were extravagantly high, a fault that might even now be considered as leaning to virtue’s side, since it added to the security of the policyholders, by increasing the assets of the companies. To a Unitarian preacher, Dr. Price, belongs the honour of having elaborated the first English mortality tables; which, from his having employed the registers of the births and deaths of the town of Northampton for his calcula¬ tions, have received the name, and are still known as, the Northampton Mortality Tables. They were published in 1780, and were especially constructed the discomfiture of some quiet people. The following lines, quoted by Walford from the New Monthly Magazine of a later date, illustrate this phase, and perhaps also give the correct clue to the original meaning of the terms which Babbage has otherwise defined :— “ By fire and life insurers next I’m intercepted, pester’d, vex’d, Almost beyond endurance ; And though the schemes appear unsound, Their advocates are seldom found Deficient in assurance.” * The early offices charged enormous premiums, from not possessing reliable data for calculation. The premium to assure <£100 for one year, on the life of any age between 12 and 45, was as much as £5 ; whereas the assurance for the whole life on the same amount now ranges, according to age, from £l : 8s. to <£3 : 12s.